This research extends the investigator's prior NSF supported work to develop theoretical and empirical understanding of the double bind faced by women of color in STEM fields. That is, their race and gender present dual dilemmas as they move through STEM educational and career paths. The proposed study will identify gaps in our understanding, and identify some of the methodological problems associated with answering outstanding questions about the double bind. The major research question is: What strategies work to enable women of color to achieve higher levels of advancement in STEM academia and professions? The goal is to bring a clearer understanding of the issues which confront women of color as they pursue study of science and engineering, and what factors influence whether they leave or remain in STEM.
The work will employ a highly structured narrative analysis process to identify and quantify factors that have been successful in broadening the participation of minority women in STEM. The research design involves two separate tracks of work: 1) to conduct narrative analysis of primary documents associated with women of color in science; and 2) to conduct site visits and interviews to understand features of programs associated with successful support of women of color in undergraduate and graduate education. The first part is designed to inform the second, with the narrative analysis helping to identify features to look for in site visits and to use in development of interview protocols.
This research will focus on individual and programmatic factors that sustain women of color as they confront barriers to their career goals. It examines institutional strategies and support structures that help women of color ultimately to succeed, and social and pedagogic elements that influence their educational experiences. Although women of color have made some progress over the last three decades towards more equitable participation in STEM fields, the major efforts made to address this issue have not produced the desired outcomes; minority women continue to be underrepresented relative to white women and non-minority men. The factors that account for continued lower participation rates are not yet fully understood.
Beyond the Double Bind is designed to transform the intellectual basis for building future programs that will better enable women of color to be successful in STEM. While focused on women of color, the results will ultimately inform strategies and programs to expand the presence of all women and minorities in STEM.
Our study utilizes data from a national cohort of eighth-grade students to consider how different gender and racial/ethnic subgroups compare to White males in their likelihood to aspire toward a science or math occupation and examine the roles that self-concept, enjoyment, and achievement may play in shaping disparities at this early point in occupational trajectories. We find that the importance of enjoyment, self-concept, and achievement in explaining disparities in science career aspirations relative to White males varies according to the female subgroup considered, such that no singular
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Catherine Riegle-CrumbChelsea MooreAida Ramos-Wada
Queens Central Library contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct an evaluation of the newly completed Children's Library and Discovery Center (CLDC), partially funded by the National Science Foundation. In addition to traditional children's library resources, the CLDC includes interactive science exhibits, programming space, and an early childhood area. The evaluation sought to understand 1) how its family customers use the new CLDC (and its exhibits) and what they most value about it, and 2) experiences of CLDC staff who interact with the customers. How did we approach this
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Queens Central Library
Summary of Findings Summative Evaluation Cielo y Tierra Noticias del Mundo Robert L. Russell, Ph.D. Learning Experience Design October 2011 Learning Experience Design conducted summative evaluation of the project entitled: Cielo y Tierra Noticias del Mundo (Sky & Earth News of the World). A series of three evaluation sessions were conducted with radio listeners to look at the impacts of the programs on their interest in the topics presented, their understanding of the content presented, and their motivation to take further action. The first two studies used focus group sessions. The third and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert RussellEarthSky Communications, Inc.Malu Jimenez
The goal of this project is to extend the impact of the nationally broadcast weekly radio program, Science Friday to a new, young audience through the various new cyber-space platforms and interactive tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and Second Life as well as new emerging social networking tools. The STEM content over the course of the two year project will include a wide variety of topics in all disciplines. The relationship between art and science will also be a focus. The NPR radio broadcasts currently reach 1.3 million listeners every week, and that audience is expected to increase. In addition to that audience, this project will target a new audience of adults under the age of 35 using various cyber platforms and new social networking tools such as Second Life, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Audiences will also be reached through remote broadcasts from science centers and art centers around the country. Over 30 science centers will use this project's web content on their own web sites, reaching their audiences as well. The web content will be translated into Spanish and widely disseminated to Hispanic audiences. Each Friday afternoon, Ira Flatow, the PI will produce and host the nationally broadcast Science Friday radio program interviewing scientists and engineers in a lively engaging format. In addition, the Science Friday digital media team will be producing and inviting others to create and post digital content and commentary on the Science Friday web site for further dissemination through Second Life, Facebook, as well as other emerging networking platforms. The evaluation will use a quasi-experimental design to study the appeal of both the radio broadcasts and the cyber-platforms with both older and younger audiences. Proposed audience impacts include increased STEM knowledge, interest, and behaviors. Partner organizations include the Self Reliance Foundation, the New York Hall of Science, LA Theatreworks, and Tribeca Film Festival.
