We explored a long-standing community science partnership between the Science Museum of Virginia and Groundwork RVA, a local organization that connects youth with opportunities to enhance greenspaces in Richmond.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
Project Harvest is a co-created citizen science project that investigates the quality of household environments in Arizona communities neighboring active or legacy mining and/or toxic release. Project Harvest is a response to the community-driven questions, “Are there pollutants in harvested rainwater? Can I use the harvested rainwater for my garden?"
The Yellowstone Altai-Sayan Project (YASP) brings together student and professional researchers with Indigenous communities in domestic (intermountain western U.S.) and international (northwest Mongolian) settings. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, MSU and tribal college student participants performed research projects in their home communities (including Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux, and Fort Berthold Mandan, Hidatsa and Sahnish) during spring semester 2016. In the spirit of reciprocity, these projects were then offered in comparative research contexts during summer 2016, working with Indigenous researchers and herder (semi-nomadic) communities in the Darhad Valley of northwestern Mongolia, where our partner organization, BioRegions International, has worked since 1998. In both places, Indigenous Research Methodologies and a complementary approach called Holistic Management guided how and what research was performed, and were in turn enriched by Mongolian research methodologies. Ongoing conversations with community members inspire the research questions, methods of data collection, as well as how and what is disseminated, and to whom. The Project represents an ongoing relationship with and between Indigenous communities in two comparable bioregions*: the Big Sky of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and the Eternal Blue Sky of Northern Mongolia.
*A ‘bioregion’ encompasses landscapes, natural processes and human elements as equal parts of the whole (see http://bioregions.org/).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristin RuppelClifford MontagneLisa Lone Fight
A frequently missing element in environmental education programs is a concerted effort by communities, organizations, government, and academic stakeholders to build meaningful partnerships and cultivate informal science learning opportunities via public participation in environmental research. This collaborative approach not only makes scientific information more readily available, it also engages community members in the processes of scientific inquiry, synthesis, data interpretation, and the translation of results into action. This project will build a co-created citizen science program coupled with a peer education model and an extensive communication of results to increase environmental STEM literacy. The project targets historically underrepresented populations that are likely to be disproportionately impacted by climate, water scarcity, and food security. Based upon past needs assessments in the targeted communities, gardens irrigated by harvested rainwater will become hubs for environmental STEM education and research. For this project, gardens irrigated by harvested rainwater will serve as hubs for environmental literacy education efforts. Researchers from the University of Arizona and Sonora Environmental Research Institute will work alongside community environmental health workers, who will then train families residing in environmentally compromised areas (urban and rural) on how to monitor their soil, plant, and harvested water quality. The project aims to: (1) co-produce environmental monitoring, exposure, and risk data in a form that will be directly relevant to the participants' lives, (2) increase the community's involvement in environmental decision-making, and (3) improve environmental STEM literacy and learning in underserved rural and urban communities. The project will investigate and gather extensive quantitative and quantitative data to understand how: (1) participation in a co-created citizen science project enhances a participant's overall environmental STEM literacy; (2) a peer-education model coupled with a co-created citizen science program affects participation of historically underrepresented groups in citizen science; and (3) the environmental monitoring approach influences the participant's environmental health learning outcomes and understanding of the scientific method. In parallel, this project will evaluate the role of local-based knowledge mediators and different mechanisms to communicate results. These findings will advance the fields of informal science education, environmental science, and risk communication. Concomitantly, the project will facilitate the co-generation of a robust dataset that will not only inform guidelines and recommendations for harvested rainwater use, it will build capacity in underserved communities and inform the safe and sustainable production of food sources. This research effort is especially critical for populations in arid and semiarid environments, which account for ~40% of the global land area and are inhabited by one-third of the world's population. This program will be available in English and Spanish and can truly democratize environmental STEM research and policy. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understandings of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
This is a collaborative research project between Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, USA and Gorno-Altaisk State University (GASU), Altai Republic, Russian Federation. In this NSF International Research Experiences for Students project MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic and work with faculty and students at Gorno-Altaisk University to conduct research related to native language use in learning ecological sciences in informal settings. Student researchers will conduct individual studies related to the project theme of science learning in ecological contexts. This project will help students learn how to conduct educational research related to the ecological learning experiences of indigenous youth (ages12-16) and the use and influence of native language in learning about environment. This research directly addresses the results of our prior NSF supported work that identified shared issues of indigenous people, natural resources and the decline of native language use among underserved populations in the Altai and Yellowstone systems. This project contributes significantly to our emerging understanding of science learning in informal settings. It addresses a unique conception of ecological learning in three dimensions; personal, community and cultural perspectives. Research and education objectives align with modern conceptualizations of informal science learning as proposed by the National Academies of Science (2009). The MSU-GASU collaboration provides a holistic view of science learning and will unite diverse intellectual resources and research efforts in unique ecological and social systems. Both the Yellowstone and Altai mountain systems are of global concern as part of worldwide natural and cultural resources impacted by pervasive development, recreation and tourism activities and climate change. The underlying theoretical foundation for learning proposed in this research project is the basis for effective approaches to enable isolated rural populations to contribute traditional knowledge and wisdom to contemporary issues related to world-wide ecological and cultural issues including global climate change. Aspects of sustainability practices that are embedded in the knowledge and social processes of both marginalized and dominant societies will be better understood and taken into consideration for future research and education activities. Research outcomes will contribute to more effective informal, place-based and experiential science learning to help empower communities and decision makers in meeting challenges of sustainability. Inevitably, we expect this work to extend our understanding of science learning related to critical natural and cultural resources and their management. An understanding of how, why and where learning takes place will help extend the US and international research and education agendas related to informal science learning, natural and cultural resource management and sustainability.
Non-technical part.
This is a collaborative research project between Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, USA and Gorno-Altaisk State University (GASU), Altai Republic, Russian Federation. In this NSF International Research Experiences for Students project MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic and work with faculty and students at Gorno-Altaisk University to conduct research related to native language use in learning ecological sciences in informal settings. Student researchers will conduct individual studies related to the project theme of science learning in ecological contexts. This project we will help students learn how to conduct educational research related to the ecological learning experiences of indigenous youth (ages12-16) and the use and influence of native language in learning about environment. Three cohorts of five MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic for eight weeks in the summers of 2013, 2014 & 2015. MSU students will comprise a research team with GASU science, education and language faculty to conduct research in the city of Gorno-Altaisk, two medium size villages such as Onguday and two small villages such as Karakol. We expect to work with youth in each setting and interview a representative sample at each site. As a research team we expect to gain a better understanding of how indigenous youth use native Altai language in informal settings to learn about environment. We expect to compare sights within the study. As part of our larger research interests in ecological learning and native people, we will conduct a similar comparative study in the Yellowstone Ecosystem with Native American youth. The studies associated with this project will add to our understanding about the extent and nature of native language use to learn science in underserved populations in very sensitive and unique ecological and cultural settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael BrodyClifford MontagneArthur BangertChristine StantonShane Doyle
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen WashinawatokMegan BangDouglas MedinUniversity of Washington