The goal of this NSF-funded RAPID research project was to advance understanding of how children’s science podcasts can provide families with information to help ease children’s worries during a pandemic by increasing children’s understanding of pandemic-related science concepts and supporting pandemic-related family conversations. Our research was guided by the following questions:
1. How and to what extent do Brains On!’s coronavirus-based episodes help children and their families understand and talk about science-related pandemic topics?
2. What kinds of conversations are
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world continues to struggle with the many ways our lives have changed and the uncertainty that remains about the future. Vaccines are being widely administered, but how and when life will return to “normal” remains unknown. During this time, caregivers continue to seek out information to address the questions, worries, and information needs their children have about this unique moment in their lives. Our NSF-funded RAPID research project has helped to uncover some of these questions, worries, and needs by talking to caregivers of listeners of the children
This RAPID award is made by the AISL program in the Division of Research on Learning in the Directorate for Education and Human Resources, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. COVID-19 presents a national threat to the health of children and families, presenting serious implications for the mental and physical health of children. This project addresses two critical aspects of the impact on COVID-19 on families: (a) the large-scale shift to at-home learning based on nationwide school closures and (b) the critical need for families to understand the basic science of virus transmission and prevention. To address these needs, the project team will develop a series of STEM activities for families with children in grades K-6 that make use of items readily available in most households. The activities help children and their families learn about viruses, virus transmission, and virus prevention while also developing other STEM-skills, particularly related to engineering design. Importantly, the project team also considers the emotional well-being of children and families during the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Led by researchers from Indiana University and Binghamton University, and experts in educational resource development from Science Friday (a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the public's access to science and scientific information through podcasts, digital videos, original web articles, and educational resources for teachers and informal educators) the project is further supported by partnerships with the New York Hall of Science, Amazeum (AR), the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (ME), The Tech Museum of Innovation (CA), the Indiana State Museum, and Kopernik Observatory Science Center (NY). The activities will be shared with families through live-streamed web sessions that introduce the activity, give tips to adults for facilitation, share a bit on related STEM careers and engage the audience in dialog about the activity and their current experiences. Versions of the sessions that are recorded will be edited and include closed-captioning and subtitles in multiple languages before being posted on platforms such as YouTube.
This project uses a design-based research approach to investigate strategies for enabling families to actively engage with STEM while home and away from their traditional institutions during a period of crisis. The research components focus on:
Engagement: How do families engage in the activity tasks, in terms of processes, practices, and use of resources? Who participated, why did they choose to participate and how did they engage (including modification of activities)? What barriers prevented interested families from completing activities?
Impact: How did the activities change participants? feelings of: a) efficacy around STEM and b) connectedness/ isolation, during extended school closures?
The Activities: Which activities had the greatest uptake? How many activity ideas were submitted by those outside of the team? What was the age/content focus of each of these activities?
The researchers will analyze social media data (including data on resource downloads and use of tracked links, YouTube and Facebook views, comment threads during livestreams and Likes/Shares/Follows across social media sites) to refine and improve the activities and programming as well as learn about the ways families are engaging in the activities. The researchers will solicit survey responses from website visitors to gather more information on participants, why they participated, how they engaged and how the activities impacted participants? efficacy around STEM and their feelings of connectedness or isolation. The researchers will also ask participants to submit images, videos and text that describes what they are making and their process along the way. Analysis of this data would lead to insights on how children and families use STEM language and practices; how children and families ask questions and use COVID-19-related and other information as part of their design work; and how ideas are formed, shaped and refined as families engage in design and making. While the project focuses on a unique opportunity to collect data on family STEM engagement as families respond to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, this project and its findings will provide a knowledge base that can be utilized to inform future responses to national emergencies, other work aimed at promoting family learning at home, and approaches to supporting children in open-ended problem solving.
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.
Museums in the US receive approximately 55 million visits each year from students in school groups. Field trip visits to an art museum have been found to positively impact critical thinking skills, empathy and tolerance - an increase that can be even more significant for youth from rural or high-poverty regions. While field trips are popular, especially at science museums, there have been no experimental studies about their impact on STEM career choices and interests, much less any which used a culturally sensitive and responsive approach. Given the resources put into field trips, this study investigates if causal links can be drawn between museum experiences and impact on youth. The Museum of Science & Industry uses a Learning Labs approach for engaging its visitors. These "Learning Labs" are facilitated experiences that run roughly an hour. Currently there are 12 lab topics. This study focuses on MedLab--one of the learning labs--as the setting for the research. MedLab is designed for on-site and online experience using ultra-sophisticated and highly versatile technology in challenges taken from research on the top healthcare issues that face adolescents in their communities.
This study is informed by research and theory on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) and Racial and Ethnic Identity. The former describes a process many follow when thinking about career options, broadly. The latter describes how people see themselves in the world through their membership with a racial and/or ethnic group. Both processes can collectively influence STEM career choices. This study follows an embedded mixed-method design. The quantitative portion includes an experimental, pre/post/delayed post-test design of both educators and their students using multiple measures taken mostly from previously published instruments. The qualitative portion includes observation rubrics of MedLab sessions along with interviews and focus groups with staff, educators, students and families that take place both within and outside of the museum. This is an experimental study of moderate size of both heterogeneous teacher and student populations in real world settings. It involves comparing youth and educators that participate in MedLab with those who do not. By conducting research that looks at each community through the lens of their unique experiences, the research will measure their impact more sensitively and authentically, addressing a gap in current literature on informal science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) career education with diverse students.
This study is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program and the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program.
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.
Casual games are everywhere. People play them throughout life to pass the time, to engage in social interactions, and to learn. However, their simplicity and use in distraction-heavy environments can attenuate their potential for learning. This experimental study explored the effects playing an online, casual game has on awareness of human biological systems. Two hundred and forty-two children were given pretests at a Museum and posttests at home after playing either a treatment or control game. Also, 41 children were interviewed to explore deeper meanings behind the test results. Results show
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.
