Abstract
In 2011, Donna DiBartolomeo and Zachary Clark enrolled in the Arts in Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Harvard Graduate School of Education is home to Project Zero, an educational research group comprising multiple, independently funded projects examining creativity, ethics, understanding, and other aspects of learning and its processes. Under the guidance of Principal Investigator Howard Gardner and Project Manager Katie Davis, the authors were tasked with developing a methodology capable of observing finegrained, objective detail in complete works of
This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understandings of, the design and development of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning in informal environments. Roughly one million refugees resettled in the United States in the past decade, many of whom are school-aged youth. During secondary school, resettled refugee youth are often still developing English language literacy and STEM skills needed for successful postsecondary experiences in the United States. At the same time, these youth bring rich cultural and linguistic resources that they can use as an asset as they grow their STEM skill sets, prepare for future success, and make positive impacts on U.S. society. To promote these assets and engage youth in developing STEM literacy, this after-school program engages these youth in critical STEM literacy development. The project focuses on STEM learning, specifically the relationship between human life and climate, as well as developing youths' STEM identities and agency.
The project will develop and implement a community-based afterschool program that provides resettled Burmese refugee youth with STEM learning experiences. By drawing upon youths' experiences, the program will engage youth in learning about climate science and developing digital stories to communicate with broader audiences. To do so, the team will implement a program that builds on principles of responsive teaching, funds of knowledge, and English literacy development in authentic meaning-making contexts. The project will examine how youth expand their STEM knowledge, develop STEM identities and agency, and develop their expertise in communicating about STEM within and beyond their participation in the after-school program. The research team will explore existing and innovative data collection and analysis methods by drawing on principles of ethnography, video ethnography, mediated discourse analysis, and phenomenological and ethnomethodological analysis of interviews. These analyses will document learning over time in informal STEM learning settings. As there is very little prior research on STEM learning in this population, this project will generate knowledge about how to support STEM sense-making and critical STEM literacy. Furthermore, by testing the designed curriculum and building a partnership with a local community organization, the project will build capacity for broadening participation in informal STEM learning practices.
In this article, we invite you to expand your vision of what it means to work at the intersections of formal and informal science and literacy education by describing how educators have collaborated to create programs that blend science and literacy in schools, in museums, and across these two spaces. In 2012, K–12 teachers from the National Writing Project (NWP) began working with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and science museum educators in the National Science Foundation–funded Intersections project, which is being evaluated by Inverness Research. NWP is a network
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Makerspaces are social spaces with tools, where individuals and groups conceptualize, design, and make things using new and old technologies. Literacy practices are the ways people use representational texts to navigate and make sense of their worlds. They are used in particular contexts with particular goals. By “representational texts” we mean written words, talk, photographs, diagrams, videos, schematics, computer code, electrical circuit diagrams
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The Expanding Repertoires project is a collaboration between the Center of Science and Industry (COSI) and The Ohio State University (OSU) to begin the systematic study of science and children's museum programs and practice for preschool dual language learners (DLLs), their families, and the community organizations and early childhood professionals who serve them.
Pacific Science Center will expand its Science, Technology, Engineering and Math—Out-of-School Time (STEM-OST) model to new venues in the Puget Sound region to improve science literacy and increase interest in STEM careers for youth. STEM-OST brings hands-on lessons and activities in physics, engineering, astronomy, mathematics, geology, and health to elementary and middle school children in underserved communities throughout the summer months. The center will modify lessons and activities to serve students in grades K-2, align the curriculum with the Next Generation Science Standards, and increase the number of Family Science Days and Family Science Workshops offered to enhance parent involvement in STEM learning. The program will employ a tiered mentoring approach with outreach educators, teens, and education volunteers to increase interest in STEM content and provide direct links between STEM and workforce preparedness.
