This project is funded by the EHR Core Research (ECR) program, which supports work that advances fundamental research on STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. It responds to continuing concerns about racial and social inequities in STEM fields that begin to emerge in the early childhood years. The overarching goal of the project is to identify cultural strengths that support early science learning opportunities among Spanish-speaking children from immigrant Latin American communities, a population that is traditionally underrepresented in STEM educational and career pursuits. Building on a growing interest in the ways stories can promote early engagement in and understanding of science, this project will investigate the role of oral and written stories as culturally relevant and potentially powerful tools for making scientific ideas and inquiry practices meaningful and accessible for young Latinx children. Findings will reveal ways that family storytelling practices can provide accessible entry points for Latinx children's early science learning, and recommend methods that parents and educators can use to foster learning about scientific practices that can, in turn, increase interest and participation in science education and fields.
The project will advance knowledge on the socio-cultural and familial experience of Latinx children that can contribute to their early science learning and skills. The project team will examine the oral story and reading practices of 330 Latinx families with 3- to 5-year-old children recruited from three geographic locations in the United States: New York, Chicago, and San Jose. Combining interviews and observations, the project team will investigate: (1) how conversations about science and nature occur in Latinx children's daily lives, and (2) whether and to what extent narrative and expository books, family personal narratives, and adivinanzas (riddles) engender family conversations about scientific ideas and science practices. Across- and within-site comparisons will allow the project team to consider the immediate ecology and broader factors that shape Latinx families’ science-related views and practices. Although developmental science has long acknowledged that early learning is culturally situated, most research on early STEM is still informed by mainstream experiences that largely exclude the lived experiences of children from groups underrepresented in STEM, especially those who speak languages other than English. The proposed work will advance understanding of stories as cultural resources to support early science engagement and learning among Latinx children and inform the development of high quality, equitable informal and formal science educational opportunities for young children.
This award is funded in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
This project will create the specification for a learner-controlled system to represent youth learning in Out-of-School-Time (OST) settings, to improve access to future Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities. For learners to pursue a STEM education, and STEM careers, they must be able to move through "gatekeeping" mechanisms that filter and sort students based on factors such as prior coursework and grades, teacher recommendations, and language proficiency assessments. Even though abundant evidence shows that such measures fail to capture all important aspects of STEM learning, they are traditionally relied upon in secondary and post-secondary STEM education contexts as indicators of preparation for future STEM learning. These systemic processes exclude certain minoritized groups, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), low income, immigrant and refugee youth, and youth learning English, from high-quality secondary and post-secondary STEM learning experiences because existing measures do not validate their prior knowledge and experiences. Yet, minoritized youth often engage in OST STEM learning opportunities, where their readiness for future learning opportunities is nurtured and valued. One challenge is to reliably document this readiness in a usable format so youth can access new STEM learning opportunities, especially in post-secondary contexts. This project builds strategically upon earlier work focusing on the democratization of STEM learning through vehicles such as digital micro-credentials or badges, and upon digital portfolios. Missing from these earlier efforts was integration of these platforms with an infrastructure that connected youth learners to OST STEM learning organizations and to future STEM learning opportunities. This Innovations in Development project brings together minoritized youth and their families, OST providers, and admissions officials from higher education institutions to explore the needed design features for OST "transcripts," and user stories that describe how software systems can support their creation and sharing. Grounded in the concept of mastery-based learning, where learning is demonstrated via action, learners will control what is included in the transcript so that they create their own narratives about their learning experiences. Recognizing that documentation is not the key focus of most STEM OST organizations, this project will provide direct support for identifying and codifying learning goals or outcomes that learners and their families find relevant and important within different STEM activities. 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.
The project will take a Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) approach and proceed by convening representatives from three main stakeholder groups (youth and their families, OST providers, and admissions staff) to engage in a series of discovery and design activities. Project partners, including the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MA), STEAMville (IL), STUDIO (WA), and Wolverine Pathways (MI), will work together with the PIs to design templates learners can use to characterize STEM learning from each provider, aligned with different STEM learning foci (e.g., computer science, computational thinking, cross-cutting concepts, science and engineering practices, and mathematics). Data collected from these sessions will be used to address the following research questions: (1) How and why do youth and families from minoritized communities understand and choose to participate in STEM OST learning opportunities?, (2) How do youth understand and interact with STEM OST learning opportunities?, (3) How do OST providers characterize the STEM learning goals in the activities they provide?, and (4) How do college admissions personnel view the role of informal STEM learning as part of a holistic admissions process? This work has the potential to further the understanding of how OST learning can be documented and shared as a part of the larger ecosystem of STEM learning trajectories. By deeply engaging the perspectives and voices of minoritized youth and families, this project seeks to develop a valid and trustworthy instrument that recognizes and serves their STEM learning, thus broadening the participation of minoritized youth in STEM education and careers. This work will also benefit OST providers, by translating the documentation of youth STEM learning into forms that may help communicate the efficacy of their programs in ways that further their missions, including communicating evidence of effectiveness to both future participants and funders.
