Imagination Station, Toledo’s Science Center, will implement Toledo Tinkers: Through a Child’s Eyes — a new initiative to address barriers to STEM education and promote a lifelong love of those subjects. An outreach curriculum and a mobile tinkering lab will help children ages 11–13 and their families establish personal connections with making and tinkering. Pilot programs will include the Maker Club — a 12-session out-of-school program for students from Boys and Girls Clubs of Toledo and other community-based organizations — as well as Tinkering Takeovers, which is a drop-in tinkering program for families at branch libraries. A community exhibition will showcase the diversity of the Toledo community and its rich history of making and tinkering, using the work of participating children.
Refugee youth are particularly vulnerable to STEM disenfranchisement due to factors including limited or interrupted schooling following displacement; restricted exposure to STEM education; and linguistic, cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and racial minority status. Refugee youth may experience a gap in STEM skills and knowledge, and a conflict between the identities necessary for participation in their families and communities, and those expected for success in STEM settings. To conduct research to better understand these challenges, an interrelated set of activities will be developed. First, youth will learn principles of physics and computing by participating in cosmic ray research with physicists using an instructional approach that builds from their home languages and cultures. Then youth periodically share what they are learning in the cosmic ray research with their parents, siblings, and science teachers at family and community science events. Finally, youth conduct reflective research on their own STEM identity development over the course of the project. Research on learning will be conducted within and across these three strands to better understand how refugee youth develop STEM-positive identities. This project will benefit society by improving equity and diversity in STEM through (1) creating opportunities for refugee youth to participate in physics research and to develop computing skills and (2) producing knowledge on STEM identity development that may be applied more broadly to improve STEM education. Deliverables from this project include: (a) research publications on STEM identity and learning; (b) curriculum resources for teaching physics and computing to multilingual youth; (c) an online digital storytelling exhibit offering narratives about belonging in STEM research which can be shared with STEM stakeholders (policy makers, scientists, educators, etc.); and (d) an online database of cosmic ray data which will be available to physicists worldwide for research purposes. This Innovations in Development proposal 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.
This program is designed to provide multiple contexts, relationships, and modes across and within which the identity work of individual students can be studied to look for convergence or divergence. To achieve this goal, the research applies a linguistic anthropological framework embedding discourse analysis in a larger ethnography. Data collected in this study include field notes, audio and video recordings of naturalistic interactions in the cosmic ray research and other program activities, multimodal artifacts (e.g., students' digital stories), student work products, interviews, and surveys. Critically, this methodology combines the analysis of identity formation as it unfolds in moment-to-moment conversations (during STEM learning, and in conversations about STEM and STEM learning) with reflective tasks and the production of personal narratives (e.g., in digital stories and interviews). Documenting convergence and divergence of STEM identities across these sources of data offers both methodological and theoretical contributions to the field. The research will offer thick description of the discursive practices of refugee youth to reveal how they construct identities related to STEM and STEM disciplines across settings (e.g., during cosmic ray research, while creating digital stories), relationships (e.g., peer, parent, teacher), and the languages they speak (e.g., English, Swahili). The findings will be of potential value to instructional designers of informal learning experiences including those working with afterschool, museums, science centers and the like, educators, and scholars of learning and identity.
This Innovations in Development 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tino NyaweloJohn MatthewsJordan GertonSarah Braden
Well-designed out-of-school time experiences can provide youth with rich opportunities to learn. However, to design effective out-of-school time experiences, it is critical to have a research basis that clarifies the features of programs that support increased youth engagement that then leads to better outcomes for youth. This project explores the features of programming that integrates sports, mathematics and science concepts, and growth mindset for 4th through 8th grade aged Latinx and African American youth. To accomplish this, the investigators refine curricular resources for out-of-school time programs and develop a model for professional learning experiences for informal educators and facilitators to support their implementation of integrated sports and STEM programming. To identify critical features of the programming, the researchers explore the ways that the program activities are implemented in two different contexts as well as the impact of the programming on youth participants' mindset, understanding of science and mathematics concepts, STEM interests, and self-perceived science and mathematics abilities. Additionally, researchers will explore the ways that the sports-themed programming supports (or could better support) girls' engagement.
