The University of Guam (UOG) NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project, GROWING STEM, addresses the grand challenge of increasing Native Pacific Islander representation in the nation's STEM enterprise, particularly in environmental sciences. The project addresses culturally-relevant and place-based research as the framework to attract, engage, and retain Native Pacific Islander students in STEM disciplines. The full science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pathway will be addressed from K-12 to graduate studies with partnerships that include the Guam Department of Education, Humatak Community Foundation, Pacific Post-Secondary Education Council, the Guam Science and Discovery Society, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and the University of Alaska-Fairbaanks. As the project progresses, the project anticipates further partnerships with the current NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project at the University of the Virgin Islands.
Pilot activities include summer internships for high school students, undergraduate and graduate research opportunities through UOG's Plant Nursery and the Humatak Community Foundation Heritage House. STEM professional development activities will be offered through conference participation and student research presentations in venues such as the Guam Science and Discovery Society's Guam Island-wide Science Fair and SACNAS. Faculty will be recruited to develop a mentoring protocol for the project participants. Community outreach and extension services will expand public understanding in environmental sciences from the GROW STEM project. Project metrics will include monitoring the diversity of partners, increases in community engagement, Native Pacific Islander participation in STEM activities, the number of students who desire to attain terminal STEM degrees and the number of community members reached by pilot STEM extension and outreach activities. Dissemination of the GROWING STEM pilot project results will occur through the NSF INCLUDES National Network, partner annual conferences, and local, regional and national STEM conferences.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
John PetersonCheryl SanguezaElse DemeulenaereAustin Shelton
This project is a Design and Development Launch Pilot (DDLP) of the NSF INCLUDES program. The goal of the project is to enhance the knowledge and applicability of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) for a broad cross-section of people living in the U.S,-Affiliated Pacific Islands. The focus will be on water resources, which is an extremely important topic for this region and equally relevant nationally. The project will engage local community groups and schools in water monitoring, sampling, and analysis, in order to promote the benefits of science education and careers among a population that is underrepresented in these areas. Moreover, the project will improve the capabilities of the island residents for making decisions about sustainable use and protection of these scarce resources. A functioning network will be established among the islands that will have a positive impact on the health and well-being of the residents.
This project will use water as a highly relevant topic in order to involve a wide range of individuals in both general STEM learning and the basic scientific principles as applied to water resources. Specific aspects include engaging K-12, higher education, informal educators and community members to manage water resources in a sustainable fashion that will reduce disaster risk. In addition, the project will empower local communities through water literacy to make better informed, evidence-based decisions that balance the needs of diverse stakeholder groups. The overarching goal is to further advance the inclusion of underrepresented learners in STEM fields. Benefits to society will accrue by: increasing STEM learning opportunities for ~6,500 students from underserved and underrepresented Indigenous Pacific Islanders that will enhance their eligibility for STEM careers; building community resiliency through a collective impact network to resolve emerging water crises; and fostering collaboration among different constituencies in remote communities to make better-informed decisions that reflect the needs and constraints of diverse interests.
This is an "Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science" (INCLUDES) Design and Development Launch Pilot that will implement a plan to assess the feasibility of a strategy designed to ensure high levels of improvement in K-12 grade students' mathematics achievement. The plan will focus on an often-neglected group of students--those who have been performing at the lowest quartile on state tests of mathematics, including African American, Hispanic, Native American, students with disabilities, and those segregated in urban and rural communities across the country. The project will draw on lessons learned from the nation's Civil Rights Movement and a community-organizing strategy learned during the struggle to achieve voting rights for African Americans. The Algebra Project (AP) is a national, nonprofit organization that uses mathematics as an organizing tool to ensure quality public school education for every child in America; it believes that every child has a right to a quality education to succeed in this technology-based society. AP's unique approach to school reform intentionally develops sustainable, student-centered models by building coalitions of stakeholders within the local communities, particularly the historically underserved populations. The AP works to change the deeply rooted social attitudes that encourage the disenfranchisement of a third of the nation's population. It delivers a multi-pronged approach to build demand for and support of quality public schools, including research and development, school development, and community development education reform efforts through K-12 initiatives.
