The Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio will expand its professional development program for educators in Chicago Public Schools and surrounding suburbs with low-income populations. The Teaching by Design program integrates design-based inquiry and problem-solving into K-12 curricula. It connects Wright's design philosophy to contemporary issues in STEAM subjects. Following a multi-year pilot, the trust will bring the project to scale by delivering 12 professional development seminars, developing 100 new lesson plans, enhancing the program's online platform, evaluating the project's short- and long-term impact, and cultivating a sustainable Teaching by Design learning community. The seminars will provide educators with a fully immersive artmaking and design experience that can be replicated in the classroom and connected to cross-curricular themes and learning standards. The project aims to reach 90 educators in at least 40 schools, 9,000 students, and an estimated 3,000 website users.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will amplify its partnership with Hart Magnet School, a Title 1 elementary school in urban Stamford, Connecticut, by increasing exposure and access to the arts for first-fifth graders, their families, and educators. A new program model, leveraging the museum's artist exhibitions, will focus on technology and an inquiry-based approach to science. Students, educators, and families will be encouraged to see and think in new ways through on-site STEAM tours at the museum, artist-led workshops at Hart, teacher professional development, and afterschool family activities. Outside evaluators will work with the project team to develop goals and associated metrics to measure how the model of museum-school partnership can enhance student achievement, engage families more deeply in their child's school experience and community, and contribute to teacher professional development. The evaluator will also train museum staff on best practices for program assessment.
In partnership with early childhood service providers and elementary school systems, the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry will expand the reach of its programming to share its hands-on, play-based approach to STEM education with targeted children and educators. The museum will create a Power of Play curriculum with lesson plans that reflect best practices and focus on play-based activities to teach STEM concepts tied to grade level and state standards. The museum will train and support 40 teachers and educators from ten Head Start/First Steps early childhood centers and ten Title I elementary schools, and provide them with free Pop Up Tinker Shop (a museum on wheels) outreach visits. The trainings will build teacher confidence, promote best practices for play-based learning, support a community of practice, and enhance young learners' engagement, fascination, and attitude towards STEM. The Power of Play Curriculum will be published as a bound resource and shared with other children's museums and service providers.
The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University will integrate unaccredited, home-based preschool care providers and the low-income families they serve into Philadelphia's initiative to increase the number of preschool education facilities and make high-quality pre-K instruction available to all children (Universal Pre-K). The project outputs include: an interdisciplinary pre-K curriculum that fosters knowledge and skill building in science, math, and literacy as well as positive social-emotional development; professional development workshops and one-on-one training with museum educators for childcare staff, followed by networking and alliance-building; and seven free Celebrate Pre-K Learning Days at the museum for families to learn about the importance of school readiness in science, math, and literacy and practice using free family learning kits that support these skills. The new citywide partnership, managed by the museum, is called Science and Literacy for Success and is supported by a robust number of partnerships with local social service and education agencies.
This video presents reflections on SCIENCES: Supporting a Community’s Informal Education Needs—Confidence and Empowerment in STEM. SCIENCES brought together Eden Place Nature Center and the Chicago Zoological Society to collaboratively support environmental conservation and lifelong scientific learning in the Fuller Park neighborhood of Chicago.
The SCIENCES project began in 2013 and focused on adapting existing educational programs into a suite of environmentally focused science learning opportunities for professional, student, and public audiences in the Fuller Park neighborhood
In The Nature of Community: SCIENCES, we share the lessons learned from an innovative partnership designed to leverage the strengths of two nonprofit organizations—a large cultural institution and a smaller, deeply-rooted community-based organization, both of which offer informal science education expertise.
You’ll read first-hand reflections of how staff members, community leaders and members, children, and adults experienced this partnership: the expectations, surprises, challenges, successes, and lessons learned. We hope the description of this partnership inspires other organizations to
The challenge to the science communication field put forward by Bruce Lewenstein, of the sector becoming a ‘ghetto’ of women's over-representation (see the commentary by Lewenstein in this issue), is a very timely wake-up call. This Commentary however, elaborates and frames the pivotal and constructivist premises on which this phenomenon should be interrogated and understood on many levels. It is critical that we undertake a deeper introspection, beyond just simplistic head counts of the number of women and men in the field, if we are to make sense of the seeming paradoxes that pervade the
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Elizabeth Rasekoala
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
There is a significant under-representation of women in STEM which is damaging societal progress for democratic, utilitarian, and equity reasons. However, changing stereotypes in STEM requires a solution denied by the problem — more visible female role models. Science communicators are critical to curate the conditions to bypass this Catch 22. We propose that enhancing self-efficacy for female scientists and engineers to mentor others will generate more supportive workplaces. Similarly, enhancing self-efficacy for public engagement improves the visibility of diverse female role models for
The employment demands in STEM fields grew twice as fast as employment in non-STEM fields in the last decade, making it a matter of national importance to educate the next generation about science, engineering and the scientific process. The need to educate students about STEM is particularly pronounced in low-income, rural communities where: i) students may perceive that STEM learning has little relevance to their lives; ii) there are little, if any, STEM-related resources and infrastructure available at their schools or in their immediate areas; and iii) STEM teachers, usually one per school, often teach out of their area expertise, and lack a network from which they can learn and with which they can share experiences. Through the proposed project, middle school teachers in low-income, rural communities will partner with Dartmouth faculty and graduate students and professional science educators at the Montshire Museum of Science to develop sustainable STEM curricular units for their schools. These crosscutting units will include a series of hands-on, investigative, active learning, and standards-aligned lessons based in part on engineering design principles that may be used annually for the betterment of student learning. Once developed and tested in a classroom setting in our four pilot schools, the units will be made available to other partner schools in NH and VT and finally to any school wishing to adopt them. In addition, A STEM rural educator network, through which crosscutting units may be disseminated and teachers may share and support each other, will be created to enhance the teachers’ ability to network, seek advice, share information, etc.