The project builds on the University of Arizona researchers' existing partnerships with Major League Baseball (MLB) and Boys/Girls Club programs and an existing school-based MLB program for schools to (a) expand and refine Science of Baseball activities to enhance engagement among girls and incorporate growth mindset experiences that focus on the value of effort, determination, and learning from mistakes in both athletics and STEM; (b) study the enactment and outcomes of the program with 4th-8th grade aged youth in the two distinct informal learning settings; and (c) develop and refine a model for professional learning that includes in-person and on-line components for training informal STEM learning facilitators. The work will focus on two study contexts: afterschool programs of Boys and Girls Clubs in AZ, CA, and MO and summer programs of MLB in CA and MO. Participants will include 300 youth and up to 28 informal STEM learning facilitators split across the two contexts. Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) will be used to a) iteratively refine the activities and professional development model, and b) study the enactment and outcomes of the program. Research questions focus on outcomes for youth participants (i.e., impact on growth mindset, STEM dispositions, and understanding of science/math concepts), and the elements of effective professional development for informal STEM educators. Outcomes of the project include empirical evidence of what works and what doesn't work in the design, implementation, and professional development for STEM learning programs that integrate sports and growth mindset principles. In addition, outcomes of the project will advance knowledge of how different out-of-school program structures with similar sports-focused STEM programming can similarly (or differentially) support youth learning.
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.
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.
Computing and computational thinking are integral to the practice of modern science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); therefore, computational skills are essential for students' preparation to participate in computationally intensive STEM fields and the emerging workforce. In the U.S., Latinx and Spanish speaking students are underrepresented in computing and STEM fields, therefore, expanding opportunities for students to learn computing is an urgent need. The Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Puerto Rico will collaborate on research and development that will provide Latinx and Spanish speaking students in the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico, opportunities to learn computer science and its application in solving problems in STEM fields. The project will use a creative approach to teaching computer science by engaging Latinx and Spanish speaking students in learning how to code and reprogram in a music platform, EarSketch. The culturally relevant educational practices of the curriculum, as a model for informal STEM learning, will enable students to code and reprogram music, including sounds relevant to their own cultures, community narratives, and cultural storytelling. Research results will inform education programs seeking to design culturally authentic activities for diverse populations as a means to broaden participation in integrated STEM and Computing. This Broad Implementation 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, including multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
As part of the technical innovation of the project, the EarSketch platform will be redesigned for cultural and linguistic authenticity that will include incorporating traditional and contemporary Latin sound beats and musical samples into the software so that students can remix music and learn coding using sounds relevant to their cultures; and developing a Spanish version of the platform, with a toggle to easily switch between English and Spanish. Investigators will also develop an informal STEM curriculum using best practices from Culturally Relevant Education and Cultural Sustaining Pedagogy that provides authentic, culturally and linguistically rich opportunities for student engagement by establishing direct and constant connections to their cultures, communities and lived experiences. The curriculum design and implementation team will work collaboratively with members of Latinx diverse cultural groups to ensure semantic and content equivalency across diverse students and sites. Validating the intervention across students and sites is one of the goals of the project. The model curriculum for informal learning will be implemented as a semester long afterschool program in six schools per year in Atlanta and Puerto Rico, and as a one-week summer camp twice in the summer. The curricular materials will be broadly disseminated, and training will be provided to informal learning practitioners as part of the project. The research will explore differences in musical and computational engagement; the interconnection between music and the computational aspects of EarSketch; and the degree to which the program promotes cultural engagement among culturally and linguistically heterogenous groups of Latinx students in Atlanta, and more culturally and linguistically homogenous Latinx students in Puerto Rico. Investigators will use a mixed method design to collect data from surveys, interviews, focus groups, and computational/musical artifacts created by students. The study will employ multiple case study methodology to analyze and compare the implementation of the critical components of the program in Puerto Rico and Atlanta, and to explore differences in students' musical and computational thinking practices in the two regions. Results from the research will determine the impact of the curriculum on computer science skills and associated computational practices; and contribute to the understanding of the role of cultural engagement on educational outcomes such as sense of belonging, persistence, computational thinking, programming content knowledge and computer science identity. Results will inform education programs designing culturally authentic and engaging programming for diverse populations of Latinx youths.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Diley HernandezJason FreemanDouglas EdwardsRafael Arce-NazarioJoseph Carroll-Miranda
