The Rochester Museum and Science Center and partners will plan, design, fabricate, and evaluate its new Water Worlds exhibition using a hybrid exhibition model that integrates hands-on science and interactive technology with authentic collections objects in immersive environments. Reimagining the gallery in this way will allow the museum’s professional staff to work with outside experts in the sciences—including environmental science, sustainability, water resources, and climate—to create a unified watershed-themed narrative for the gallery. Hands-on, inquiry-focused exhibits will inspire visitors to explore the Lake Ontario watershed and analyze critical local issues including water pollution, flooding, invasive species, and the impact of a changing climate on local waterways, as well as innovative solutions to these challenges.
The Green Bank Observatory organized a community workshop on research experiences for high school students in disciplines supported by NSF’s Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). The workshop was intended as a forum for sharing, gathering community input, and illuminating best practices in providing research experiences to high school students and organizing such research activities across universities, labs, and observatories. The input gathered from the workshop may be useful to others wanting to support K-12 research activities.
It is often stated that solving the global challenges presented by the 21st century requires a United States workforce with training in STEM fields, and that the STEM workforce may be insufficient to fill that need. Education research literature in STEM suggests that engaging students early and often in authentic research experiences enhances STEM identity, STEM self-efficacy, and STEM career interest: three personal attributes that are linked to entry into and persistence on a STEM career pathway. Much of this literature is focused on college students, however. This workshop convened people and organizations who have designed and implemented research experiences for high school students, and who will examine the role such experiences can play in the development of a student’s interest and STEM identity.
The Explora Science Center and Children’s Museum will carry out the “Planting Seeds of STEM” project to address the under-representation of people of color in STEM courses and careers. Through informal science education programming that focuses on the STEM concepts inherent in the agricultural traditions of New Mexico, the project will engage students from communities of color in STEM. The project also aims to increase exposure to STEM role models, especially farmers from communities of color, and spark interest in STEM content and careers. The museum will partner with multiple local organizations and the New Mexico State University Master Gardener Program to implement the project activities.
The Adler Planetarium will expand access to STEM programs for African American and Latinx Chicago teens through a progressive series of entry-point, introductory, intermediate, and advanced level programs. Students in grades 7–12 will be invited to join teams of scientists, engineers, and educators to undertake authentic scientific research and solve real engineering challenges. In collaboration with schools and community-based organizations, Adler will develop and implement new participant recruitment and retention strategies to reach teens in specific neighborhoods. The initiative will help address the underrepresentation of Latinx and African Americans in engineering.
This summary brief captures highlights from the evaluation report for the first year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project (also available on this page). The purpose of this document is to communicate key updates from evaluation in a less technical way with the many different audiences who have an interest in keeping up with WaterMarks.
This is the evaluation report for the first year of the NSF-funded WaterMarks project. It reflects an initial summary of available evidence about the intended outcomes of program activities to date, as well as commentary on how the project is using (or could use) this information moving forward. This report contains descriptions of embedded measures (i.e. anonymized drawings and reflections captured on a thematic postcard) included in community walks and analyses of secondary data (i.e., interviews conducted by other members of hte project team), as well as reflections emerging from the
Having a central scientific language remains crucial for advancing and globally sharing science. Nevertheless, maintaining one dominant language also creates barriers to accessing scientific careers and knowledge. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we describe how, when, and why to make scientific literature more readily available in multiple languages through the practice of translation. We broadly review the advantages and limitations of neural machine translation systems and propose that translation can serve as both a short- and a long-term solution for making science more resilient
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Emma SteigerwaldValeria Ramírez-CastañedaDébora Y C BrandtAndrás BáldiJulie Teresa ShapiroLynne BowkerRebecca D Tarvin
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This qualitative study explores perspectives of U.S.A.-based science communication researchers and practitioners who attended a symposium focused on advancing inclusive science communication (ISC). ISC is a growing global movement that aims to center equity, inclusion, and marginalized perspectives in science communication. Findings underscore the complexity of systemic barriers to ISC, the critical need for resource sharing and network building, and the importance of evaluation frameworks. The authors also highlight critical dialogue as a strategic tool that might help support intentional
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sunshine MenezesKayon Murray-JohnsonHollie SmithHannah TrautmannMehri Azizi
Many urgent environmental challenges, from soil degradation and water pollution to global climate change, have deep roots in how complex systems impact human well-being, and how humans relate to nature and to each other. Learning In and From the Environment through Multiple Ways of Knowing (LIFEways) is based on the premise that Indigenous stewardship has sustained communities on these lands since time immemorial. This project is collaboratively led by the Indigenous Education Institute and Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center, in partnership with Native Pathways and the Reimagine Research Group, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, World Forestry Center, and a national park network in the Pacific Northwest. The aim of this partnership is to deepen the informal learning field’s understanding of how Indigenous ways of knowing are currently or can be included in outdoor learning environments such as parks, nature preserves, and tribal lands. The project will share practices that center Indigenous worldviews to build awareness of their value and enhance STEM learning in outdoor settings. These approaches engage Native community members in continuing their traditional knowledge and practices, and help non-Native audiences learn from the dynamic interrelationships of the environment in authentic, respectful ways.
