The State University of New York (SUNY) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) are collaborating to implement the SUNY/NYAS STEM Mentoring Program, a full scale development project designed to improve the science and math literacy of middle school youth. Building upon lessons learned through the implementation of national initiatives such as NSF's Graduate STEM Fellows in K-12 Education (GK-12) Program, university initiatives such as the UTeach model, and locally-run programs, this project's goals are to: 1) increase access to high quality, hands-on STEM programs in informal environments, 2) improve teaching and outreach skills of scientists in training (graduate and postdoctoral fellows), and 3) test hypotheses around scalable program elements. Together, SUNY and NYAS propose to carry out a comprehensive, systemic science education initiative to recruit graduate students and postdoctoral fellows studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at colleges and universities statewide to serve as mentors in afterschool programs. SUNY campuses will partner with a community-based organization (CBO) to place mentors in afterschool programs serving middle school students in high-need, low-resource urban and rural communities. Project deliverables include a three-credit online graduate course for mentor training, six pilot sites, a best practices guide, and a model for national dissemination. The online course will prepare graduate and postdoctoral fellows to spend 12-15 weeks in afterschool programs, introducing students to life science, earth science, mathematics and engineering using curriculum modules that are aligned with the New York State standards. The project design includes three pre-selected sites (College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering at the University of Albany, SUNY Institute of Technology, and SUNY Downstate Medical Center) and three future sites to be selected through a competitive process, each of which will be paired with a CBO to create a locally designed STEM mentoring program. As a result, a minimum of 192 mentors will provide informal STEM education to 2,880 middle school students throughout New York State. The comprehensive, mixed-methods evaluation will address the following questions: 1) Does student participation in an afterschool model of informal education lead to an increase in STEM content knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and interest in pursuing further STEM education and career pathways? 2) Do young scientists who participate in the program develop effective teaching and mentoring skills, and develop interest in teaching or mentoring career options that result in STEM retention? 3) What are the attributes of an effective STEM afterschool program and the elements of local adaptation and innovation that are necessary to achieve a successful scale-up to geographically diverse locations? 4) What is the role of the afterschool model in delivering informal STEM education? This innovative model includes a commitment to scale across the 64 SUNY campuses and 122 Councils of the Girl Scouts of the USA, use an online platform to deliver training, and place scientists-in-training in informal learning environments. It is hypothesized that as a result of greater access to STEM education in an informal setting, participating middle school youth will develop increased levels of STEM content knowledge, self-efficacy, confidence in STEM learning, and interest in STEM careers. Scientist mentors will: 1) gain an understanding of the context and characteristics of informal science education, 2) develop skills in mentoring and interpersonal communication, 3) learn and apply best practices of inquiry instruction, and 4) potentially develop interest in teaching as a viable career option. It is anticipated that the project will add to the research literature in several areas such as the effectiveness of incentives for graduate students; the design of mentor support systems; and the structure of pilot site programs in local communities. Findings and materials from this project will be disseminated through presentations at local, regional, and national conferences, publications in peer-reviewed journals focused on informal science education, and briefings sent to more than 25,000 NYAS members around the world.