This application requests support to enable a team of experienced science educators and biomedical and behavioral health network scientists to develop and implement the Worlds of Connections curriculum. Most middle school students are familiar with patient care-related health careers (e.g., nurses, dentists, surgeons), but few know about emerging careers in network science that can be leveraged to improve population health. This innovative and research-based science program is strategically designed to increase awareness of, understanding of, and interest in the important role of network science for health. This project will design learning activities that incite interest in network science applications to biomedical and public health research. The long- term goal is to enhance the diversity of the bio-behavioral and biomedical workforce by increasing interest in network science among members of underrepresented minority communities and to promote public understanding of the benefits of NIH-funded research for public health. The goal of this application is to identify and create resources that will overcome barriers to network science uptake among underserved minority middle school youth. The central hypothesis is that the technology-rich field of network science will attract segments of today’s youth who remain uninterested in conventional, bio-centric health fields. Project activities are designed to improve understanding of how informal STEM experiences with network science in health research can increase STEM identities, STEM possible selves, and STEM career aspirations among youth from groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines at the center of health science research (Aim 1) and create emerging media resources via augmented reality technologies to stimulate broad interest in and understanding of the role of network science in biomedical and public health research (Aim 2). A team led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologists will partner with the University of Nebraska at Omaha; state museums; centers for math, science, and emerging media arts; NIH-funded network scientists; educators; community learning centers at local public schools; learning researchers; undergraduates; software professionals; artists; augmented reality professionals; storytellers; and evaluation experts to accomplish these goals and ensure out of school learning will reinforce Next Generation Science Standards. The Worlds of Connections project is expected to impact 35,250 youth and 20,570 educators in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska by: adding network science modules to ongoing 6th-8th-grade afterschool STEM clubs in community learning centers; adding network science for health resources to a summer graduate course on “activating youth STEM identities” for sixth to twelfth grade STEM teachers; connecting teachers with local network scientists; creating free, downloadable, high-quality emerging media arts-enhanced stories; and publishing peer-reviewed research on the potential of network science to attract youth to health careers. Coupled with the dissemination plan, the project design and activities will be replicable, allowing this project to serve as a model to guide other projects in STEM communication.
PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE:
The lack of public understanding about the role of network science in the basic biological and social health sciences limits career options and support for historically underrepresented groups whose diverse viewpoints and questions will be needed to solve the next generation of health problems. The Worlds of Connections project will combine network science, social science, learning research, biology, computer science, mathematics, emerging media arts, and informal science learning expertise to build a series of monitored and evaluated dissemination experiments for middle school science education in high poverty schools. Broad dissemination of the curriculum and project impacts will employ virtual reality technologies to bring new and younger publics into health-related STEM careers.
Mentoring is a widely accepted strategy for supporting positive socioemotional and cognitive development across a variety of sectors including education, workforce development, and the justice system. An estimated 2.5 million volunteer mentors support youth development in the United States each year. However, there is broad concern that practice has outpaced empirical testing, with significant gaps in the research literature on important modifiers of mentoring relationships and their impacts. This is especially true for mentoring youth ages 10-14 in STEM. Studying highly successful programs may be one way to better understand the role of mentoring and moderators of mentoring effectiveness. The Science Club, a community-based STEM mentoring program for middle-grade youth in the Chicago area, will provide multiple sites for a research study to examine three important issues for advancing theory and practice for STEM mentoring. These issues include (1) understanding STEM mentoring for youth in the middle grades, (2) identifying outcomes and motivations for scientist mentors to more fully participate in mentoring programs, and (3) examining a model of middle-school-focused STEM mentoring collaboration.