Families play a vital role in supporting children’s informal science learning. Yet multiple studies have shown that Latinx families, particularly in neighborhoods with a high poverty rate, face many barriers to accessing informal science experiences and environments. Telenovelas, a type of television serial drama watched by Spanish-speaking audiences around the world, may provide an entryway to reaching these families. Prior research has shown that telenovelas can be an effective means of changing adults’ behavior, with potential cascading impacts on children. Education Development Center, Literacy Partners, and Univision will use a culturally responsive approach to broaden participation of Latinx families in informal science learning using La Fuerza de Creer, a popular Spanish-language telenovela that reaches 7 million U.S. viewers. The five-episode telenovela series will model positive informal science interactions between caregivers and their children and provide positive role models of Latinx scientists. The project team will then use the telenovela as the foundation for a five-session workshop series for caregivers to further explore how to engage in these informal science learning opportunities with their children. The La Fuerza-STEM project will build on families’ strengths and interests and tap their power—la fuerza—to engage children in exploring science. This research will examine the relationship between the telenovela/workshops and caregivers’ practices and attitudes towards science. La Fuerza-STEM seeks to expand informal science learning using a culturally grounded strategy to engage an under-served population that is historically under-represented in STEM.
The project will use an iterative research and design process that is guided by the input of both parent and scientific advisory boards. Front-end formative research with approximately 30 Latinx caregivers from under-resourced communities will explore their informal science practices. These experiences will then inform script development for the telenovela. A pre-post comparison group study with 200 caregivers will investigate how caregivers’ attitudes toward science might change as a result of viewing the telenovela. The project will then build a 5-session workshop series around the telenovela and these research findings. Finally, 300 caregivers will participate in a randomized controlled trial to examine the efficacy of the La Fuerza-STEM workshops on changing caregivers’ informal science attitudes and practices. Throughout, the project will address the overarching research question, How can a culturally relevant telenovela be used to improve Latinx caregivers’ science self-efficacy, career awareness, and informal science practices? Project findings and products will be publicly disseminated through publications, conference presentations, and local partner organizations, with an eye toward open access and data sharing. The project will generate knowledge about the effectiveness of embedding informal science content in a culturally-grounded medium—the telenovela—in improving caregivers’ confidence and competence to engage in informal science learning experiences with their children. With an anticipated audience of 7 million, the potential impact of the telenovela on caregivers’ informal science attitudes and practices is enormous. By implementing workshops with local organizations, the project aims to be self-sustaining, building the capacity of community partners to provide families with services targeting informal science knowledge and skills long after the grant has ended.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joy KennedyJessica YoungAlexia RaynalAnthony Tassi
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program 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. The project aims to understand ways to empower Latinx families (adult caregivers) to feel confident in their ability to support their middle school-aged girls in science and engineering activities. The project involves seven weeks of family programming around rockets or urban farming, as well as separate conversation groups for adult family members and girls. The project is relevant for several reasons: females and Latinx individuals are both underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) coursework and careers; girls tend to lose interest in STEM by middle school age; and adult family members may have an impact on their children's attitudes and interests. The project partners with school districts and nonprofit organizations in Arizona and California.
This multidisciplinary project's priority is broadening participation, with a focus on increasing Latina girls' science and engineering interests through Family Project-Based Learning Activities, Conversation Groups, and a cultivated Community of Learners. It is based on the frameworks of Social Cognitive Career Theory and Community Cultural Wealth. The project aims to empower families (adult caregivers) to feel confident in their ability to support their daughters in science and engineering activities, which is often low especially among Latinx parents. The project will develop and evaluate two out-of-school enrichment methods for aiding families in encouraging and supporting their daughters in science: Family Problem-Based Learning Activities, which focus on rockets and urban farming, and Conversation Groups, which provide information and discussion for separate groups of parents and girls. A series of pilot studies will be conducted with 80 families to iteratively evaluate and improve the materials and procedure prior to the main study with 180 families, featuring a factorial design with a control group.
The materials developed and research findings may inform similar projects, especially those for students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and projects seeking to enhance the role of families in learning. The hypothesis guiding the project is that the greatest gains will be produced with the synergistic combination of enrichment methods. Another component that can potentially have broad impact is working to create environments where Community Cultural Wealth is recognized and enhanced through interactions of different families, creating Communities of Learners. This can inform projects that recognize the importance of community and/or that seek to use culture as an asset. The proposed study will engage three geographically distributed universities and several community partners. It will also provide university students and community leaders opportunities for work on instructional design, implementation, and research. The team will disseminate their findings and methods through multiple avenues to reach researchers, parents, leaders, curators, and educators in informal and K-12 settings.
This Research in Service to Practice 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine Short-MeyersonPeter RilleroPeter MeyersonMargarita Jimenez-SilvaChristopher Edwards