Informal STEM learning experiences (ISLEs), such as participating in science, computing, and engineering clubs and camps, have been associated with the development of youth’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics interests and career aspirations. However, research on ISLEs predominantly focuses on institutional settings such as museums and science centers, which are often discursively inaccessible to youth who identify with minoritized demographic groups. Using latent class analysis, we identify five general profiles (i.e., classes) of childhood participation in ISLEs from data
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Remy DouHeidi CianZahra HazariPhilip SadlerGerhard Sonnert
National Foundation for the Blind (NFB) Engineering Quotient (EQ) for Teachers is a free, online curriculum and collection of resources for educators who want to teach NFB EQ, the National Federation of the Blind’s week-long engineering program designed for blind and low-vision youth.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Natalie ShaheenWade GoodridgeSarah LopezPeter AndersonAnn CunninghamDavid Nietfeld
This guidebook will help you plan your action project. The initial brainstorm pages will help you consider where to start, and the Action Project Framework will navigate you through steps to get to your destination: the completion of your project!
This project focuses on environmental health literacy and will explore the extent to which diverse rural and urban youth in an out-of-school STEM enrichment program exhibit gains in environmental health literacy while engaged in learning and teaching others about community resilience in the face of changing climates. Science centers and museums provide unique opportunities for youth to learn about resilience, because they bring community members together to examine the ways that current science influences local decisions. In this project, teams of participating youth will progress through four learning modules that explore the impacts of changing climates on local communities, the local vulnerabilities and risks associated with those changes, possible mitigation and adaptation strategies, and building capacities for communities to become climate resilient. After completion of these modules, participating youth will conduct a resilience-focused action project. Participants will be encouraged to engage peers, families, friends, and other community stakeholders in the design and implementation of their projects, and they will gain experience in accessing local climate and weather data, and in sharing their findings through relevant web portals. Participants will also use various sensors and web-based tools to collect their own data.
This study is guided by three research questions: 1) To what extent do youth develop knowledge, skills, and self- efficacy for developing community resilience (taken together, environmental health literacy in the context of resilience) through participation in museum-led, resilience-focused programming? 2) What program features and settings foster these science learning outcomes? And 3) How does environmental health literacy differ among rural and urban youth, and what do any differences imply for project replication? Over a two- year period, the project will proceed in six stages: a) Materials Development during the first year, b) Recruitment and selection of youth participants, c) Summer institute (six days), d) Workshops and field experiences during the school year following the summer institute, e) Locally relevant action projects, and f) End- of-program summit (one day). In pursuing answers to the research questions, a variety of data sources will be used, including transcripts from youth focus groups and educator interviews, brief researcher reflections of each focus group and interview, and a survey of resilience- related knowledge. Quantitative data sources will include a demographic survey and responses to a self-efficacy instrument for adolescents. The project will directly engage 32 youth, together with one parent or guardian per youth. The study will explore the experiences of rural and urban youth of high school age engaged in interactive, parallel programming to enable the project team to compare and contrast changes in environmental health literacy between rural and urban participants. It is anticipated that this research will advance knowledge of how engagement of diverse youth in informal learning environments influences understanding of resilience and development of environmental health literacy, and it will provide insights into the role of partnerships between research universities and informal science centers in focusing on community resilience.
Awareness of a STEM discipline is a complex construct to operationalize; a learner’s awareness of a discipline is sometimes viewed through the lens of personal identity, use of relevant discourse, or knowledge of career pathways. This research proposes defining engineering awareness through a learner’s associations with engineering practices - fundamental processes involved in engineering such as identifying criteria and constraints, testing designs, diagnosing issues and assessing goal completion. In this study, a learner’s engineering awareness was determined by examining 1) their ability to
This document provides a brief story about how the Designing our Tomorrow team explored some of their questions about exhibit features by using the C-PIECE Framework: Framework of Collaborative Practices at Interactive Engineering Challenge Exhibits.
This exploratory line of inquiry looked at relationships between exhibit features and visitor groups’ Informed engineering design practices. This brief includes an Introduction, Methods and Findings, Summary, and Implications.
This exploratory line of inquiry was conducted to inform the development of the Designing our Tomorrow exhibit and
This paper provides detailed descriptions of the goals, theoretical perspectives, context, and methods used in A study of collaborative practices at interactive engineering challenge exhibits (the C-PIECE Study), the first of two studies in the Designing Our Tomorrow (DOT) research program. The C-PIECE Study supported foundational and exploratory lines of inquiry related to engineering practices used by families engaging with design challenge exhibits. This paper describes the study background and methods as an anchor to four other products that detail these four specific lines of inquiry and
The purpose of this research was to explore associations between engineering practices included in the C-PIECE framework. In this work, we took particular interest in practices under the Defining a Problem proficiency. Practices under Defining a Problem have great potential to influence the entire exhibit interaction and early observations indicated that visitor groups did not engage frequently in these practices at the informed level, therefore they were seen as an opportunity ripe for study. Through observations, interviews, and video analysis, the DOT research team investigated the
This video captures the energy and potetial of the Designing our Tomorrow project. It is intended to complement presentations and posters about Designing our Tomorrow.
The Designing Our Tomorrow project aims to develop a framework for creating exhibit-based engineering design challenges and expand an existing model of facilitation for use in engineering exhibits. Designing our Tomorrow seeks to broaden participation in engineering and build capacity within the informal science education (ISE) field while raising public awareness of the importance of sustainable engineering design practices
In April 2018, FHI 360, under the leadership of Maryann Stimmer and Merle Froschl, convened a meeting of thought leaders in Washington, D.C. to capture a “snapshot” of STEM education. They subsequently conducted additional interviews with more than 50 local and national policy leaders; public and private funders; researchers; PreK-12 and post-secondary educators; parents, and leaders of afterschool programs, science centers and youth-serving organizations. The purpose of this summary report is to identify current trends and gaps to inform research, policy, and practice in order to reinforce
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