Hero Elementary is a transmedia educational initiative aimed at improving the school readiness and academic achievement in science and literacy of children grades K-2. With an emphasis on Latinx communities, English Language Learners, youth with disabilities, and children from low-income households, Hero Elementary celebrates kids and encourages them to make a difference in their own backyards and beyond by actively doing science and using their Superpowers of Science. The project embeds the expectations of K–2nd NGSS and CCSS-ELA standards into a series of activities, including interactive games, educational apps, non-fiction e-books, hands-on activities, and a digital science notebook. The activities are organized into playlists for educators and students to use in afterschool programs. Each playlist centers on a meaningful conceptual theme in K-2 science learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joan FreeseMomoko HayakawaBryce Becker
The goals of this proposal are: 1) to provide opportunities for underrepresented students to consider careers in basic or clinical research by exciting them through an educational Citizen Science research project; 2) to provide teachers with professional development in science content and teaching skills using research projects as the infrastructure; and 3) to improve the environments and behaviors in early childcare and education settings related to healthy lifestyles across the state through HSTA students Citizen Science projects. The project will complement or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs. It will encourage interactive partnerships between biomedical and clinical researchers,in-service teachers and early childcare and education facilities to prevent obesity.
Specific Aim I is the Biomedical Summer Institute for Teachers led by university faculty. This component is a one week university based component. The focus is to enhance teacher knowledge of biomedical characteristics and problems associated with childhood obesity, simple statistics, ethics and HIPAA compliance, and the principles of Citizen Science using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The teachers, together with the university faculty and staff, will develop the curriculum and activities for Specific Aim II.
Specific Aim II is the Biomedical Summer Institute for Students, led by HSTA teachers guided by university faculty. This experience will expose 11th grade HSTA students to the biomedical characteristics and problems associated with obesity with a focus on early childhood. Students will be trained on Key 2 a Healthy Start, which aims to improve nutrition and physical activity best practices, policies and environments in West Virginia’s early child care and education programs. The students will develop a meaningful project related to childhood obesity and an aspect of its prevention so that the summer institute bridges seamlessly into Specific Aim III.
Specific Aim III is the Community Based After School Club Experiences. The students and teachers from the summer experience will lead additional interested 9th–12th grade students in their clubs to examine their communities and to engage community members in conducting public health intervention research in topics surrounding childhood obesity prevention through Citizen Science. Students and teachers will work collaboratively with the Key 2 a Healthy Start team on community projects that will be focused on providing on-going technical assistance that will ultimately move the early childcare settings towards achieving best practices related to nutrition and physical activity in young children.
The NIH Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) program of Emory University endeavors to use an over-arching theme of citizen science principles to:
develop an innovative curriculum based on citizen science and experiential learning to evaluate the efficacy of informal science education in after-school settings;
promote biomedical scientific careers in under-represented groups targeting females for Girls for Science summer research experiences;
train teachers in Title I schools to implement this citizen science based curriculum; and
disseminate the citizen science principles through outreach.
This novel, experiential science and engineering program, termed Experiential Citizen Science Training for the Next Generation (ExCiTNG), encompasses community-identified topics reflecting NIH research priorities. The curriculum is mapped to Next Generation Science Standards.
A comprehensive evaluation plan accompanies each program component, composed of short- and/or longer-term outcome measures. We will use our existing outreach program (Students for Science) along with scientific community partnerships (Atlanta Science Festival) to implement key aspects of the program throughout the state of Georgia. These efforts will be overseen by a central Steering Committee composed of leadership of the Community Education Research Program of the Emory/Morehouse/Georgia Institute of Technology Atlanta Clinical Translational Science Institute (NIH CTSA), the Principal Investigators, representatives of each program component, and an independent K–12 STEM evaluator from the Georgia Department of Education.
The Community Advisory Board, including educators, parents, and community members, will help guide the program’s implementation and monitor progress. A committee of NIH-funded investigators, representing multiple NIH institutes along with experienced science writers, will lead the effort for dissemination and assure that on-going and new NIH research priorities are integrated into the program’s curriculum over time.