Conventional outdoor education is mostly grounded in Western concepts of “conservation” and “preservation” that position humans as acting separately from nature. This Research in Service to Practice project will identify “wise practices” that honor Indigenous ways of knowing, and investigate current capacities, barriers and opportunities for amplifying Indigenous voices in outdoor education. A team of Native and non-Native researchers and practitioners will draw upon Indigenous and Western research paradigms. Methods include Talk Story dialogues, a landscape study using national surveys, case studies, and a Circle of Relations to interpret and disseminate research findings. LIFEways will also document partnership processes to continue to build on the Collaboration with Integrity framework between tribal and non-tribal organizations (Maryboy and Begay, 2012). Findings from the LIFEways project will be shared broadly through a series of webinars, local and national meetings, conferences, and publications.
This project engages pre-college Latinx, Black, and Indigenous learners, educators, and collaborating undergraduates in an international, project-based learning and media-making community in areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project addresses key challenges including broadening participation in informal STEM learning, developing capacity for leading informal STEM programs, and building stronger connections between STEM learning and personal and social identity formation during adolescence. The project’s community of participants is an asset-based learning environment that treats each participant, their background, skills, and interests as uniquely beneficial to the whole. Led by mentors at each hub (teachers, leaders from science organizations, or other out-of-school learning environments), participants collaborate with peers from the US and from other countries. The collaborations encompass a broad spectrum of STEM projects. Participants also create digital media to communicate their projects. The project activities reflect a focus on STEM content, collaboration, and communication, in a global context that includes school-age learners from the US and peers from Central and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Sub-Sahara. The combination of the sophisticated STEM competencies skills for collaborating across international and cultural boundaries, and media-savvy communication abilities are essential to the nation’s future STEM workforce and to building a scientifically vibrant citizenry.
The project addresses two primary research questions co-developed with teachers and other informal science providers. The first research question involves understanding and optimizing conditions for broadening participation through this type of distributed or virtual collaboration across boundaries of culture, race, gender, ability, nationality, and socioeconomic status. The project features a design experiment by which the overall community of participants comprises four separate hubs, each hosted by the different project partners (primarily teachers). Educators devise, test, and revise alternative designs for organizing STEM collaborations. Publication of these teacher-led designs and their evaluation are among the primary outputs of the project. The designs modify and improve a template developed under this project’s proof-of-concept precursor (NSF1612824). The second research question addresses how growth in STEM abilities, collaboration, and communication mutually reinforce adolescent personal and social identity formation. Participating students in the US will intentionally reflect heterogeneous backgrounds. The project analysis will focus on whether cultural and national cross-boundary collaboration can strengthen the development of learners' personal identity and academic performance. The project methodology relies heavily on quantitative ethnography and epistemic network analysis. This approach enables the creation of visual models that highlight the presence or absence of connections between constructs relevant to each research question, along with changes between and within groups. The constructs include variations of autonomy, competence, and connection (pillars of self-determination theory) in tracing identity formation and STEM abilities. The quantitative ethnography approach provides statistically reliable scaffolding and insights about the hub designs and their efficacy in promoting goals of broadening participation and fostering mutually reinforcing STEM competencies and identity formation. This type of virtual collaboration, crossing boundaries of culture, nationality, ethnicity, age, gender, economic strata, or ability, can realistically be expected to play a significant role in next-generation learning environments, especially through out-of-school activities. The project is expected to reach 120 U.S. and 80 non-U.S. students annually. Research findings, design principles and curricula will be widely disseminated to researchers, designers, program developers, informal science institutions and community organizations.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Eric HamiltonNastassia JonesDanielle EspinoSeung Lee
Stark inequities evident in the low representation of Black women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medicine (STEMM) careers persist despite considerable investment in the diversification of the education-to-workplace STEMM pipeline. College participation rates of Black women measure 4-5% of all degrees in biological and physical sciences, 2-3% of degrees in computer science and math, and roughly 1% in engineering. Ultimately, Black women make up only 2.5% of the workforce in STEMM-related fields, indicating that they chronically experience stalled professional advancement. Because there are so few longitudinal studies in either formal or informal settings, educators and researchers lack critical insights into why BA/BS credentialed Black women drop out of STEMM careers at high rates upon entering the workforce. This Research in Service to Practice project will conduct a longitudinal examination of key professional outcomes and life trajectories among adult Black women who enrolled Women in Natural Sciences (WINS), a 40-year-old out-of-school time (OST) high school STEM enrichment program. Prior research on WINS documents that alumnae outperform national averages on all metrics related to STEMM advancement up through college graduation. This study will test the hypothesis that such success continues for these cohorts as they pursue life goals and navigate the workforce. Findings from this study will promote the progress of science, pivotal to NSF’s mission as the project builds knowledge about supportive and frustrating factors for Black women in STEMM careers. Strategic impact lies in the novel participant-centered research methods that amplify Black women’s voices and increase both accuracy and equity in informal STEM learning research.
