In December of 2019, TERC and the University of Notre Dame convened 21 early childhood reading, family learning, and informal STEM education experts to explore the role of children’s fiction books as a tool for supporting STEM learning with young children and their families. Through the discussions, the group developed a series of recommendations for future research and practice, with a particular focus on integrating diversity and equity perspectives into the use of storybooks.
In December of 2019, TERC and the University of Notre Dame convened a group of 21 early childhood reading, family learning, and informal STEM education experts to explore the role of children’s fiction books as a tool for supporting STEM learning with young children and their families. Participants included educators and researchers from across the country representing a broad range of learning contexts, professional roles, audience focus areas, and STEM discipline expertise. Through the discussions, the group developed a series of recommendations for future work, with a particular focus on
In informal science contexts, the word tinkering describes a learning process that combines art, science, and technology through hands-on inquiry. With the growth in popularity of the making and tinkering movements nationwide, these practices are increasingly making their way into early childhood environments where they have great promise to positively impact the early STEM learning experiences of young children. This 2-day conference hosted at the Exploratorium in San Francisco will bring together stakeholders exploring applications of tinkering in informal early childhood environments. The conference will provide opportunities to explore the role, value, and challenges associated with implementing meaningful tinkering interventions in learning environments serving young children. The project seeks to 1) Convene stakeholders from the tinkering and early childhood programs; and 2) further the exploration and evolution of practitioner and researcher knowledge about tinkering in early childhood contexts. The long-term goal is to support more young children being introduced to STEM learning through tinkering's adaptable approaches to STEM-learning that align with the developmental needs of this young population.
This project will collaboratively analyze and document the state of the field of STEM-rich tinkering in informal early childhood contexts. Additionally, the project will deepen relationships across the early childhood tinkering ecosystem. Additional outcomes include an effort to provide tangible resources to the field highlighting current promising practices and future opportunities for development. The conference will also provide an understanding of how tinkering interventions may contribute to the development of STEM interest, identity and learning amongst early childhood audiences. Finally, the conference will bring together research and practitioners to explore how tinkering in early childhood settings can be used effectively to meet the needs of diverse learners including learners from underserved and underrepresented communities. The project will recruit a total of 75 participants with backgrounds in the field of tinkering and STEM learning, early childhood research, and professional development practices representing a diverse set of institutions and organizations. Research questions for the conference will focus on: 1) What types of supports and professional development do early childhood educators need to facilitate early STEM learning through tinkering? 2) What types of built environment and hands-on materials best support young children's ability to learn STEM content and practices through tinkering? 3) What types of strategies best support caregiver involvement in young children's learning? 4) What is the role of early childhood tinkering in young children?s STEM learning, interest, and identity development? 5) How can culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogies be used to ensure equity across a diversity of young learners and their families? To answer these research questions the project will use qualitative methods before, during and post-conference. Research methods will include a landscape analysis identifying needs of participants, surveys, observations and informal interviews with participants.
This Conference award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences.
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.
A large body of research highlights the benefits of storybooks for children's learning. In the context of preschool classrooms, the use of storybooks to engage young children in STEM is a frequent topic of practitioner-oriented articles. There is also an increasing number of informal STEM education (ISE) projects exploring how to leverage storybooks to engage young children and their families in different STEM content domains. While there is universal excitement for the potential of storybooks in ISE, there is an acknowledgment of a critical need for more cross-project sharing, more research, and more efforts to synthesize and share findings. This award will catalyze new research studies and partnerships to advance efforts in ISE contexts, including the role of books in the overall learning experience or program, how books are selected or designed, and how the reading is facilitated by teachers and families. Participants will be educators and researchers working with or studying family learning for preschool-age children (three to five years) using early childhood fiction books as a tool for engaging families in STEM topics and skills.
Storybook STEM will be implemented in four phases: (1) pre-convening activities to plan, synthesize existing resources, engage a broader group of educators and researchers beyond convening attendees, and prepare convening participants to maximize the value of the in-person discussions; (2) in-person convening to catalyze cross-project discussions, outline promising practices, and identify questions and ideas for the future; (3) evaluation of the impact and value of the convening, from the perspective of participants and a project steering committee; and (4) dissemination of findings and recommendations to educators and researchers within and beyond the ISE field. Outcomes include: (1) documenting current and past work in ISE and other fields; (2) summarizing key recommendations and resources from the reading, literacy, and early childhood development fields; and (3) outlining promising directions for future work.