Currently, many museums present histories of science and technology, but very few are integrating scientific activity--observation, measurement, experimentation-with the time- and place-specific narratives that characterize history-learning experiences. For the Prairie Science project, Conner Prairie is combining proven science center-style activities, developed by the Science Museum of Minnesota, with family-engagement strategies developed through extensive research and testing with audiences in historical settings. The goal of this integration is to create guest experiences that are rich in both STEM and historical content and encourage family learning. One key deliverable of this project is the Create.Connect gallery, which is currently installed at Conner Prairie. Create.Connect allows the project team to evaluate and research hands-on activities, facilitation strategies and historic settings to understand how these elements combine to encourage family conversations and learning around historical narratives and STEM content. For example, in one exhibit area families can experiment with creating their own efficient wind turbine designs while learning about the innovations of the Flint & Walling windmill manufacturing company from Indiana. The activity is facilitated by a historic interpreter portraying a windmill salesman from 1900. The interpreter not only guides the family though the process of scientific inquiry, but shares his historic perspective on wind power as well. Two other exhibit areas invite hands-on exploration of electrical circuits and forces in motion as they connect to stories from Indiana history. Evaluation and research findings from the Create.Connect exhibit will be used to develop a model that can guide other history institutions that want to incorporate STEM content and thinking into their exhibits and interpretation. By partnering with the Science Museum of Minnesota, we will combine the experience of science center professionals and history museum professionals to find the best practices for incorporating science activities into historic settings. To ensure that this dissemination model is informed from many perspectives, Conner Prairie has invited the participation of four history museums: The Museum of America and the Sea, Mystic, Connecticut; the California State Railroad Museum, Sacramento, California; the Wabash County Historical Society, Wabash, Indiana; and the Oliver H. Kelley Farm, Elk River, Minnesota. Each of the four participants will install history-STEM exhibit components which will be connected to location-specific historic narratives. Drawing on the staff experience and talents of participant museums, this project will develop realistic solutions to an array of anticipated barriers. These issues and the resulting approaches will become part of a stronger, more adaptable dissemination model that will support history museums in creating STEM-based guest experiences.
ISE Research: Contextualizing Science Learning and Motivation in Rural and Indigenous Adolescents through Mapping Sustainable Practices is a three-year interdisciplinary research project. Researchers from the University of New Hampshire will investigate impacts of contextualization on science learning, motivation, and positive attitudes toward science of early adolescents from rural and Indigenous populations. The project will yield research findings that can help identify contextualization as a means to engage rural and Indigenous adolescents. The project team uses a systematic approach that incorporates mixed methods of data collection and analysis to learn more about how culture and community (contextualization) impact STEM learning. They hypothesize that contextualizing science learning to culture and community will enhance rural majority and Indigenous early adolescents' science knowledge and positively strengthen motivation and attitudes toward science. Local community and Indigenous group members provide expertise that contributes to the design of the research and the related curriculum as well as the interpretation of the findings. This project will contribute to what we know about how underserved and underrepresented youth engage in STEM learning in relation to their world views. This work will help advance the informal science education field in terms of providing rigorous evidence that can inform theory on learning and motivation among disadvantaged STEM learners as well as address practical issues around the design of STEM programs for rural and Indigenous groups.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Eleanor AbramsThomas KellyLisa TownsonRuth VarnerMichael Middleton
Water for Life (WfL) is a full scale development youth and community based program; centered on freshwater literacy, water conservation and rainwater harvesting led by the Pacific Resources for Education Learning (PREL) in Hawaii. The goals of the project are to: (a) promote an understanding of water conservation and stewardship in areas lacking adequate quality water supplies and (b) build local capacity among rural communities to develop and employ site specific freshwater harvesting strategies proven to improve water quality. Rural communities within four Pacific Island entities in the U.S. affiliated Freely Associated States (FAS) will participate in WfL activities. PREL is collaborating with a host of organizations (such as the Federated States of Micronesia National Department of Education, Marshall Islands Conservation Society, and the Micronesian Conservation Trust, etc.) to develop and implement all phases of the initiative. This work is already improving the quality of life for hundreds of people in the FAS through water conversation education and improved water quality in local areas. Working closely with site-embedded PREL staff, Core Teams at each site - consisting of 4-6 local leaders from environmental agencies, water/sanitation systems, and education institutions - participated