Through a series of three studies, the team will investigate which elements of the mentoring relationships are associated with the demonstrated STEM identity gains in youth participants. The work will also contribute much-needed data on the impact of STEM mentoring relationships on the mentors themselves. Study 1 is designed as a retrospective study of program alumni, both youth and mentors, about the nature and extent of each their STEM identity shifts during their time in Science Club. A purposeful sample of 160+ youth and 100+ mentor alumni will participate. Study 2 is a prospective study of three consecutive cohorts of active Science Club participants, built on data and findings from Study 1. In Study 2, the team will design and implement a new Identity-Focused Mentoring Observation Instrument specifically aimed at exploring the nature and quality of mentoring relationships and their role in science identity development longitudinally. Three independent cohorts of 40 youth and 20 mentors each will participate. Study 3 is retrospective, examining how participating individuals and organizations perceive and are impacted by mentoring. The three studies employ a mixed methods approach utilizing surveys, observations, individual interviews, and document review.
This proposal will fill critical gaps in the mentoring literature regarding the formative middle school years through novel, empirical research. Building on the current literature and practice, outcomes of the work will inform practice and enhance knowledge-building in the field on both mentoring relationships and the collective impact of university-school-OST partnerships.
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.
The role of afterschool programs in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning ecosystem has grown over the past two decades, which has led to increasing efforts to support and improve program quality. These efforts include developing STEM programs and curricula, creating standards for facilitating informal STEM learning experiences, building networks of support, and developing tools for assessment and evaluation. However, such efforts may have limited impact in terms of ongoing quality improvement. STEM curricula vary in disciplinary focus, quality and may not apply to local contexts and needs. Many afterschool programs resort to using simple STEM kits or online activities rather than rigorous curricula with support for educators. The project will study how the California Department of Education's (CDE) efforts to change organizational culture to support continuous quality improvement (CQI) have affected the offerings and quality of afterschool STEM in the state's more than 4,500 publicly funded afterschool sites. The EPISTEMIC project will contribute new research findings on how CQI can increase access to higher quality STEM learning opportunities for underserved youth. Even more important, the project will provide new insights on how organizational culture affects participation in and implementation of afterschool CQI.
The team will use an organizational theory framework and a mixed methods approach to conduct three research activities: (1) Describe the organizational context through interviews, participant observations, and artifact analysis to map and describe the overall support system as a context for understanding organizational culture change; (2) Describe change over time in organizational culture, CQI processes, and STEM program offerings and quality through surveys/interviews of afterschool youth, staff, directors, and grantee representatives; and (3) Generate explanations about the relationships between organizational culture, CQI, and STEM quality in different contexts through in depth case studies. Bringing organizational culture, CQI, and STEM offerings and quality into shared focus is the most important intellectual contribution of this work. Organizational theory's sensemaking concept will guide analyses to describe, exemplify, and generate theoretical explanations for patterns in organizational culture, CQI, and STEM program changes, with attention to relevant contextual factors.