The findings from this project will provide a critical resource to help broadening participation efforts be more effective and inclusive for audiences across the country. Research studies motivated by the convening will address the lack of empirical work on storybooks as a tool for ISE programs and advance the ISE field's knowledge of how to integrate these books effectively. Because storybooks are a highly accessible and almost universally used family learning resource, the topic of the convening will be relevant to a wide range of audiences and will help educators broaden access to ISE for traditionally underserved and under-resourced communities.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
Community collaboration and empowerment was identified by the GENIAL organizers as an important theme to include in the Summit. Informal STEM learning (ISL) organizations strive to engage Latino audiences in their science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programming on a long-term basis and recognize the importance of understanding the needs, motivations, interests, and challenges of the diverse Latino community in the context of STEM participation. An effective way to collaborate with a community is to involve them as equal partners in the co-development of ISL experiences. A key
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Salvador AcevedoPaul DusenberyExploratorium
Brookfield Zoo will develop a model for formal and informal early childhood educators in the Chicago metropolitan area to promote children and family learning (nature play, exploration, and scientific inquiry) within urban environments. In collaboration with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and the Mary Crane and El Valor Head Start centers in Chicago, Brookfield Zoo will train 80 early childhood educators in its established nature play curriculum; facilitate networking opportunities between participants and organizations; and host a two-day symposium for 150 early childhood educators at the end of the project. This partnership has built-in capacity for expansion within Chicago and throughout the region, and can serve as a replicable model for zoos, nature preserves, and Head Start programs throughout the country to increase opportunities children have to play, explore, and learn in nature as a basis for developing lifelong environmental stewardship.
This evaluation reports on the Mission: Solar System project, a 2-year project funded by NASA. The goal of the Mission: Solar System was to create a collection of resources that integrates digital media with hands-on science and engineering activities to support kids’ exploration in formal and informal education settings. Our goal in creating the resources were: For youth: (1) Provide opportunities to use science, technology, engineering, and math to solve challenges related to exploring our solar system, (2) Build and hone critical thinking, problem-solving, and design process skills, (3)
This is a handout from the session "NASA in the Community: Diverse solutions to engaging families/educators" at the 2014 ASTC Conference held in Raleigh, NC. It includes presentation slides and related reference materials about NASA-funded informal education projects.
The Coalition for Science After School was launched January 28, 2004 at the Santa Fe Institute, home to the world’s leading researchers on the study of complexity. Against the dazzling backdrop of the New Mexican mesa, 40 educational leaders from diverse but overlapping domains—science, technology, engineering and mathematics education and after-school programs—met to grapple with three emerging, important trends in youth development and science learning in this country: 1. An explosion in the number of U.S. youth attending after-school programs, and increasing links between school and after
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The Coalition for Science After SchoolLeah Reisman
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Designed learning environments like museums have the potential to change the way that families think and talk about scientific topics together in everyday contexts like the home. The current study examines the affect of a visit to a museum exhibit highlighting the processes of manufacturing on the ability of parents and children to talk about how familiar objects are made. A model for family knowledge building is also presented as a means of assessing whether parents and children improved their understanding of manufacturing processes after their museum visit. A simulated home activity
The Franklin Institute Science Museum is planning, implementing, evaluating and disseminating the results of a 2.5 day conference entitled "Museums and New Family. Audiences - Building Relationships." The conference will be held in Philadelphia and involve a total of 75 professionals representing 25 museum/community programs, local community partners, advisers, and community partnership funders. Growing out of several initiatives over the past decade, the primary goal of the conference is to explore how museums and other informal science education organizations can develop and maintain long-term museum/community relationships to engage underserved families in informal STEM activities. Outcomes will include stronger relationships, a set of best practices and guidelines to be disseminated to the field, and the beginnings of a network.
The New York Hall of Science (NYSCI), in collaboration with O\'Reilly Media will host a two-day workshop to explore the potential for the kinds of making, designing, and engineering practices celebrated at Maker Faire to enrich science and math learning. The purpose of this workshop is to identify and aggregate successful programming strategies that increase student engagement and proficiency in STEM, with a focus on students underrepresented in STEM careers. The meeting will be organized around three main ideas: catalyzing a national Maker movement; dissemination and scaling of design principles; and assessment of impacts on STEM learning and attitudes. The convening highlights the capacity of making activities to impact student motivation, attitudes, and conceptual understanding in STEM in both informal and formal learning environments. The workshop will be held in conjunction with the World Maker Faire at NYSCI on September 18-19, 2011. The World Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-it-Yourself or DIY movement and brings together a broad community of professionals and laypersons with a common interest in technology-based creativity, tinkering, and the reuse of materials and technology. The proposed workshop extends the work of the previous Maker Faire workshop (DRL 10-46459) by identifying initiatives that bridge the Maker and STEM communities while building students' foundational STEM knowledge and engaging audiences underrepresented in STEM careers. This workshop will accommodate approximately 50 local and national scientists, engineers, learning science researchers, educators, policymakers, and philanthropists. Select participants will present detailed case studies of maker programs, design principles, assessments, and measured outcomes in STEM attitudes and learning. Key elements of successful programs and assessment strategies will be identified across the case studies in brainstorming sessions and roundtable discussions. Following the workshop, a subset of the case studies will be compiled into an edited volume, indexed by the dimensions of student learning in the National Research Council publication, "A Framework for K-12 STEM Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas." This project uses the momentum of the popular Maker Faire movement, based in design, engineering and technology concepts, to connect to STEM education while capitalizing on the strengths of informal learning environments. The workshop provides researchers, practitioners, and policymakers with an aggregated collection of program design principles and reliable metrics for documenting changes in preK-20 STEM attitudes and learning. The edited volume has the potential to advance the understanding of how to bridge formal and informal learning environments, while also fostering research on the affective dimensions of making in diverse audiences.