in a 5-day professional learning immersion in May, 2013, to buld capacities to develop and facilitate water conservation and catchment activities at the four target sites in the FAS. The Core Team members at each site now are recruiting and collaborating with local community members to implement site-specific projects that both educate and provide enhanced access to high quality drinking water. Both adults and youth are now engaging in a spectrum of proejcts that address loca needs and priorities through site-specific service learning activities. The site-specific focus in each locale, determined by the local Core Team, is distinct. In Palau, the Core Team has built broader community awareness of water conservation issues, raised the issue of water security in national conversations, engaged remote communities in improving natural rainwater drainage collection systems, and produced youth-oriented educational materials focused on local sites. In Yap, the Core Team members have collaborated with public utilities to install first-flush diverters into community rainwater catchment systems on Yap proper, and now are installing these devices in rainwater catchment systems on Yap's neighbor islands. In Chuuk, groundwater springs in remote communities are being upgraded for improved storage capacity, protection against contamination, and better public access. In Majuro (RMI), public school rainwater catchment systems are being repaired, repainted, cleaned, and upgraded so that schools can and will provide adequate drinking water to students (and to broader segments of the community during droughts). Broad segments of communities, including school classes and clubs, church and civic groups, etc. are becoming increasingly involved in building better water security and resilience for their communities, in preparation for a predicted drought, predicted to hit in the winter of 2014-2015, brought on by an El Nino event now edevelopig in the eastern Pacific. Water for Life has produced a range of locally relevant educational materials, including books, pamphlets, flyers, etc., some in English and others in local languages. Posters and billboards are being produced to enhance and maintain public awareness. Infrastructure projects are enabling better collection of more, higher quality water for drinking. A full-scale water handbook is under development, and this will serve as a basis for a self-contained water 'course' that will be offered through local community colleges. The experiences of project participants are being captured, analyzed, and reported in front-end, formative, and sumative evaluations conducted by David Heil & Associates. Thousands of individuals, comprising large segments of the participating countries' populations, will be directly impacted by the project. The results will be applicable to other remote and rural communities outside of the Pacific distressed by poor water quality and ineffective freshwater harvesting systems.
This CRPA award addresses the exciting contemporary chemical science that occurs in interstellar space. The new interferometers coming online this year will enhance this new area of science and further intrigue those who engage. The plan in this award is to build an exhibit that will interest the audience with the space-based aspects, but will also engage them in understanding the chemistry that occurs in space. This is a collaborative effort between the University of Virginia and the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The exhibit is relatively small facilitating its mobility. Thus, the authors will travel the exhibit to smaller venues in rural areas and embrace citizens who are typically under-served by educational opportunities of ISE venues. The target audience is 12-15 year old youths. Clearly, this project is meant to engage the public in both Space science and Chemistry with the ultimate hope that some individuals will even think about careers in the joint science field that is emerging from these types of behaviors.
This project is intended to develop a model for STEM education through local libraries. There are several unique features in this endeavor. The model is being aimed at rural libraries and adult residents that are geographically remote from typical venues such as museums, zoos, and science centers. According to the 2000 census, there are 50 million individuals in this designation and the size of the group is increasing and becoming more diverse. Efforts to impact diverse audiences who are economically disadvantaged will be part of the plan. In many rural locations there are few community venues, but libraries are often present. The American Library Association and the Association Rural and Small Libraries have begun the reinvention of these libraries so they can become more attuned to the communities in which they are apart. Thus, this project is an effort to find new ways of communicating STEM concepts to a reasonably large underserved group. The design is to derive a "unit of knowledge enhancement" (some portion of Climate Change, for example) through a hybrid combination of book-club and scientific cafe further augmented with videos and web materials. Another part of the design is to enhance the base STEM knowledge of library staff and to associate the knowledge unit with an individual who has the specific STEM topic knowledge for a specific unit. Considerable effort shall be expended in developing the models for staff knowledge enhancement with a progressive number of librarians in training from 8 to 20 to 135. To build the content library model, five units of knowledge will be devised and circulated to participating libraries. Evaluation of the project includes front end, formative and summative by the Goodman Research Group. In addition to the "units of knowledge enhancement," the major results will be the model on how best to relate and educate citizens in rural environments and how to educate the library staff.
