Overlaying Computer Science (CS) courses on top of inequitable schooling systems will not move us toward “CS for All.” This paper prioritizes the perspectives of minoritized students enrolled in high school CS classrooms across a large, urban school district in the Western United States, to help inform how CS can truly be for all.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jean RyooTiera TanksleyCynthia EstradaJane Margolis
This Masters project consists of two elements: 1) an integrated after-school program to improve student English language reading and academic outcomes for third graders' vocabulary development by incorporating music, artistic creativity and linguistics; 2) a pilot sample curriculum that demonstrates the approach for building student comprehension through musical theater and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) content experiences. Called "Water Buddy", this is an after-school program uses singing, dancing, writing, and play to build reading and vocabulary skills. The goal
This project is a Smart and Connected Communities award. The community is part of Evanston, Illinois and is composed of the lead partners described below:
EvanSTEM which is a in-school/out of school time (OST) program to improve access and engagement for students in Evanston who have underperformed or been underrepresented in STEM.
McGaw YMCA which consists of 12,000 families serving 20,000 individuals and supporting technology and makerspace activities (MetaMedia) in a safe community atmosphere.
Office of Community Education Partnerships (OCEP) at Northwestern University which provides support for the university and community to collaborate on research, teaching, and service initiatives.
This partnership will develop a new approach to learning enagement through the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) interests of all young people in Evanston. This project is entitled Interests for All (I4All) and builds upon existing research results of the two Principal Investigators (PIs) and previous partnerships between the lead partners (EvanSTEM and MetaMedia had OCEP as a founding partner). I4All also brings together Evanston school districts, OST prividers, the city, and Evanston's Northwestern University as participants.
In particular the project builds on PI Pinkard's Cities of Learning project and co-PI Stevens' FUSE Studios project. Both of these projects have explicit goals to broaden participation in STEAM pursuits, a goal that is significantly advanced through I4All. In this project, I4All infrastructure will be evaluated using quantitative metrics that will tell the researchers whether and to what degree Evanston youth are finding and developing their STEAM interests and whether the I4All infrastructure supports a significantly more equitable distribution of opportunities to youth. The researchers will also conduct in depth qualitative case studies of youth interest development. These longitudinal studies will complement the quantitative metrics of participation and give measures that will be used in informing changes in I4All as part of the PIs Design Based Implementation Research approach. The artifacts produced in I4All include FUSE studio projects, software infrastructure to guide the students through OST and in-school activities and to provide to the students actionable information as to logistics for participation in I4All activities, and data that will be available to all stakeholders to evaluate the effectiveness of I4All. Additionally, this research has the potential to provide for scaling this model to different communities, leveraging the OST network in one community to begin to offer professional development more widely throughout the school districts and as an exemplar for other districts. These research results could also affect strategies and policies created by local school officials and community organizations regarding how to work together to create local learning environments to create an ecosystem where formal and informal learning spaces support and reinforce STEAM knowledge.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This paper examines the differences and challenges encountered when trying to create informal blended (virtual and hands-on) engineering design STEM activities. It contrasts the creation of STEM activities for formal and informal learning environments, stressing that the differences extend far beyond the length of the activity or depth of any learning goals. The discussion begins with an examination of differences between the two learning environments that need to be taken into consideration. These differences include the physical environments, organizational structures, and the goals or
This CAREER proposal focuses on the development of teachers' identities, which are operationalized as beliefs and practices, behaviors, and pedagogical knowledge. The PI uses a qualitative approach, occurring over two phases, to investigate the impact of formal-informal collaborations on identity development over time. The study is grounded in an ecological theoretical approach that incorporates a view of informal learning settings as learner-driven and unique in providing opportunities for interaction with objects during meaning-making experiences among groups of learners. The longitudinal research design includes collection of an array of data, including observations of teaching and learning activities, interviews, survey responses, and archival documents such as student work and videos of classroom experiences. The PI uses a narrative analysis and a grounded theoretical approach to generate themes about beliefs and practices around behaviors and pedagogical knowledge informed by informal science education experiences.
Research findings and related educational activities inform the field's understanding of best practices of integrating informal science activities into science teacher education, including determining appropriate kinds of support for STEM teachers who learn to teach in informal learning environments (ILE). The PI is integrating research findings in the revision of existing courses and the development of new courses and experiences for both new and experienced teachers. The project addresses the need for empirical evidence of impacts of ILE experiences on professional development, and will build capacity of informal science institution and university professionals to provide effective teacher education experiences and new teacher support.