The Algebra Project and the Young People's Project (YPP) will join efforts to bring together over 70 individuals and organizations, including 17 universities of which 8 are Historical Black Colleges and Universities, school districts, mathematics educators, and researchers to examine their experiences, and use collective learning to refine and hone strategies that they have piloted and tested to promote mathematics inclusion. The role of YPP in the proposed project will be to organize and facilitate the youth component, such that project activities reflect the language and culture of students, continuously leveraging and building upon their voice, creative input, and ongoing feedback. YPP will conduct workshops for students organized around math-based games that provide collective experiences in which student learning requires individual reflection, small group work, teamwork and discussion. The proposed work will comprise the design of effective learning opportunities; building and supporting a cadre of teachers who can effectively work with students learning under the proposed approach; using technologies to enhance teaching and learning; and utilizing evaluation and research to drive continuous improvement. Because bringing together an effective network with diverse expertise to collaborate towards national impact requires expert facilitation processes, the project will establish working groups around three major principles: (1) Organizing from the bottom up through students, their teachers, and others in local communities committed to their education, allied with individuals and organizations who have expertise and dedication for achieving the stated goals, can produce significant progress and the conditions for collective impact; (2) Effective learning materials and formal and informal learning opportunities in mathematics can be designed and implemented for students performing in the bottom academic quartile; and (3) Teachers and other educators can become more proficient and more confident in their capacity to produce students who are successful in learning the level of mathematics required for full participation in STEM. The working groups will also be tasked to consider two cross-cutting topics: (a) the communication structures and technologies needed to operate and expand the present network, and to create the "backbone" and other structures needed to operate and expand the network; and (b) the measurements and metrics for major needs, such as assessing students' mathematics literacy, socio-emotional development in specified areas; teachers' competencies; as well as the work of the network. The final product of this plan will be a "Theory of Collective Action and Strategic Plan". The plan will contain recommendations for collective actions needed in order for the current network to coordinate, add appropriate partners, develop the needed backbone structures, and become an NSF Alliance for national impact on the broadening participation challenge of improving the mathematics achievement. An external evaluator will conduct both formative and summative aspects of this process.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert MosesNell CobbGregory BudzbanMaisha MosesWilliam Crombie
Worldwide, four million people participate in geocaching--a game of discovering hidden treasures with GPS-enabled devices (including smart phones). Geocachers span all ages and tend to be interested in technology and the outdoors. To share information about the Montana Climate Assessment (MCA), an NSF-funded scientific report, Montana State University created a custom trackable geocaching coin featuring the MCA Website and logo. We then recruited volunteers to hide one coin in each of Montana’s 56 counties. Volunteer geocachers enthusiastically adopted all 56 counties, wrote blogs and social media posts about the coins, and engaged local Scout troops and schools. Other geocachers then found and circulated the coins while learning about Montana’s climate. One coin has traveled nearly 4,000 miles; several have visited other states and Canada. 95% of the volunteers said the project made them feel more connected to university research, and they told an average of seven other people about the project. Nearly all of the participants were unfamiliar with the Montana Climate Assessment prior to participating. The geocaching educational outreach project included several partnerships, including with Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle (a.k.a. “Groundspeak”); Cache Advance, Inc., an environmentally friendly outdoor gear company; and Gallatin Valley Geocachers. An advisory board of geocachers helped launch the project.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Suzi TaylorRay CallawayM.J. NehasilCathy Whitlock
Educational approaches that provide meaningful, relevant opportunities for place-based learning have been shown to be effective models for engaging indigenous students in science. The Laulima A ‘Ike Pono (LAIP) collaboration was developed to create a place-based inclusive learning environment for engaging local community members, especially Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, in scientific research at a historically significant ancient Hawaiian fishpond. The LAIP internship focused on problem-solving activities that were culturally relevant to provide a holistic STEM research experience
This article explores science communication from the perspective of those most at risk of exclusion, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork. I conducted five focus groups and 32 interviews with participants from low-income, minority ethnic backgrounds. Using theories of social reproduction and social justice, I argue that participation in science communication is marked by structural inequalities (particularly ethnicity and class) in two ways. First, participants’ involvement in science communication practices was narrow (limited to science media consumption). Second, their experiences of exclusion
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.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Katie SpellmanElena SparrowChrista MulderDeb Jones
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 conduct research designed to deepen our fundamental knowledge about culture, experience, and ecosystems cognition and to develop innovative practices and approaches to support learning about changing ecological systems and environmental decision making. Work on cultural differences in the production of complex systems knowledge is severely lacking. This gap in knowledge may contribute to the continued reproduction of inequities in science education. More broadly findings from this project will have clear implications for theories of cognitive development, especially those pertaining to how knowledge is shaped by culture and experience. Focusing on ecosystems may represent an opportunity to not only increase engagement and achievement in science among non-dominant communities and Native youth specifically, but also advance effective learning for all communities. The primary deliverables for the project are conference presentations and research publications. However, the project will also develop additional resources freely available to researchers, educators, and the general public. These will include summer curricular materials and teaching tools, professional development workshops, practitioner briefs about research findings that can be used in professional development workshops and shared share more broadly, and evaluation reports.