This application requests support to enable a team of experienced science educators and biomedical and behavioral health network scientists to develop and implement the Worlds of Connections curriculum. Most middle school students are familiar with patient care-related health careers (e.g., nurses, dentists, surgeons), but few know about emerging careers in network science that can be leveraged to improve population health. This innovative and research-based science program is strategically designed to increase awareness of, understanding of, and interest in the important role of network science for health. This project will design learning activities that incite interest in network science applications to biomedical and public health research. The long- term goal is to enhance the diversity of the bio-behavioral and biomedical workforce by increasing interest in network science among members of underrepresented minority communities and to promote public understanding of the benefits of NIH-funded research for public health. The goal of this application is to identify and create resources that will overcome barriers to network science uptake among underserved minority middle school youth. The central hypothesis is that the technology-rich field of network science will attract segments of today’s youth who remain uninterested in conventional, bio-centric health fields. Project activities are designed to improve understanding of how informal STEM experiences with network science in health research can increase STEM identities, STEM possible selves, and STEM career aspirations among youth from groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines at the center of health science research (Aim 1) and create emerging media resources via augmented reality technologies to stimulate broad interest in and understanding of the role of network science in biomedical and public health research (Aim 2). A team led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologists will partner with the University of Nebraska at Omaha; state museums; centers for math, science, and emerging media arts; NIH-funded network scientists; educators; community learning centers at local public schools; learning researchers; undergraduates; software professionals; artists; augmented reality professionals; storytellers; and evaluation experts to accomplish these goals and ensure out of school learning will reinforce Next Generation Science Standards. The Worlds of Connections project is expected to impact 35,250 youth and 20,570 educators in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska by: adding network science modules to ongoing 6th-8th-grade afterschool STEM clubs in community learning centers; adding network science for health resources to a summer graduate course on “activating youth STEM identities” for sixth to twelfth grade STEM teachers; connecting teachers with local network scientists; creating free, downloadable, high-quality emerging media arts-enhanced stories; and publishing peer-reviewed research on the potential of network science to attract youth to health careers. Coupled with the dissemination plan, the project design and activities will be replicable, allowing this project to serve as a model to guide other projects in STEM communication.
PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE:
The lack of public understanding about the role of network science in the basic biological and social health sciences limits career options and support for historically underrepresented groups whose diverse viewpoints and questions will be needed to solve the next generation of health problems. The Worlds of Connections project will combine network science, social science, learning research, biology, computer science, mathematics, emerging media arts, and informal science learning expertise to build a series of monitored and evaluated dissemination experiments for middle school science education in high poverty schools. Broad dissemination of the curriculum and project impacts will employ virtual reality technologies to bring new and younger publics into health-related STEM careers.
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. Informal STEM educational activities have proliferated widely in the US over the last 20 years. Additional research will further validate the long-term benefits of this mode of learning. Thus, elaborating the multitude of variables in informal learning and how those variables can be used for individual learning is yet to be defined for the circumstances of the learners. Thus, the primary objective of this work is to produce robust and detailed evidence to help shape both practice and policy for informal STEM learning in a broad array of common circumstances such as rural, urban, varying economic situations, and unique characteristics and cultures of citizen groups. Rather than pursuing a universal model of informal learning, the principal investigator will develop a series of comprehensive models that will support learning in informal environments for various demographic groups. The research will undertake a longitudinal mixed-methods approach of Out of School Time/informal STEM experiences over a five-year time span of data collection for youth ages 9-19 in urban, suburban, town, and rural communities. The evidence base will include data on youth experiences of informal STEM, factors that exert an influence on participation in informal STEM, the impact of participation on choices about educational pathways and careers, and preferences for particular types of learning activities. The quantitative data will include youth surveys, program details (e.g. duration of program, length of each program session, youth/facilitator ratio, etc.), and demographics. The qualitative data will include on-site informal interviews with youth and facilitators, and program documentation. 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.
Project SYSTEMIC (A Systems Thinking Approach to STEM Ecosystem Development in Chicago) will apply systems thinking to a community-level STEM ecosystem development effort in one of Chicago's largest and most distressed neighborhoods. The project aims to broaden participation of African American and low-income Chicago Public School students (preK-12) in STEM learning opportunities. The proposed model of collaborative change for this project builds on the work of two coordinated collective impact initiatives--the Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative and Austin Coming Together, a network of local organizations committed to improving educational and economic outcomes for the community. A key feature of this project is that it adds innovative, interactive, visual problem structuring and solving strategies to highlight and uncover the systemic interdependencies that contribute to the BP challenge for African American youth. The project will convene a series of workshops to engage community stakeholders in the mapping of the STEM ecosystem. A broad and representative cross-section of community stakeholders will design and develop evidence-based STEM ecosystem organizing and implementation strategies. Key outcomes anticipated from this project are the development of a shared understanding, agenda, activities, and commitment to collectively address the underlying challenges of STEM access and participation for African American youth. The goal of this community-driven project is to develop a viable system model that elevates neighborhood voices, historically excluded from the problem-solving table and decision-making processes, to leverage existing assets, build local capacity, increase messaging and awareness of the value of STEM, identify needed new programs, and develop coordination/resource sharing mechanisms across partners to support implementation. The evaluation of this project will be grounded in systems thinking and culturally-responsive approaches that seek to understand the diverse perspectives of stakeholders while measuring progress toward project goals. Evaluation data will be used to assess the problem structuring process, to evaluate the organizational strategy designed to address the structured problem, and to support adaptive learning among stakeholders.