This project specifically addresses the SMRB’s imperative that “NIH’s pre-college STEM activities need a rejuvenated integrated focus on biomedical workforce preparedness with special considerations for under-represented minorities.”
Approximately one-third of CityLab’s participants are under-represented minority (URM) students, but we now have a unique opportunity to build a program that will reach many URM students and position them for undergraduate STEM success. We have partnered with urban squash education organizations in Boston (SquashBusters) and New York (CitySquash and StreetSquash) that recruit URM/low SES students to participate in after-school squash training and academic enrichment programs. We have also partnered with the Squash + Education Alliance (previously named the National Urban Squash and Education Association) to disseminate the new program—first from Boston to New York and later through its national network of affiliated squash education programs.
In order to bring this project to fruition, Boston University is joining forces with Fordham University in New York. Fordham is home to CitySquash so these organizations provide an ideal base for the New York activities. The proposed project will enable us to demonstrate feasibility and replicability within the 5-year scope of this grant. Our shared vision is to develop a national model for informal precollege biomedical science education that can be infused into a myriad of similar athletic/academic enrichment programs.
The squash education movement for urban youth has been highly successful in enrolling program graduates in college. Since the academic offerings of the squash education programs focus on English Language Arts and Mathematics, their students struggle with science and rarely recognize the tremendous opportunities for long- term employment in STEM fields.
This project will bring CityLab’s resources to local squash programs in a coordinated and sustained engagement to introduce students to STEM, specifically the biomedical sciences. Together with the urban squash centers, we will build upon the hands-on life science experiences developed and widely disseminated by CityLab to create engaging laboratory-based experiences involving athletics and physiology.
The specific aims of the proposed project are:
To develop, implement, and evaluate a new partnership model for recruiting URM/low SES students and inspiring them to pursue careers in STEM; and
To examine changes in the science learner identities (SLI) of the students who participate in this program and establish this metric as a marker for continued engagement in STEM.
With the involvement of the two urban research universities, three local squash education programs, and SEA, we see this new SEPA initiative as a unique way to pilot, refine, and disseminate an after-school/informal science education program that can have a significant impact on the nation’s production of talented STEM graduates from URM/low SES backgrounds.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Carl FranzblauDonald DeRosaCarla Romney
This project will advance efforts of the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program to better understand and promote practices that increase student motivations and capacities to pursue careers in fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) by designing, implementing, and testing an afterschool internship program that will engage older youth in work-based learning experiences in in STEM fields. The new model program will link the resources and learning approaches of the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program to career academies where youth from populations underrepresented in STEM fields will gain direct experiences in data collection and analysis through student-led investigations in the geosciences and environmental studies. Two key outcomes of this project will be: (a) Development of a replicable model of an afterschool STEM internship program for informal STEM learning environments and schools across the nation, and (b) Development of a set of measurement tools and approaches that can assess and promote understanding regarding how youth think and feel about science and their possible future roles in science careers. Participating youth will master scientific practices and become immersed in science culture through opportunities to develop research projects, interact with scientists, and collaborate with fellow student-researchers. In the process, they will develop collaboration and communication skills, and gain an increased sense of identity and agency in science fields. They will also learn new strategies to attain their career goals.
