This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning 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. Specifically, this project connects Native Hawaiian youth ages 12-17 and their family members to STEM by channeling their cultural relationship with ʻāina, the sustaining elements of the natural world including the land, sea, and air. This project seeks to: broaden participation of Native Hawaiian youth who have been historically underrepresented in STEM; actively uphold Native Hawaiian ways of knowing and traditional knowledge; articulate the science rooted in cultural wisdom; and bring STEM into the lives of participants as they connect to the ʻāina. In partnership with six ʻāina-based community organizations across Hawaiʻi, this project will develop, implement, and study ʻāina-centered environmental education activities that explore solutions to local environmental problems. For example, in one module youth and their families will explore of a section of a nearby stream; identify and discuss the native, non-native, and invasive species; remove invasive species from a small section of the stream and make observations leading to discussions of unintended consequences and systemic impacts; ultimately, learners will meet at additional local waterways to engage in similar explorations and discussions, transferring their knowledge to understanding the impacts of construction on local streams and coral reefs. To this effort, the community-based organizations bring their expertise in preserving Hawaiian culture and sustainable island lifestyle, including rural and urban systems such as farming and irrigation traditions and the restoration of cultural sites. University of Hawai’i faculty and staff bring expertise in Environmental Science, Biology, Hawaiian Studies and Problem-Based Learning Curriculum Development. This project further supports organizational learning and sharing among the six community-based organizations. Grounded in Hawaiian ʻAʻo, where learning and teaching are the same interaction, community-based organizations will create a Community of Practice that will co-learn Problem-Based Learning pedagogy; co-learn and engage in research and evaluation methods; and share experiential and traditional knowledge to co-develop the ʻāina-based environmental education activities.
This project is uniquely situated to study the impact of community-led culturally relevant pedagogy on Hawaiian learners’ interests and connections to environmental science, and to understand ʻāina-based learning through empirical research. Research methods draw on Community-Based Participatory Research and Indigenous Research Methods to develop a collaborative research design process incorporated into the project’s key components. Community members, researchers, and evaluators will work together to examine the following research questions: 1) How does environmental Problem-Based Learning situate within ʻāina-based informal contexts?; 2) What are the environmental education learning impacts of ʻāina-based activities on youth and family participants?; and 3) How does the ʻāina-centered Problem-Based Learning approach to informal STEM education support STEM knowledge, interest and awareness? The evaluation will employ a mixed-methods participatory design to explore program efficacy, fidelity, and implementation more broadly across community-based sites, as well as program sustainability within each community-based site. Anticipated project outcomes are a 15-week organizational learning and sharing program with six ʻāina-based community organizations and 72 staff; the design and implementation of 18 activities to reach 360 youth and at least one of their family members; and the launch of an ʻāina-based STEM Community of Practice. The project’s research and development process for ʻāina-centered environmental education activities will be shared broadly and provide a useful example for other organizations locally and nationally working in informal settings with Native or Indigenous populations.
Creating science education that can contribute to cultivating just, culturally thriving, and sustainable worlds is an important issue of our time. Indigenous peoples have persistently been under-represented in science reproducing inequalities in a myriad of ways from educational attainment, participation in and contributing to innovations in foundational knowledge, to effective policy making that upholds and respects Indigenous sovereignty. The development of models of science education that attend to intersections of knowledge and development, socio-scientific decision-making and civic leadership, and the complexities and contradictions of these realities, is imperative. This five-year Innovations in Development project broadens participation and strengthens infrastructure and capacity for Indigenous learners to meet, adapt to, and lead change in relation to the socio-ecological challenges of the 21st century. The project engages multi-sited community-based design studies to develop and research the impacts of Indigenous informal field-based science education with three Indigenous leadership communities from the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes. This project will have broader impacts through model development, building infrastructure to transform the capacity of informal field-based science education, and will produce cutting edge foundational knowledge about pressing 21st century issues with a particular focus on Indigenous communities. The project increases Indigenous participation in research through 1) engagement of Indigenous community members as research assistants, 2) training of Indigenous graduate fellows, and post-doctoral fellows, and 3) supporting the careers of more junior Indigenous scholars.
This research seeks to identify key design features of an Indigenous field (land/water) based model of science education and to understand how learners’ and educators’ reasoning, deliberation, decision-making, and leadership about complex socio-ecological systems and community change evolve in such learning environments. The project also examines key aspects of co-design and partnership with Tribal communities and how these methods of co-production of new science enable new capacities for systems transformation. This multi-layered project is organized through 3 panels of studies including: Panel 1) community-based design experiments to develop and refine a model of Indigenous informal science education; Panel 2) co-design and implementation of professional learning programs for Indigenous informal science education; and Panel 3) foundational studies in cognition and learning with respect to socio-ecological systems thinking and the impact on learning and instructional practices. Of particular importance in this research is the rigorous development and articulation of effective pedagogical practices and orientations. More broadly, findings will have clear implications for theories of cognitive development, deliberation and environmental decision making and especially those pertaining to how knowledge is shaped by culture and experience.