This article describes how science centers and museums can better engage ethnic-specific communities that, overall, historically do not visit these institutions. Cecilia Garibay, principal of the Garibay Group, summarizes her research in this area, specifically focusing on Latino families in the United States and shares several key values that influence Latino parents' leisure choices. Examples of how leading institutions have used these findings are included and highlight ways museums can use research to better engage diverse communities.
'TV411 What's Cooking?' provides adults with low levels of literacy and numeracy with access to a free multi-media resource which delivers mathematics and science content in the form of an online cooking show. This series builds on a prior NSF planning grant (DRL 07-75623) and the research-based design of the TV411 educational materials while addressing biochemical, physical, and mathematical processes that occur in cooking and daily life. The project will be managed by the Education Development Center's Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA) project, in partnership with the Public Internet Channel, a New York-based Head Start Program, and formal education partners. The project's goals are to raise awareness of math and science content in daily life, overcome negative attitudes and behaviors related to science learning, and increase knowledge, vocabulary, and skills related to science and math while building capacity to use informal science education resources. Additional goals are to increase the capacity level of adult educators and informal workshop facilitators to teach basic math and science concepts. Finally, the project is designed to research strategies in which low-literacy adult learners utilize informal math and science resources in a Web 2.0 environment. Deliverables include six video segments that embed basic literacy and numeracy concepts in a cooking show format, 12 interactive web activities including games and simulations, and a reconstructed TV411 Online website with Web 2.0 features. In year 2, Spanish language videos and web lessons, customized toolkits for The Public Internet Channel, workshop materials for parents, and articles and reports for dissemination to education and informal learning networks nationwide are produced. The videos will be distributed on TV411 Online and the Public Internet Channel (pic.tv). The mixed-methods evaluation addresses four impact categories (awareness, engagement, attitudes, and behavior). An embedded evaluation approach will be used to determine knowledge gains, while behavioral and attitudinal questions will be asked separately in two web surveys given to random sample of 500 website visitors. Interviews are used to determine teacher perceptions of usability and effectiveness of materials. 'TV411 What's Cooking?' is projected to attract 1.5 million website visitors in the first year and an additional 500,000 each subsequent year. This well-researched project advances adult literacy and numeracy, while providing students participating in GED, adult basic education, and informal community-based programs with engaging STEM content.
This Communicating Research to Public Audiences (NSF 03-509) project is based on the PI's current NSF award: SBE-0545361- ADVANCE: Determining national science faculty demographics in order to empower women and guide solutions. This project will help address the need for underrepresented female faculty as role models and mentors in science and engineering. Although the number of female under-represented minority students (URM) in college has been increasing, there are astonishingly low numbers of female URM faculty in each science discipline. This project would produce a series of female URM faculty biographical videos to substitute for the lack of personal contact young women have with these role models. The videos would be widely disseminated through schools, colleges, and minority serving organizations to reach young women.