In developing and testing the new model of an afterschool program focusing on STEM careers, the project will draw on both existing and emerging knowledge from three areas of inquiry: informal STEM learning, youth development, and work-based learning. The project will bring together theory related to work-based learning and apprenticeship to knowledge about informal STEM learning and youth development, addressing the needs of older youth as they transition to adulthood. The program will also explore the use of measurement tools that address workforce-related student learning goals in addition to social-emotional learning and STEM learning goals, adapting existing tools and developing new tools as needed. The result will be a replicable model for an afterschool, career-focused internship that facilitates STEM learning and identity, employing youth development principles, such as experiential learning, peer collaboration, adult mentoring, and meaningful contributions to the world beyond school. The project will use a mixed-methods approach to investigate four research questions: (1) What aspects of the program are most important for promoting the development of scientific practices, socio-emotional learning, and career skills? (2) How can afterschool informal science learning be designed to address the perceptions and needs of diverse groups, especially those from populations underrepresented in STEM? (3) How do youth make gains in developing facility with STEM practices, key social-emotional outcomes needed in work and civic life, and career development knowledge? And (4) How do we accurately measure development of scientific practices, socio-emotional learning and career skills? The project will develop pretest and posttest self-report measures to gauge program influence on social-emotional outcomes and career-related outcomes, and performance-based assessments and rubrics will be used to assess culminating science projects. Other factors contributing to the success of the new model will be examined through analysis of coach instructional logs, surveys, and questions, as well as participant observations, interviews, and focus groups. Project participants will be youth of ages 14-18 recruited from ten inner-city schools having large populations of students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Participants will meet in teams of approximately 14 interns for a total of 2.5 hours per week for 32 weeks. Each team will also meet an additional 4-6 times for weekend or overnight outings associated with their study sites.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Manuel AlonsoCathy RingstaffSvetlana Darche
“Tinkering EU: Building Science Capital for All” aims to develop activities and resources that support a learner-centred culture, improve science education and develop 21st century skills - all of which are fundamental for active citizenship, employability, and social inclusion. To do this, it adopts ‘Tinkering’, an innovative pedagogy developed in the USA, which is used by museums, and has proven able to create a lifelong engagement with science for everyone. Tinkering works particularly well for people who argue that “they are not good at science” or are disaffected from any formal teaching and learning process. It can be a powerful tool to tackle disadvantage. The project integrates Tinkering into the school curriculum to develop the science capital of disadvantaged youth through the use of museums. It addresses students from 8 to 14 years old (primary and junior high schools).
Coordinator: National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci
Partners:
University of Cambridge – UK
NEMO Science Museum – The Netherlands
Science Gallery Dublin – Ireland
CosmoCaixa – Spain
Science Center Network – Austria
NOESIS – Greece
The Space and Earth Informal STEM Education (SEISE) project, led by the Arizona State University with partners Science Museum of Minnesota, Museum of Science, Boston, and the University of California Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science and Space Sciences Laboratory, is raising the capacity of museums and informal science educators to engage the public in Heliophysics, Earth Science, Planetary Science, and Astrophysics, and their social dimensions through the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net). SEISE will also partner on a network-to-network basis with other existing coalitions and professional associations dedicated to informal and lifelong STEM learning, including the Afterschool Alliance, National Girls Collaborative Project, NASA Museum Alliance, STAR_Net, and members of the Association of Children’s Museums and Association of Science-Technology Centers. The goals for this project include engaging multiple and diverse public audiences in STEM, improving the knowledge and skills of informal educators, and encouraging local partnerships.
In collaboration with the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD), SEISE is leveraging NASA subject matter experts (SMEs), SMD assets and data, and existing educational products and online portals to create compelling learning experiences that will be widely use to share the story, science, and adventure of NASA’s scientific explorations of planet Earth, our solar system, and the universe beyond. Collaborative goals include enabling STEM education, improving U.S. scientific literacy, advancing national educational goals, and leveraging science activities through partnerships. Efforts will focus on providing opportunities for learners explore and build skills in the core science and engineering content, skills, and processes related to Earth and space sciences. SEISE is creating hands-on activity toolkits (250-350 toolkits per year over four years), small footprint exhibitions (50 identical copies), and professional development opportunities (including online workshops).
Evaluation for the project will include front-end and formative data to inform the development of products and help with project decision gates, as well as summative data that will allow stakeholders to understand the project’s reach and outcomes.
Northern ecosystems are rapidly changing; so too are the learning and information needs of Arctic and sub-Arctic communities who depend on these ecosystems for wild harvested foods. Public Participation in Scientific Research (PPSR) presents a possible method to increase flow of scientific and local knowledge, enhance STEM-based problem solving skills, and co-create new knowledge about phenology at local and regional or larger scales. However, there remain some key challenges that the field of PPSR research must address to achieve this goal. The proposed research will make substantial contributions to two of these issues by: 1) advancing theory on the interactions between PPSR and resilience in social-ecological systems, and 2) advancing our understanding of strategies to increase the engagement of youth and adults historically underrepresented in STEM, including Alaska Native and indigenous youth and their families who play an essential role in the sustainability of environmental monitoring in the high latitudes and rural locations throughout the globe. In particular, our project results will assist practitioners in choosing and investing in design elements of PPSR projects to better navigate the trade-offs between large-scale scientific outcomes and local cultural relevance. The data collected across the citizen science network will also advance scientific knowledge on the effects of phenological changes on berry availability to people and other animals.