This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Filiberto Barajas-LopezAnna LeesMegan BangAnna LeesFiliberto Barajas-Lopez
Reflecting on the practice of storytelling, this practice insight explores how collaborations between scholars and practitioners can improve storytelling for science communication outcomes with publics. The case studies presented demonstrate the benefits of collaborative storytelling for inspiring publics, promoting understanding of science, and engaging publics more deliberatively in science. The projects show how collaboration between scholars and practitioners [in storytelling] can happen across a continuum of scholarship from evaluation and action research to more critical thinking
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michelle RiedlingerJenni MetcalfeAyelet Baram-TsabariMarta EntradasMarina JoubertLuisa Massarani
In this commentary we are concerned with what mainstream science communication has neglected through cultural narrowness and ambient racism: other practitioners, missing audiences, unvalued knowledge, unrecognised practices. We explore examples from First Nations Peoples in the lands now known as Australia, from Griots in West Africa and from People's Science Movements in India to help us reimagine science communication. To develop meaningfully inclusive approaches to science communication, we argue there is an urgent need for the ‘mainstream’ to recognise, value and learn from science
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Summer May FinlaySujatha RamanElizabeth RasekoalaVanessa Mignanemily dawsonLiz Neeley YongLindy Orthea
The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community developed an informal environmental health and sustainability (EHS) curriculum based on Swinomish beliefs and practices. EHS programs developed and implemented by Indigenous communities are extremely scarce. The mainstream view of EHS does not do justice to how many Indigenous peoples define EHS as reciprocal relationships between people, nonhuman beings, homelands, air, and waters. The curriculum provides an alternative informal educational platform for teaching science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (STEAM) using identification, harvest
As new technologies continue to dominate the world, access to and participation in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and computing has become a critical focus of education research, practice, and policy. This issue is exceptionally relevant for American Indians, who remain underrepresented as only 0.2% of the STEM workforce, even though they make up 2% of the U.S. population. In response to this need, this Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) project takes a community-driven design approach, a collaborative design process in which Indigenous partners maintain sovereignty as designers, to collaboratively create three place-based storytelling experiences, stories told in historical and cultural places through location-based media. The place-based storytelling experiences will be digital installations at three culturally, politically, and historically significant sites in the local community where the public can engage with Indigenous science. The work is being done in partnership with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN).
The principal investigator and the NWBSN will investigate: (a) what are effective strategies and processes to conduct community-driven design with Indigenous partners?; (b) how does designing place-based storytelling experiences develop tribal members' design, technical, and computational skills?; (c) how does designing these experiences impact tribal members' scientific, technological, and cultural identities? The goals are to establish a process of community-driven design, build infrastructure to support this process, and understand how this methodological approach can result in culturally-appropriate ways to engage with science through technology. The principal investigator will work with the tribe to complete three intergenerational design cycles (a design cycle is made up of multiple design iterations). Each design cycle will result in one place-based storytelling experience. The goal is to include roughly 15 youth (ages 6-18), 10 Elders, and 10 other community members (i.e. members ages 18-50, likely parents) in each design cycle (35 tribal members total). Some designers are likely to participate in multiple design cycles. The tribe currently has 48 youth ages 6-18 and the project aims to engage at least 30 across all three design cycles. Over four years of designing three different experiences, the NWBSN aims to recruit at least 100 tribal members (just under 20% of the tribe) to make contributions (as designers, storytellers, or to provide cultural artifacts or design feedback).
This CAREER award 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.
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.
