To advance justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion in science, we must first understand and improve the dominant-culture frameworks that impede progress and, second, we must intentionally create more equitable models. The present authors call ourselves the ICBOs and Allies Workgroup (ICBOs stands for independent community-based organizations), and we represent communities historically excluded from the sciences. Together with institutional allies and advisors, we began our research because we wanted our voices to be heard, and we hoped to bring a different perspective to doing science with
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TEAM MEMBERS:
María Cecilia Alvarez RicaldeJuan Flores ValadezCatherine CrumJohn AnnoniRick BonneyMateo Luna CastelliMarilú López FrettsBrigid LuceyKaren PurcellJ. Marcelo BontaPatricia CampbellMakeda CheatomBerenice RodriguezYao Augustine FoliJosé GonzálezJosé Miguel Hernández HurtadoSister Sharon HoraceKaren KitchenPepe Marcos-IgaTanya SchuhPhyllis Edwards TurnerBobby WilsonFanny Villarreal
This Pilot and Feasibility project will investigate: a) the kinds of learning outcomes that occur in an informal STEM project utilizing a Critical Environmental Justice-informed Participatory Action Research framework, co-created between researchers and homeless communities, and b) the challenges and opportunities that arise in evaluating such collaborative projects. To address these questions, a team of university and community researchers will work with two self-organized homeless communities, in Portland, OR and Baltimore, MD, to systematically examine air quality at their sites and further develop a multimedia environmental justice toolkit. The toolkit is aimed at equipping homeless communities with STEM-based information and approaches to learn about and address various environmental hazards. Homeless people are disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of air and soil pollution, rodents, extreme weather, floods, fires, and other hazards. This collaboration will study STEM learning outcomes related to the broader historical socio-political context in which people are living. The project also anticipates finding ways to adapt evaluation processes to better suit the needs of marginalized groups participating in informal STEM projects.
Guided by this integrated framework, the team will undertake participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and document analysis to assess learning. It also anticipates gaining insights into how evaluation processes may be adapted to better suit the needs of marginalized groups participating in informal STEM 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Chris HawnMelanie MaloneErin GoodlingDillon MahmoudiAnthony Levenda
Curiosity is a grant-funding programme from the Wellcome Trust with BBC Children in Need., and it provides funding to help youth organisations develop and deliver inspiring science activities for disadvantaged children and young people. This report looks at the key findings from the 32 projects funded during the first round.
The Round 1 projects were delivered by voluntary and community sector organisations, some of which were in partnership with ISL providers, and offered a variety of science opportunities from surveying local weather to building a green-powered race car. Many projects
This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot will improve math achievement among elementary school students of color in public schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Recognizing the need to coordinate efforts related to students' math and science achievement, key stakeholders formed the NM STEM Ecosystem, a dynamic network of cross-sector partners committed to making real impact on STEM education and degree attainment in Albuquerque. The NM STEM Ecosystem identified the math achievement gap between low-income students of color and their more economically-advantaged peers as the Broadening Participation (BP) Challenge it would address first. While math achievement gaps between students of color and Caucasian students appear nationally, the situation is particularly dire in New Mexico. In order to keep doors open to future STEM careers, it is crucial that learning pathways for math are articulated early and that these pathways honor families' cultural ways of knowing. The innovative strategy of Math Families & Communities Empowering Student Success (Math FACESS) is to use a collective impact approach to close the math achievement gap by connecting formal and informal STEM educators around a coherent, multi-faceted program of early mathematics teaching and learning that empowers parents and teachers to support children's mathematical development. Implementation of Math FACESS includes four major components: 1) Teachers at two pilot schools will participate in professional development related to Math Talk and Listening; 2) Parents at the pilot schools will participate in parent workshops and community-based activities focused on supporting their children's math achievement; 3) Project partners will implement community-based family activities organized around a theme of Twelve Months of Math; and 4) Ecosystem partners will study what worked and what didn't, in order to identify best practices that can be shared with system leaders to scale effective practices and increase impact.