Continuous quality improvement provides tools for afterschool STEM staff to identify needs and ways to improve. The EPISTEMIC study will contribute recommendations on the systemic, organizational, and cultural aspects of improvement strategies relevant to policymakers, funders, support providers, and afterschool organizations in California, as well as other state or nongovernmental support systems around the country. The study will also produce CQI guidelines for reflecting on and incorporating changes to organizational culture as part of CQI for afterschool staff and site directors. These will be helpful for practitioners around the country. The study's focus on three organizational contexts -- school district, national afterschool, and local afterschool -- will extend the relevance of the findings and recommendations, which will be disseminated through forums, workshops, and articles in practice and policy-oriented publications. The study will also benefit the research community by providing a framework and methods for studying organizational culture and CQI. The findings on the relationships between organizational culture, CQI, and STEM offerings and outcomes will provide a foundation for further research on how these relate to STEM learning outcomes for youth. EPISTEMIC 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.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Patrik LundhAndrea BeesleyTimothy PodkulCarrie Allen
This Research in Service to Practice project will bring together representatives from six long-standing youth programs, experts in the field of out-of-school-time youth programming, and education researchers to collaboratively explore the long-term (15-25 years) impact of STEM-focused, intensive (100+ hours/year), multi-year programming. The six partnering programs have maintained records with a combined total of over 3000 alums who participated between 1995 and 2005. This four-year research project uses an explanatory, sequential, mixed-method design to carry out four steps: (1) identify and describe the impact on the lives of program alums who are now ages 30 to 45; (2) identify causal pathways from program strategies to long-term outcomes; (3) develop an understanding of these pathways from the perspective of the people who experienced them; and (4) disseminate this knowledge broadly to those associated with STEM-focused programming. Research questions include: How did these programs affect youth's lives as they progressed toward and into adulthood? What program strategies and what participant attributes contributed most to the staying power of these effects? What life events and social structures supported and inhibited participant outcomes? This project describes the effects, identifies the causal pathways, and produces materials that programs can use for both strategic planning and generating support resources. Additionally, this project provides research methodology for organizations that want to conduct their own retrospective research and lays a foundation for a more comprehensive study that includes programs without historical documentation. The project aligns with NSF's Big Idea "NSF INCLUDES: Transforming education and career pathways to help broaden participation in science and engineering" by providing essential information about the long-term effect of interventions on educational and career pathways in STEM.
The project's approach involves three phases: (1) research preparation, (2) causal structural modeling of survey data from approximately 2,000 respondents, and (3) rich qualitative follow-up. Human ecological and self-determination theories inform data collection and analyses at every project phase. In the preparation phase, program staff complete program profiles from an historic perspective by identifying program strategies that may have included, for example, scientific research, robotics development, teaching science in informal settings, and working in scientific research labs. In the quantitative phase, the project will recruit alums who attended one of the 6 youth programs between 1995 and 2005 to submit a current resume and complete an online questionnaire, based on the following scaled variables: retrospective recall of basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration in relation to perceived program strategies; STEM identity (at three time periods: pre-program; post-program; and current); current well-being; career influences; and career barriers. The questionnaire also includes open-ended questions about life events related to the following categories: family and friends, school and work, and living conditions. Analysis of the questionnaire will lead to development of a causal structural model. In the qualitative phase, data will be collected from a purposefully selected sample of 30 alums based on findings from the quantitative phase. Methods include interviews, photo journals, and STEM pathways maps. Analysis of interviews, resumes, and photo journals take place within the structure of basic psychological need satisfaction and motivational quality across ecological systems over time. Qualitative analysis uses the constant comparative method, and findings are used to update and refine the final causal structural model and inform overall findings, conclusions, and recommendations of the project.
Since the 1990s, out-of-school time programs have engaged youth from underserved communities in STEM learning and in building interest in STEM careers, yet these programs often based on untested assumptions that participation has lasting effects on education, career, and life choices related to STEM. This Research in Service to Practice project has the potential to 1) guide practitioners in program improvement and improved program outcomes; 2) provide insight into achieving program goals, such as equity, increased well-being of participants, an informed citizenry, and a diversified STEM workforce; and 3) inform multi-stakeholder decision-making with respect to this type of programming. This research also builds a foundation of research data collection and analysis methods to guide and support future research on long term-impacts and youth STEM programming. Dissemination strategies include a website, webinars, video, infographics, conference presentations, and written reports to reach stakeholders including practitioners, researchers, administrators, and funders.
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.