This paper describes community engagement activities with indigenous heritage and archaeology research in the Caribbean. The practice of local community engagement with the archaeological research process and results can contribute to retelling the indigenous history of the Caribbean in a more nuanced manner, and to dispel the documentary biases that originated and were perpetuated from colonial times. From the conception of the ERC-Synergy NEXUS 1492 research project, a key aim has been to engage local communities and partners in the research process and collaboratively explore how the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Tibisay Sankatsing NavaCorrine Hofman
During the International Year of Astronomy in 2009, we initiated a collaboration between astrophysicists in Western Australia working toward building the largest telescope on Earth, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), and Indigenous artists living in the region where the SKA is to be built. We came together to explore deep traditions in Indigenous culture, including perspectives of the night sky, and the modern astrophysical understanding of the Universe. Over the course of the year, we travelled as a group and camped at the SKA site, we sat under the stars and shared stories about the
The RASOR project is designed to increase engagement of students from rural Alaska communities in biomedical/STEM careers. Rural Alaskan communities are home to students of intersecting identities underrepresented in biomedical science, including Alaska Native, low-income, first generation college, and rural. Geographic isolation defines these communities and can limit the exposure of students to scientifically-minded peers, professional role models, and science career pathways. However these students also have a particularly strong environmental connection through subsistence and recreational activities, which makes the one-health approach to bio-medicine an intuitive and effective route for introducing scientific research and STEM content. In RASOR, we will implement place-based mentored research projects with students in rural Alaskan communities at the high school level, when most students are beginning to seriously consider career paths. The biomedical one-health approach will build connections between student experiences of village life in rural Alaska and biomedical research. Engaging undergraduate students in research has proved one of the most successful means of increasing the persistence of minority students in science (Kuh 2008). Furthermore, RASOR will integrate high school students into community-based participatory research (Israel et al. 2005). This approach is designed to demonstrate the practicality of scientific research, that science has the ability to support community and cultural priorities and to provide career pathways for individual community members. The one-health approach will provide continuity with BLaST, an NIH-funded BUILD program that provides undergraduate biomedical students with guidance and support. RASOR will work closely with BLaST, implementing among younger (pre-BLaST) students approaches that have been successful for retaining rural Alaska students along STEM pathways and tracking of post-RASOR students. Alaska Native and rural Alaska students are a unique and diverse population underrepresented in biomedical science and STEM fields.
American Indian and Alaska Native communities continue to disproportionately face significant environmental challenges and concerns as a predominately place-based people whose health, culture, community, and livelihood are often directly linked to the state of their local environment. With increasing threats to Native lands and traditions, there is an urgent need to promote ecological sustainability awareness and opportunities among all stakeholders within and beyond the impacted areas. This is especially true among the dozens of tribes and over 50,000 members of the Coast Salish Nations in the Pacific Northwest United States. The youth within these communities are particularly vulnerable. This Innovations in Development project endeavors to address this serious concern by implementing a multidimensional, multigenerational model aimed at intersecting traditional ecological knowledge with contemporary knowledge to promote: (a) environmental sustainability awareness, (b) increased STEM knowledge and skills across various scientific domains, and (c) STEM fields and workforce opportunities within Coast Salish communities. Building on results from a prior pilot study, the project will be grounded on eight guiding principles. These principles will be reflected in all aspects of the project including an innovative, culturally responsive toolkit, curriculum, museum exhibit and programming, workshops, and a newly established community of practice. If successful, this project could provide new insights on effective mechanisms for not only promoting STEM knowledge and skills within informal contexts among Coast Salish communities but also awareness and social change around issues of environmental sustainability in the Pacific Northwest.
Over a five-year period, the project will build upon an extant curriculum and findings codified in a pilot study. Each aspect of the pilot work will be refined to ensure that the model established in this Innovations and Development project is coherent, comprehensive, and replicable. Workshops and internships will prepare up to 200 Coast Salish Nation informal community educators to implement the model within their communities. Over 2,500 Coast Salish Nation and Swinomish youth, adults, educators, and elders are expected to be directly impacted by the workshops, internships, curriculum and online toolkit. Another 300 learners of diverse ages are expected to benefit from portable teaching collections developed by the project. Through a partnership with the Washington State Burke Natural History Museum, an exhibit and museum programming based on the model will be developed and accessible in the Museum, potentially reaching another 35,000 people each year. The project evaluation will assess the extent to which the following expected outcomes are achieved: (a) increased awareness and understanding of Indigenous environmental sustainability challenges; (b) increased skills in developing and implementing education programs through an Indigenous lens; (c) increased interest in and awareness of the environmental sciences and other STEM disciplines and fields; and (d) sustainable relationships among the Coast Salish Nations. A process evaluation will be conducted to formatively monitor and assess the work. A cross cultural team, including a recognized Coast Salish Indigenous evaluator, will lead the summative evaluation. The project team is experienced and led by representatives from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Oregon State University, Garden Raised Bounty, the Center for Lifelong STEM Learning, the Urban Indian Research Institute, Feed Seven Generations, and the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.
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.
This poster was presented at the 2019 NSF AISL Principal Investigators meeting.
The poster describes the Rural Activation and Innovation Network, in which four Arizona regions were selected for their uniqueness in geography and demographics to provide insights about barriers and solutions to implementing ISE experiences in rural communities.