The Arctic Harvest research goals are to 1) critically examine the relationship between PPSR learning outcomes in informal science environments and attributes of social-ecological resilience and 2) assess the impact of two program design elements (level of support and interaction with mentors and scientists, and an innovative story-based delivery method) on the engagement of underserved audiences. In partnership with afterschool clubs in urban and rural Alaska, we will assess the impact of participation in Winterberry, a new PPSR project that investigates the effect of changes in the timing of the seasons on subsistence berry resources. We propose to investigate individual and community-level learning outcomes expected to influence the ability for communities to adapt to climate change impacts, including attributes of engagement, higher-order thinking skills, and their influence on the level of civic action and interest in berry resource stewardship by the youth groups. Using both quantitative and qualitative approaches, we compare these outcomes with the same citizen science program delivered through two alternate methods: 1) a highly supported delivery method with increased in-person interaction with program mentors and scientists, and 2) an innovative method that weaves in storytelling based on elder experiences, youth observations, and citizen science data at all stages of the program learning cycle. This project 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, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The project also has support from the Office of Polar Programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katie SpellmanElena SparrowChrista MulderDeb Jones
resourceprojectWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
The intent of this five-year project is to design, deliver, and study professional development for Informal Science Learning (ISL) educators in the arena of equity-focused STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) teaching and learning. While the strategy of integrating art and science to promote interest, identity, and other STEM-related learning has grown in recent years, this domain is still nascent with respect to a guiding set of best practices. Through prior work, the team has developed and implemented a set of design principles that incorporate effective practices for broadening participation of girls in science via science-art integration on the topic of the biology, chemistry and optics of "Colors in Nature." The continued initiative would impact the ISL field by providing a mechanism for ISL educators in museums, libraries and after-school programs to adopt and implement these STEAM design principles into their work. The team will lead long-term (12-18 months) professional development activities for ISL educators, including: 1) in-person workshops that leverage their four previously developed kits; 2) online, asynchronous learning activities featuring interactive instructional videos around their STEAM design principles; 3) synchronous sessions to debrief content and foster communities of practice; and 4) guided design work around the development or redesign of STEAM activities. In the first four years of the project, the team will work with four core institutional partners (Sitka Sound Science Center, Sno-Isle Libraries, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District after-school program, and the Pima County Public Library system) across three states (Alaska, Washington, and Arizona). In the project's later stages, they will disseminate their learning tools to a broad, national audience. This project 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, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
The project has three main goals: (1) To support ISL educators in offering meaningful STEAM activities, (2) To create institutional change among the partner organizations, and (3) To advance the ISL field with respect to professional development and designing for STEAM Programming. The research questions associated with the professional development activities address the ways in which change occurs and focus on all three levels: individual, institutional, and the ISL field. The methods are qualitative and quantitative, including videotaped observations, pre and post interviews, surveys and analysis of online and offline artifacts. In addition, the project evaluation will assess the implementation of the project's professional development model for effectiveness. Methods will include observations, interviews, surveys and Website analytics and program data.
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. The project will derive a nationwide online coaching/mentoring program for out of school educators in rural settings. The program builds on a Noyce Foundation pilot project. The issue to be addressed is that educators in rural settings are challenged in a multitude of ways due to isolation. This project will try to find ways to alleviate some of the consequences of isolation through resource sharing, knowledge sharing, and unique techniques for communicating with students. Partners in this effort are the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance, the National AfterSchool Association, Development Without Limits, and the Maine State Library.