This research probes the experiences of Black women at a critical phase of their workforce participation when BS/BA credentialed WINS alumnae establish their careers (ages 26-46). The team will conduct a longitudinal comparative case study of outcomes and life trajectories among 20 years of WINS cohorts (1995-2015). Research questions include (1) What do the life-journey narratives of WINS alumnae in adulthood reveal about influential factors in the socio-cultural ecological systems of Black women in STEMM? (2) What are the long-term outcomes among WINS women regarding education, STEMM and other careers, socio-economic status, and STEMM self-efficacy and interest? How do these vary? (3) What salient program elements in WINS are highlighted in alumnae narratives as relevant to Black women’s experiences in adulthood? How do these associations vary? (4) How do selected outcomes (stated in RQ2) and life story narratives among non-enrolled applicants compare to program alumnae? and (5) How do salient components in the WINS program associate with socio-cultural factors in regard to Black women’s careers and other life goals? Participants include 100 Black WINS alumnae as an intervention group and a matched comparison group of 100 Black women who successfully applied to the WINS program but did not or could not enroll. Measurable life outcomes and life trajectory narratives with maps of experiences from both groups will be studied via a convergent mixed methods design inclusive of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Comparisons of outcomes and trajectories will be made between the study groups. Further, associations between alumnae’s long-term outcomes and how they correlate their WINS experiences with other socio-cultural factors in their lives will be identified. It is anticipated that findings will challenge extant knowledge and pinpoint the most effective characteristics of and appropriate measures for studying lasting impacts of OST STEMM programs for Black women and girls. The project is positioned to contribute substantially to national efforts to increase participation of Black women in STEMM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ayana Allen-HandyJacqueline GenovesiLoni Tabb
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The goal of this project is to understand and support the development of evidence-based public engagement with science (PES) strategies within STEM research organizations. It specifically seeks to understand how scientists, institutional leaders, and staff within the NSF’s Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network make decisions about the design and implementation of PES activities. The LTER Network includes 28 varied sites across North America and provides a unique opportunity to study PES decision-making within scientific organizations. The project is especially interested in the degree to which these types of organizations consider the interests and assets of local communities, including underrepresented communities. This project will lead to increased capacity for effective, evidence-based PES in an essential sector of the nation’s STEM research infrastructure. The project is a collaboration between PES practitioners within the LTER Network and PES researchers at Michigan State University and Oregon State University.
The project will address three primary research questions: (1) How do scientists, institutional leaders, and staff view and make decisions about the design and implementation of PES? (2) To what degree do PES activities and PES strategies consider the interests and assets of local communities, including those underrepresented in STEM? (3) How, and to what degree, can scientists, institutional leaders, and staff develop shared PES strategies aimed at enhancing reciprocal exchanges and ongoing relationships with communities? The project design includes: (a) surveys and interviews with LTER scientists, institutional leaders, and staff; (b) case studies coupled with strategic engagement planning to investigate the community contexts of PES; (c) a PES working group with LTER scientists and PES-related staff to integrate research and practice; (d) a PES monitoring system for tracking PES activities at LTER sites; and (e) an external advisory board of PES experts and representatives of other STEM research organizations to promote accountability of the work and broaden its impact beyond the LTER Network. The overall hypothesis is that it is possible to improve the effectiveness of PES through a focus on helping scientific organizations develop PES strategies in collaboration with relevant communities.