To address a lack of informal science education opportunities and to increase community capacity to support STEM education for their children, Washington State University's Yakima Valley/Tri Cities MESA program, the Pacific Science Center, and KDNA Educational Radio have developed a set of informal science initiatives that offer complementary learning opportunities for rural Latino families. The goal of this four-year program is to create a sustainable informal science infrastructure in southeastern Washington State to serve families, increase parental awareness, support and involvement in science education and ultimately increase the numbers of rural Latino youth pursuing STEM-related under graduate studies. This program is presented in English and Spanish languages in all of its interconnected deliverables: Two mobile exhibits, beginning with one focused on agricultural and environmental science developed by The Pacific Science (PCS) Center; Curriculum and training in agriculture, life sciences and facilitating learning; Curriculum and training for community members to provide support to parents in encouraging the academic aspirations of their children developed by PSC and MESA; 420 Youth and parents from the MESA program trained to interpret exhibits and run workshops, community festivals, family science workshops and Saturday programs throughout the community; Four annual community festivals, quarterly Family Saturday events, and Family Science Workshops reaching 20,000 people over the four-year project; Take home activities, science assemblies, a website and CDs with music and science programming for community events; A large media initiative including monthly one hour call-in radio programs featuring science experts, teachers, professionals, students and parents, 60-second messages promoting science concepts and resources and a publicity campaign in print, radio and TV to promote community festivals. These venues reach 12,500-25,000 people each; A program manual that includes training, curriculum and collaborative strategies used by the project team. Overall Accesso la Ciencia connects parents and children through fun community activities to Pasco School District's current LASER science education reform effort. This project complements the school districts effort by providing a strong community support initiative in informal science education. Each activity done in the community combines topics of interest to rural Latinos (agriculture for instance) to concepts being taught in the schools, while also providing tools and support to parents that increases their awareness of opportunities for their children in STEM education.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
James PrattD. Janae' LandisDonald LynchMichael Trevisan
This project reached the underserved Hispanic audience with 200 ninety-second Earth and Sky programs in Spanish for broadcast on commercial and public radio stations, and longer programs (8-15 min.) with interviews with Hispanic scientists, teachers and writers who serve as role models for Hispanic young people. Programs were on the cieloytierra.org web site ith Spanish language science blogs, daily sky charts and links to other relevant Spanish and scientific web sites. Project partners included The Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists and the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.
Having developed the concept of near-peer mentorship at the middle school/high school level and utilized it in a summer science education enhancement program now called Gains in the Education of Mathematics and Science or GEMS at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR), it is now our goal to ultimately expand this program into an extensive, research institute-based source of young, specially selected, near-peer mentors armed with kits, tools, teacher-student developed curricula, enthusiasm, time and talent for science teaching in the urban District of Columbia Public Schools (specific schools) and several more rural disadvantaged schools (Frederick and Howard Counties) in science teaching. We describe this program as a new in-school component, involving science clubs and lunch programs, patterned after our valuable summer science training modules and mentorship program. Our in-house program is at its maximum capacity at the Institute. Near-peer mentors will work in WRAIR's individual laboratories while perfecting/adapting hands-on activities for the new GEMS-X program to be carried out at McKinley Technology HS, Marian Koshland Museum, Roots Charter School and Lincoln Junior HS in DC, West Frederick Middle School, Frederick, MD and Folly Quarter Middle School and Glenelg HS, in Howard County, MD. Based on local demographics in these urban/rural areas, minority and disadvantaged youth, men and women, may choose science, mathematics, engineering and technology (SMET) careers with increasing frequency after participating, at such an early age, in specific learning in the quantitative disciplines. Many of these students take challenging courses within their schools, vastly improve their standardized test scores, take on internship opportunities, are provided recommendations from scientists and medical staff and ultimately are able to enter health professions that were previously unattainable. Relevance to Public Health: The Gains in the Education of Mathematis and Science (GEMS) program educates a diverse student population to benefit their science education and ultimately may improve the likelihood of successfully entry into a health or health-related professions for participating individuals. Medical education has been show to improve public health.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Debra YourickMarti Jett
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Based on nearly two decades of museum programming for low-income Hispanic and African American girls at the Miami Science Museum, this extension service project employs a train-the-trainers approach to build a network of museum-based Extension Agents dedicated to helping informal science educators attract the interest and support the persistence of minority girls, grades 6-12, currently underrepresented in STEM studies. Led by the Miami Science Museum, the collaboration brings together an experienced group of institutions with representation from the informal science, gender research, and engineering communities. In addition to the Museum, the Expert Project Team consists of key staff from the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC), and SECME Inc. (formerly the Southeastern Consortium of Minorities in Engineering), who serve as the conduit for the participation of minority engineering professional organizations. An advisory/research panel of researchers in gender in STEM, whose work complements those of the project investigators, works closely with the Expert Project Team to prepare Extension Agents from ten geographically dispersed museums, who in turn provide a range of training and peer mentoring services to the practitioner community of informal science educators in science-rich institutions nationwide. Participating museums include: Connecticut Science Center (Hartford, CT), New York Hall of Science (New York, NY), Maryland Science Center (Baltimore, MD), Miami Science Museum (Miami, FL), COSI (Columbus, OH), St. Louis Science Center (St. Louis, MO), Louisville Science Center (Louisville, KY), Sci-Port (Shreveport, LA), Explora (Albuquerque, NM), and California Academy of Sciences (San Francisco, CA).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Judy BrownLaura Huerta MigasMichele Williams