Our Instrumented Earth: Understanding Global Systems and Local Impacts through the El Nino Story centers on a new production displayed on Science on a Sphere® (SOS), and informal educational program elements to engage learners in the power and purpose of NASA data-gathering tools. Audiences include over two million visitors to partner institutions, serving both urban and rural constituencies that rank among the most diverse in the nation. The Aquarium has partnered with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) and NASA Goddard Space Center to implement elements of the program, as well as NASA scientists and experts to develop content. There are two main project goals for Our Instrumented Earth: to create a NASA-informed public by creating an SOS production which highlights space technologies and other instruments monitoring Earth; and to enhance the STEM capacity of underserved teachers, parents, and students through teacher professional development and outreach events. Major project deliverables for Our Instrumented Earth include: a brand new SOS film production, an adapted program for the Magic Planet spherical display platform to serve rural communities, professional development workshop for formal teachers, and NASA Night outreach events at the Aquarium.
Mission to Mars engages 6th-8th grade students in the science, engineering and careers related to Mars exploration. The program is led by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and includes as partners Challenger Learning Centers in Woodstock, IL, Normal IL and three NASA Centers (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Marshall Space Flight Center, and Johnson Space Center). The project aims to:
Link, via videoconference, urban and rural middle school students from low income communities in an exploration of space science
Develop and launch programs that showcase NASA Center research
Enrich middle school curricula and promote learning about NASA’s space missions with experiences that inspire youth to pursue in NASA-related STEM careers.
Programs and products produced include:
3 videoconference program scenarios that highlight research being conducted at NASA Centers
Pre- and post-event curriculum materials designed for middle school classrooms
Teacher professional development workshops
Communication support for NASA professionals
iPad apps utilized during the program
Since the program launched five years ago, Mission to Mars has served 7,676 students. MSI seeks to provide opportunities for all learners, and works to remove barriers to participation in high-quality science learning experiences. Mission to Mars allows MSI to engage more Chicago Public Schools (where 86% of students are economically disadvantaged) in real and relevant science experiences that may lead to STEM careers.
As MSI’s CP4SMP grant comes to an end, the Museum has committed to continued delivery of the program through 2 Mission to Mars Learning Labs, offered to 6-8th grade school groups visiting on field trips. Live videoconferencing with JPL and Johnson will occur during roughly half of the sessions. Our Challenger Learning Center partners will integrate Mission to Mars activities, materials and iPad apps into their own Mars-themed programs. Together these efforts extend the transformative hands-on science experiences developed under the Mission to Mars grant to a whole new audience of middle school students and teachers.
This Pathways Project connects rural, underserved youth and families in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho to STEM concepts important in sustainable building design. The project is a collaboration of the Palouse Discovery Science Center (Pullman, WA), Washington State University and University of Idaho, working in partnership with rural community organizations and businesses. The deliverables include: 1) interactive exhibit prototype activities, 2) a team cooperative learning problem-solving challenge, and (3) take-home materials to encourage participants to use what they have learned to investigate ways to make their homes more energy-efficient and sustainable. The project introduces youth and families to the traditionally difficult physics concept of thermal energy, particularly as it relates to sustainable building design. Participants explore how building materials and their properties can be used to control all three types of heat transfer: conduction, convection, and radiation. The interactive exhibit prototypes are coupled with an Energy Efficient Engineering Challenge in which participants, working in cooperative learning teams, use information learned from the exhibit prototype activities to retrofit a model house, improving its energy efficiency. The project components are piloted at the Palouse Discovery Science Center, and then travel to three underserved rural/tribal communities in Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. Front-end and formative evaluation studies will demonstrate whether this model advances participant understanding of and interest in STEM topics and careers. The project will yield information about ways that other ISE practitioners can effectively incorporate cooperative learning strategies in informal settings to improve the transferability of knowledge gained from exhibits to real-world problem-solving challenges, especially for rural and underserved audiences. This project will also provide the ISE field with: 1) a model for increasing the capacity of small, rural science centers to form collaborative regional networks that draw on previously unused resources in their communities and provide more effective outreach to the underrepresented populations they serve, and 2) a model for coupling cooperative learning with outreach exhibits, providing richer experiences of active engagement.