By using widely-available technologies, this project will bring fully online instructional coaching in STEM to out-of-school educators who live too remotely to attend ongoing in-person workshops. The project team will achieve this by adapting a highly promising coaching program where groups of educators video-record their own work with youth, practice key skills, and meet regularly to discuss their work. The project will: (a) test technical challenges to achieve fully virtual implementation; (b) design and adapt a specific STEM-skill curriculum to align with different levels of need; (c) customize the model to work with rural librarians; and (d) integrate the work into existing state and national accreditation systems.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This Change Makers project will establish Food Justice Ambassador corps across three cities in Massachusetts where youth will install, manage and learn the science and technology underlying hydroponics. The project takes a near-peer mentoring approach that empowers high school youth to take the lead in improving ethnic minority and low-income residents' access to healthy produce and to help educate middle school youth regarding the value of fresh produce in one's diet by learning the science of hydroponics. Youth will create story maps to visualize food accessibility in their communities. High school youth will work with their communities to establish hydroponic farms in middle school after-school settings. The food that is grown will be provided to the community through farmers' markets. Youth will share their work with a larger community of urban farmers at the Massachusetts Urban Farming Conference. This project seeks to understand the contribution on youth development by the model's three components: (1) STEM learning embedded in a social justice framework, (2) near-peer mentoring, and (3) youth purpose and career development. This will enable researchers to better understand how the project enables youth to learn STEM skills; apply them to a real life problem; learn the relevance of STEM skills for addressing personal, career aspiration, and social justice issues; develop a sense of purpose and aspirations related to STEM fields; and mentor other youth through the same process. The project will use a mixed-method, multi-site longitudinal study utilizing quantitative surveys, structural equation modeling, and qualitative interviews to study the intersections of the components of the project. As such, the study will address three key questions: 1) How do youth and mentors perceive and experience their roles as participants in the pedagogy? 2) What is the impact of the intervention on youth' sense of purpose, identity, career adaptability, work volition, critical consciousness, school engagement, STEM interests, and STEM intentionality? 3) What is the contribution of relational/mentoring and psychosocial/career adaptability aspects of the youths' contexts on their capacity to benefit from this program and to develop and sustain purpose and engagement in school and STEM? Most urban youth (and adults) have little knowledge of where their food comes from and have limited opportunities to learn how to grow produce as well as develop related skills that can lead to a career in a STEM field. This is particularly disconcerting as 55% of African Americans live inside central cities (90% in metropolitan areas) and over half of all Latino/as live in central cities (United States Census Bureau, 2011). This project entails the recruitment of low-income youth from populations underrepresented in science into a program where social justice concerns (food justice, food security) are illuminated, analyzed, and acted upon through the development of STEM knowledge and skills. Specifically, this project recognizes the potential for urban youth to become deeply knowledgeable citizens who can mobilize their STEM knowledge and skills to resolve social injustices such as food deserts. If successful, this project will provide a model that should be transferable to similar contexts to help broaden participation in STEM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
George BarnettBelle LiangDavid Blustein
As a part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds research and innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This Broad Implementation project would scale up the CryptoClub Project, an afterschool and online program designed to engage middle school youth in mathematics and cryptography. The project builds on previous successful work and evaluation that is ready for scale up using a train-the-trainer model implemented through a partnership with the National Girls Collaborative. The project will train 160 new CryptoClub leaders who will then train 800 new leaders at 20 hub sites reaching 9600 students. In addition, professional development modules and webinars will continue to refresh leader skills. Other project components include an online multiplayer cryptography game, weekly challenges through social media, and digital cryptology badges for students.
The research uses a think-aloud method with students as they actually attempt to solve the cryptology problems using mathematical thinking. Three think-aloud studies will be performed during the Project. The research team will code transcripts of the interviews for evidence of the mathematical thinking intended to be addressed by each activity, as well as capturing unexpected kinds of thinking. Tasks will also be rated according to the type of knowledge elicited. A written report will include statistical analyses of the think-aloud and interview responses, interpreted in light of the overall CryptoClub goals. The findings will contribute to both future research efforts and practice. The evaluation by EDC uses a quasi-experimental design, which assesses project outcomes for trainers, leaders, students, and Internet users. EDC will also investigate the fidelity to the CryptoClub model as it is scaled up. These studies have strong potential for informing numerous other projects that are at a stage where scale up is under consideration.