The near-term objectives for Math FACESS are: 1) improve students' attitudes, practices, and achievement in math; 2) improve parents' attitudes, practices, and confidence in math and increase their utilization of family math resources; 3) improve data-sharing among partners related to math participation and achievement; and 4) create pathways within the Ecosystem for family math learning. The effectiveness of the collective impact model and impacts on partner organizations also will be assessed. Through the math FACESS Launch Pilot, the NM STEM Ecosystem plans to: 1) demonstrate the power of a collective impact social innovation framework to address a systemic community condition -- in this case, the math achievement gap; 2) contribute to theory-of-change research that demonstrates student achievement can be affected by working with parents and teachers; and 3) provide a model that values different ways of knowing and uses cultural context in the design of STEM learning opportunities for students, families, and schools.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joe HastingsArmelle CasauObenshain KorenKersti TysonAngelo Gonzales
resourceresearchWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
This brief discusses the PLUM LANDING Explore Outdoors Toolkit, a new set of free, public media resources designed to help informal educators and parents infuse science learning into outdoor recreation. Developed by trusted media producer WGBH in partnership with researchers at Education Development Center (EDC), the Toolkit aims to get children (ages 6–9) from low-income, urban communities outside so they can explore the environment around them while debunking the myth that nature is something that only exists beyond city limits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marion GoldsteinElizabeth PiersonJamie KynnLisa Famularo
In this case study, we highlight the work of the Bay Area STEM Ecosystem, which aims to increase equity and access to STEM learning opportunities in underserved communities. First, we lay out the problems they are trying to solve and give a high level overview of the Bay Area STEM Ecosystem’s approach to addressing them. Then, based on field observations and interviews, we highlight both the successes and some missed opportunities from the first collaborative program of this Ecosystem. Both the successes of The Bay Area STEM Ecosystem--as well as the partners’ willingness to share and examine
Learn how to create opportunities for young people from low-income, ethnically diverse communities to learn about growing food, doing science, and how science can help them contribute to their community in positive ways. The authors developed a program that integrates hydroponics (a method of growing plants indoors without soil) into both in-school and out-of-school educational settings.
The MyBEST (Mentoring Youth Building Employable Skills in Technology) project, funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Informal Science Education program, concluded its three years of operation in 2006. This youth-based program was intended to provide participants with in-depth learning experiences involving information and design technologies. These experiences had a dual focus: enabling youth participants to gain fluency in using these technologies while showing them how adults apply them in work and academic endeavors. Appendix includes survey.
Our goal is to demonstrate an educational model fully commensurate with the demands of the 21st Century workforce, and more specifically, with the emerging “green-tech” economy. We recognize a pressing need creating more sustainable solutions for the (human) built-environment and of stabilizing economic patterns that uphold sustainable systems. to prepare citizens for the challenges of The ASCEND model is designed to encourage these societal shifts, but at the same time, it is an attempt to put theory into practice - activating educational practices aligned with research on human development and cognition. For some time now strong recommendations for apprenticeship learning have emphasized the function of legitimate peripheral participation – the possibility of which becomes more prevalent in robust communities of practice. As compared to top-down approaches (typical of formal education settings) these "learning communities" are seen as being more closely aligned with our natural propensities for learning and cognition. ASCEND represents a design-experiment -an attempt to learn how we can create and sustain opportunities for apprenticeship learning in an interdisciplinary arena at the leading edge of technical innovation. In addition, the ASCEND model introduces and examines the efficacy of “digital storytelling” as an alternative to more traditional forms of apprenticeship learning and as a means to engage and advance this and future generations in STEM. A further goal is to develop innovative measures of assessment commensurate with this new model of apprenticeship learning. Finally ASCEND explore how informal learning organizations (museums, libraries, preserves etc.) can use digital storytelling to develop community-driven programs inclusive of at-risk youth and other hard to reach audiences.
This full-scale project addresses the need for more youth, especially girls, to pursue an interest in engineering and eventually fill a critical workforce need. The project leverages museum-based exhibits, girls' activity groups, and social media to enhance participants' engineering-related interests and identities. The project includes the following bilingual deliverables: (1) Creative Solutions programming will engage girls in group oriented engineering activities at partner community-based organizations, where the activities highlight altruistic, personally relevant, and social aspects of engineering. Existing community groups will use the activities in their regular meeting structure. Visits to the museum exhibits, titled Design Your World will reinforce messages; (2) Design Your World Exhibits will serve as a community hub at two ISE institutions (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Hatfield Marine Science Center). They will leverage existing NSF-funded Engineer It! (DRL-9803989) exhibits redesigned to attract, engage, and mobilize a more diverse population by showcasing altruistic, personally relevant, and social aspects of engineering; (3) Digital engagement through targeted use of social media will complement program and exhibit content and be an online portal for groups engaged in the project; (4) A community action group (CAG) will provide professional development opportunities to stakeholders interested in girls' STEM identity (e.g. parents, STEM-based business professionals) to promote effective engineering messaging throughout the community and engage them in supporting project participants; and (5) Longitudinal research will explore how girls construct and negotiate engineering-related identities through discourse across the project activities and over time.
The goal of the SISCOM program is to improve science achievement of economically disadvantaged middle school students in science, through the development, implementation, and dissemination of a replicable, model program for use with underserved youth, especially girls, in informal educational settings. A number of programs and interventions geared toward bolstering the STEM interest and achievement of urban youth have been implemented across the country. Key elements that have proven to be successful have been incorporated into the SISCOM program include the longevity of intervention
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Penny L. Hammrich, Ph.D.Kathy Fadigan, Ed.D.Judy Stull, Ph.D.