A deeper understanding of cultural influences on conceptions of the natural world can serve to advance the educational needs of children, including children from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Project research will include two interrelated series of studies designed to expand knowledge about human cognition of complex ecosystems and the affordances of informal STEM learning environments in developing and supporting the critical 21st century skill of ecological systems level reasoning. The first consists of a series of experiments focused on ecological cognition and the role of humans in nature. The second consists of design-based research interventions in informal settings, summer workshops for youth and the communities, focused on ecological systems level thinking and socio-environmental decision making. The project will recruit and engage both child and adult participants from two broad cultural communities, Native Americans and European Americans living in urban and suburban communities, in part because it affords a sharp test of human-nature relations. Sampling from two different urban communities will avoid simple Native-non-Native comparative binaries and to conduct Native-to-Native comparative analysis. Based on results from this, the project will result in: 1) foundational knowledge about human learning and reasoning and ecosystems and environmental decision making, 2) culturally responsive models of learning and practice about complex ecosystems for indoors and outdoors informal learning environments, and 3) insights about research-practice-community partnerships. One important objective of the research is to broaden participation and close opportunity gaps for under-represented groups in STEM fields broadly and more specifically for Indigenous people. Members of Indigenous communities, who provide strong role models for other aspiring scholars, will be involved as postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and graduate fellows.
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 collaboratively design, test and study effective and efficient ways to develop embedded assessments (EAs) of citizen science (CS) volunteer scientific inquiry skills in order to better understand the impact of these CS experiences on volunteer scientific inquiry abilities. EAs are assessment activities that are integrated into the learning experience and allow learners to demonstrate their competencies in an unobtrusive way. The acquisition of scientific inquiry skills is an essential, even defining, characteristic of citizen science experiences that has a direct influence on data quality. Methods for assessing the direct impact of CS on volunteers' scientific inquiry skills are limited. The project will result in EA measures designed for use by diverse CS projects, strategies that CS projects can use to develop EA assessment tools, and research findings that document opportunities, supports and barriers of this innovative method across a range of CS contexts. Findings and initial resources will be shared with the broad array of stakeholders in CS through conferences, workshops, peer-reviewed publication, community websites and other relevant venues. The results of this work also have the potential to generalize to other informal science learning experiences that engage the public in science The project will address two research questions: (1) What processes are useful for developing broadly applicable EA methods or measures? and (2) What can we learn about gains in volunteers' scientific inquiry skills when citizen science organizations use EA? These will be addressed through design-based research focused on two streamlining strategies. For the reframing data validation strategy, six leaders from five established citizen science projects will conduct secondary analyses of their existing databases to uncover the skill gains of CS volunteers that are currently unexplored in their data. For the common measure strategy, ten CS projects will collaborate to create and test common EA measures of select identification-based skills. Data will be gathered through meeting notes, participant interviews and action plans, and volunteer skill gains to capture process and products of each strategy. Data will be analyzed using grounded theory, multiple process techniques, multilevel models, and repeated-measures analysis of variance. The design-based-research framework will significantly expand project impacts by jump-starting evaluation of the participating CS projects and by producing initial resources for two distinct EA strategies that have the potential to dramatically alter practice and impact citizen science efforts to ultimately enable more people to learn by contributing to the science endeavor. The project will directly equip the 15 participating citizen-science projects with authentic performance tools to assess the quality of their programing, which will expand their understanding of CS volunteer skills and help them better recruit and support their varied audiences (including rural, low-income and tribal communities).
The primary goal of MAST-3 is to increase the diversity of students, particularly those from underrepresented groups, electing careers in NOAA related marine sciences. This is done through a multidisciplinary program that engages students in NOAA-related marine research, and explores marine policy, the heritage of African Americans and Native Americans in the coastal environment, and seamanship. MAST students use the Chesapeake Bay to understand efforts to protect, restore and manage the use of coastal and ocean resources through an ecosystem approach to management. To do this, Hampton University has formed partnerships with various NOAA labs/sites, several university laboratories, the USEPA, various museums, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, and the menhaden fishing industry.
The National Museum of the American Indian, NY (NMAI-NY) contracted RK&A to conduct a two-phase formative evaluation of the museum’s upcoming Native New York exhibition. The study’s objectives for walk-in visitors and teachers were to understand their baseline knowledge, what piques their interest, potential barriers (confusion or misunderstanding), strategies to help make personal connections, and how/if they understand exhibition outcomes (such as appreciate who Native Americans are today and understand that Native peoples have powerfully shaped and defined New York’s geography, economy, and
From October 2015 to July 2016, Smart Start Evaluation & Research conducted a formative evaluation of a full-length film festival cut of the film The Anthropologist in order to provide feedback that improves decision-making capacity for the film’s final edit, production design, and distribution strategies in line with the project’s goals (see p. 5).
SmartStart conducted focus group interviews with participants to 1) measure their initial impressions of the film and its content, and 2) provide feedback on content, edits, target audience, website, and ideas for distribution. SmartStart then