The Herpetology Education in Rural Places & Spaces (HERPS) project is a four-year full-scale development project designed to engage diverse North Carolina residents from the Central Piedmont, Eastern Piedmont, and Inner Coastal Plain regions of the state in conservation and field experiences focused on herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians. The project targets rural underrepresented groups in STEM; predominately African-Americans, Hispanics, and Lumbee Native Americans. The University of North Carolina-Greensboro and its partner organizations, Elon University and University of North Carolina-Pembroke, will partner to develop and implement all phases of the project. Ultimately, the project aims to increase knowledge of and interest in herpetology and related conservation issues, provide authentic research experiences, and better understand identity-related motivations and affordances of the casual, regular, and enthusiastic participant across project strands. HERPS builds on four pilot studies and will engage people of all ages in a broad range of herpetological activities including: (a) an annual herpetology-focused community event (HERPS Celebrations), (b) technology resources such as a project website and customized mobile applications (HERPS Cyberhub), (c) summer and year-long herpetological research experiences (HREs) for high school students and teachers, and (d) in-depth longitudinal herpetological study opportunities (e.g., box turtle study). In addition, there is separate but integrated research stand that will focus on identity and HERPS experiences, as settings for informal science learning. The identity research will study: (a) identity-related motivations and (b) identity-related affordances of casual, regular and enthusiastic participants across threads. In addition, an extensive formative and summative evaluation will be conducted using a mixed methods approach by an external evaluator. Using a multiple-entry-points approach for learning and engagement, this project could serve as a replicable model for similar efforts in other settings. In addition, the results of the identity reseach strand could fill a critical gap in the identity and informal science education research bases. With an average estimated reach of nearly 15,000 people of all ages and diverse backgrounds, the potential broader impacts of this project could be extensive.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Catherine MatthewsAndy AshTerry TomasekAnn SomersHeidi Carlone
The purpose of this three-year collaborative design research project is to examine the role of culture in the development of knowledge and reasoning about the natural world and the subsequent sense-making of and participation in natural resource management. The PIs propose to examine the ways in which culture impacts observational habits, explanation constructing, uses and forms of evidence, and orientations towards socio-scientific challenges such as natural resource management. Collaborating on this project are researchers from the American Indian Center of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. The audience for this study includes the academic informal science education community and indigenous science educators. This project also offers extensive cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary research opportunities for pre- and post-doctoral research trainees. The project will employ a mixed methods approach and proposes evaluation through an advisory board and community input. A community assessment team is proposed to review activities, obtain feedback from the larger community, and identify challenges to the effective implementation of the program. The project is comprised of two main panels of studies: the first consisting of a series of investigations of learning in everyday activities and the second consisting of two community design experiments that engage two Native American communities and two non-Native communities, one rural and one urban for both communities, in a culturally based citizen science (CBCS) project focused on ecosystem disruption (e.g. invasive species; climate change) and natural resource management. The CBCS project will engage participants in question formation, data collection, data analysis, forming policy recommendations, and citizen action around the findings. This project will develop a citizen science model that effectively engages diverse communities towards productive science learning, helpful scientific data collection, and citizen engagement in community planning and local policy decisions. The researchers believe that fundamental advances in STEM teaching and learning are needed across the broad landscape of learning environments and that the success of such advances may pivot on innovations and discoveries made in informal environments. Insights obtained from prior research on learning in indigenous cultures, especially in biological and environmental sciences, combined with the anticipated results from this study could lead to a deeper understanding of cross-cultural similarities and differences in science learning.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen WashinawatokMegan BangDouglas MedinUniversity of Washington