The Maker movement has grown considerably over the past decade, both in the USA and internationally. Several varieties of Making have been developed, but there are still many important questions to ask and research to conduct about how different programmatic structures may relate to the potential impact Maker programs can have on individuals and communities. WestEd, in collaboration with the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, the University of Michigan C. S. Mott Hospital Children's Hospital, and the Children's Hospital of Orange County, is conducting a year-long exploratory research study that will focus on the out-of-school learning by adolescents and young adults in children's hospitals. This research study will focus on mobile and dedicated Makerspaces in hospitals to support patients' learning. The application of Makerspaces to hospital environments is a unique opportunity to research a critical need of chronically ill individuals, i.e. to explore how Making can enhance patients' agency, creative STEM learning, and physical well-being. The proposed study is building on the prior work of the principal investigator and will: (1) examine the nature and processes of learning in children's hospitals; (2) revise the current design of the mobile Makerspace and the associated implementation model in response to variations in programmatic contexts across multiple hospital settings and disparate patients' conditions; and (3) investigate and test the effectiveness of the Makerspace approach as it relates to both patients' learning and health outcomes. The study would contribute to longer-term efforts to develop a comprehensive, scalable, and sustainable strategy to determine the programmatic viability of the mobile Makerspace approach across a more varied array of hospital settings. This project has the potential to have a much broader impact by reaching out to other isolated students beyond the hospital environment, including those in residential treatment facilities for behavioral and emotional problems, as well as those attending programs designed to help youth who have been in trouble with the law get back on track. 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 project's goals are to contribute to the understanding of how to: (1) describe and measure the education and health impact of mobile Makerspaces on chronically ill patients, and (2) design and sustain implementation models in various hospital settings. Since a children's hospital is a challenging context to support a patient's learning, it is not typically conducive to learning. Patients are constantly interrupted by the demands of the illness, by the strict protocols that need to be adhered to, and by the medical staff who manage their exhaustive treatment regimens. The mobile Makerspace is intended to adjust the environment in deliberate ways, allowing researchers to study and observe what kinds of learning intervention models enable youth and young adults to recapture a sense of their own agency and enable them to see themselves as creators, and makers of things that improve their own and others' lives. The project will have two strands: one on learning and one on adaptation of the model. In the learning strand, the study will investigate how engaging with the Makerspace can enhance patients' learning by provoking their sense of curiosity, encouraging them to set up and pursue personal goals via invention, and inspiring them to feel more agentive in taking charge of their learning process i.e., development of affinity for and fluency in the ways of knowing, doing and being (the epistemologies and ontologies) of engineers or scientists. In the adaptation strand, they will identify challenges and opportunities for implementing Makerspaces and develop an implementation plan that provides a process for introducing Makerspaces into hospital settings.
One in three children in the US is overweight or obese. One in five lives in food-insecure households that struggle to put food on the table. Both problems are linked to poor academic performance, behavior problems, and high rates of school absenteeism. To address these issues, the Alliance for a Healthier Generation's Out-of-School Time initiative has been working since 2011 in eight cities to support the adoption of the National Afterschool Association's healthy eating and physical activity (HEPA) standards by before-school, afterschool, and summer programs.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniel HatcherCrystal Weedall FitzsimonsJill Turley
This article reviews a book that provides a detailed account of the interviews, observations, research, and successes and failures that led to the development of Project Coach, a program that helps youth gain life skills through mastery of a sport. Project Coach empowers and employs teenagers to become coaches and academic mentors to elementary youth in the community.
With 8.4 million children in the US spending an average of eight hours a week in afterschool programs, afterschool providers are an important part of the network of caring adults who can help to keep children safe. This article explores the topic of mandated reporting of suspected child abuse by afterschool staff.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maria GandarillaJulie O'Donnell
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This is a Science Learning+ planning project that will develop a research plan for investigating how applying the principles of embodied cognition to the design of informal learning environments can support young children's (ages 2-6) engagement with, and understanding of, science topics and concepts. While it has been fairly well established that cognition is intertwined with the body's interaction in the physical world, the precise means of applying these ideas to the design of effective learning environments is still emerging. Experimenting with various embodied cognition activities and physical learning configurations to understand what conditions are optimal for informal learning environments for early learners is a major objective of this project. During the planning grant period, the project will identity additional practitioner/research collaborations and will develop research plans for a suite of studies to be enacted by multiple teams of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists across the US and UK and that will be submitted as a Phase 2 research. The primary activities of this planning period include organizing a series of workshops that bring together informal learning educators and embodied cognition researchers to engage in deep discussion and design experimentation that will inform the development and refinement of research questions, protocols, and measurement tools. These discussions will be informed by observations of young children as they interact with the River of Grass, an exhibit prototype in which principles of embodied cognition are embedded in its design. The planning period will be led by a collaborative team of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists from the US and UK. This group will also oversee plans for the development of a new model for informal STEM research in which a constellation of practitioner/research teams across multiple organizations investigates topics of importance to informal learning practice and research that have the potential to result in a robust body of research that informs the design of informal learning spaces.
Research in experimental and developmental psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience, suggests that tool fluency depends on the merging of perceptual and motor aspects of its use, an achievement we call perceptuomotor integration. We investigate the development of perceptuomotor integration and its role in mathematical thinking and learning. Just as expertise in playing a piano relies on the interanimation of finger movements and perceived sounds, we argue that mathematical expertise involves the systematic interpenetration of perceptual and motor aspects of playing mathematical
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ricardo NemirovskyMolly KeltonBohdan Rhodehamel