Many communities across the country are developing "maker spaces," environments that combine physical fabrication equipment, social communities of people working together, and educational activities for learning how to design and create works. Increasingly, maker spaces and maker technologies provide extended learning opportunities for school-aged young people. In such environments participants engage in many forms of communication where individuals and groups of people are focused on different projects simultaneously. The research conducted in this project will address an important need of those engaged in the making movement: evidence leading to a better understanding of how participants in maker spaces engage with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as they create and produce physical products of personal and social value. Specifically, this research will generate new knowledge regarding how participants: pose and solve problems; identify, organize and integrate information from different sources; integrate information of different kinds (visual, quantitative, and verbal); and share ideas, knowledge and work with others. To understand and support STEM literacies involved in making, the investigators will study a number of different informal learning sites that self-identify as maker spaces and serve different-aged participants. The project will use ethnographic and design research techniques in three cycles of qualitative research. In Cycle One, the researchers will investigate two adult-oriented maker spaces in order to generate case studies and develop theories about how more experienced adult makers use the spaces and to create case studies of adult maker spaces, and to develop methodological techniques for understanding literacy in maker spaces. In Cycle Two, the study will expand into two out-of-school time youth-oriented maker spaces, building two new case studies and initiating design-based research activities. In Cycle Three, the team will further apply their developing theories and findings, through rapid iterative design-based research, to interventions that support participants' science literacy and making practices in two maker spaces that exist in schools. Through peer-reviewed publications, briefs, conference presentations, presence on websites of local and national maker organizations, project findings will be widely shared with organizations and individuals that are engaged in broadening the base of U.S. science and mathematics professionals for an innovation economy.
A recent report by the Association for Computing Machinery estimates that by decade's end, half of all STEM jobs in the United States will be in computing. Yet, the participation of women and underrepresented groups in post-secondary computer science programs remains discouragingly and persistently low. One of the most important findings from research in computer science education is the degree to which informal experiences with computers (at many ages and in many settings) shape young people's trajectories through high school and into undergraduate degree programs. Just as early language and mathematics literacy begins at home and is reinforced throughout childhood through a variety of experiences both in school and out, for reasons of diversity and competency, formal experiences with computational literacy alone are insufficient for developing the next generation of scientists, engineers, and citizens. Thus, this CAREER program of research seeks to contribute to a conceptual and design framework to rethink computational literacy in informal environments in an effort to engage a broad and diverse audience. It builds on the concept of cultural forms to understand existing computational literacy practices across a variety of learning settings and to contribute innovative technology designs. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in these settings. This CAREER program of research seeks to understand the role of cultural forms in informal computational learning experiences and to develop a theoretically grounded approach for designing such experiences for youth. This work starts from the premise that new forms of computational literacy will be born from existing cultural forms of literacy and numeracy (i.e., for mathematical literacy there are forms like counting songs -- "10 little ducks went out to play"). Many of these forms play out in homes between parents and children, in schools between teachers and students, and in all sorts of other place between friends and siblings. This program of study is a three-phased design and development effort focused on key research questions that include understanding (1) how cultural forms can help shape audience experiences in informal learning environments; (2) how different cultural forms interact with youth's identity-related needs and motivations; and (3) how new types of computational literacy experiences based on these forms can be created. Each phase includes inductive research that attempts to understand computational literacy as it exists in the world and a design phase guided by concrete learning objectives that address specific aspects of computational literacy. Data collection strategies will include naturalist observation, semi-structured, and in-depth interviews, and learning assessments; outcome measures will center on voluntary engagement, motivation, and persistence around the learning experiences. The contexts for research and design will be museums, homes, and afterschool programs. This research builds on a decade of experience by the PI in designing and studying computational literacy experiences across a range of learning settings including museums, homes, out-of-school programs, and classrooms. Engaging a broad and diverse audience in the future of STEM computing fields is an urgent priority of the US education system, both in schools and beyond. This project would complement substantial existing efforts to promote in-school computational literacy and, if successful, help bring about a more representative, computationally empowered citizenry. The integrated education plan supports the training and mentoring of graduate and undergraduate students in emerging research methods at the intersection of the learning sciences, computer science, and human-computer interaction. This work will also develop publically available learning experiences potentially impacting thousands of youth. These experiences will be available in museums, on the Web, and through App stores.