Engaging with Tinkering is a highly stimulating and complex experience and invites rich reflections from museum practitioners and teachers. "Tinkering as an inclusive approach for building STEM identity and supporting students facing disadvantage or with low science capital” presents the reflective practice process and tools designed by the "Tinkering EU: Building Science Capital for All" project aiming to understand in more depth the potential impact of using a Tinkering approach with students facing disadvantage. Using tools specifically designed to help teachers observe their students
The goal of the National Science Foundation?s Research Coordination Network (RCN) program is to advance a field or create new directions in research or education by supporting groups of investigators to communicate and coordinate their research, training and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, geographic and international boundaries. This RCN will bring together scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of equity and interdisciplinary making in STEM education. Making is a culture that emphasizes interest-driven learning by doing within an informal, peer-led and creative social environment. Hundreds of maker spaces and maker-oriented classroom pedagogies have developed across the country. Maker spaces often include digital technologies such as computer design, 3-D printers, and laser cutters, but may also include traditional crafts or a variety of artist-driven creations. The driving purpose of the project is to collectively broaden STEM-focused maker participation in the United States through pursuing common research questions, sharing resources, and incubating emergent inquiry and knowledge across multiple working sites of practice. The network aims to build capacity for research and knowledge, building in consequential and far-reaching mechanisms to leverage combined efforts of a core group of scholars, practitioners, and an extended network of formal and informal education partners in urban and rural sites serving people from groups underrepresented in STEM. Maker learning spaces can be particularly fruitful spaces for STEM learning toward equity because they foster interest-driven, collective, and community-oriented learning in making for social and community change. The network will be led by a team of multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary researchers from different geographic regions of the United States and guided by a steering committee of prominent researchers and practitioners in making and equity will convene to facilitate network activities.
Equitable processes are rooted in a commitment to understand and build on the skills, practices, values, and knowledge of communities marginalized in STEM. The research network aims to fill in gaps in current understandings about making and equity, including the many ways different projects define equity and STEM in making. The project will survey the existing research terrain to develop a dynamic and cohesive understanding of making that connects to learners' STEM ideas, communities, and historical ways of making. Additionally, the network will collaboratively develop central research questions for network partners. The network will create a repository for ethical and promising practices in community-based research and aggregate data across sites, among other activities. The network will support collaboration across a multiplicity of making spaces, research institutions, and community organizations throughout the country to share data, methodologies, ways of connecting to local communities and approaches to robust integration of STEM skills and practices. Project impacts will include new research partnerships, a dissemination hub for research related to making and equity, professional development for researchers and practitioners, and leveraging collective research findings about making values and practices to improve approaches to STEM-rich making integration in informal learning environments. The project is funded by NSF's Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This dissertation study investigates late-elementary and early-middle school field trips to a mathematics exhibition called Math Moves!. Developed by and currently installed at four science museums across the United States, Math Moves! is a suite of interactive technologies designed to engage visitors in open-ended explorations of ratio and proportion. Math Moves! exhibits emphasize embodied interaction and movement, through kinesthetic, multi-sensory, multi-party, and whole-body immersive experiences.
Many science museums and other informal-learning institutions offer exhibits and public
The goal of the project is to advance understanding of basic questions about learning and teaching through the development of a theory of embodied mathematical cognition that can apply to a broad range of people, settings and activities. The investigative team brings together expertise from a range of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies. A theory of embodied mathematical cognition empirically rooted in classroom learning and workplace practices will broaden the range of activities and emerging technologies that count as mathematical, and help educators to envision alternative forms of bodily engagement with mathematical problems.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ricardo NemirovskyRogers HallMartha AlibaliMitchell NathanKevin Leander
Informal STEM field trip programming is a large, yet under-researched area of the education landscape. Informal STEM education providers are often serving a more privileged section of society, leading to a risk of perpetuating inequalities seen throughout the education landscape. In an attempt to address the lack of research, this thesis explores the relationship between educational equity and informal STEM field trips. The intention was to collect data using a critical ethnography approach to the methods of qualitative questionnaire and interviews of informal STEM educators. A change in
The data collection procedure and process is one of the most critical components in a research study that affects the findings. Problems in data collection may directly influence the findings, and consequently, may lead to questionable inferences. Despite the challenges in data collection, this study provides insights for STEM education researchers and practitioners on effective data collection, in order to ensure that the data is useful for answering questions posed by research. Our engineering education research study was a part of a three-year, NSF funded project implemented in the Midwest
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ibrahim YeterAnastasia Marie RynearsonHoda EhsanAnnwesa DasguptaBarbara FagundesMuhsin MeneskeMonica Cardella
Integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects in pre-college settings is seen as critical in providing opportunities for children to develop knowledge, skills, and interests in these subjects and the associated critical thinking skills. More recently computational thinking (CT) has been called out as an equally important topic to emphasize among pre-college students. The authors of this paper began an integrated STEM+CT project three years ago to explore integrating these subjects through a science center exhibit and a curriculum for 5-8 year old students. We
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Morgan HynesMonica CardellaTamara MooreSean BrophySenay PurzerKristina TankMuhsin MeneskeIbrahim YeterHoda Ehsan