Public outdoor spaces present opportunities for social experiences and learning. This Broader Implementation project will expand and evaluate a model that transforms urban public spaces into accessible and engaging environments for learning social science in outdoor public spaces. The model combines social science inquiry exhibits, place making and human facilitation of learning experiences in outdoor public areas. Project exhibits use the facilitated social interactions as both the content of and medium for the experiences. This project will adapt the existing exhibits and add new exhibits and facilitation techniques for testing in three different urban environments. Project research will explore the efficacy of these adaptations and revised facilitation techniques for the different settings in collaboration with civic partners at each site. The project will share the model and research findings widely through the Exploratorium website and publications for researchers, developers, and educators.
The team’s prior research showed that facilitators improved multiple learning outcomes with the current exhibits. Visitors acquired new social observation skills, reflected on their own experiences, perceptions, and actions, and increased their awareness for how social behavior, cognition, and emotion can be studied scientifically. Building on the prior research, the project will install the exhibition and test its efficacy in three different urban environments and explore the adaptations that are required for different settings with different civic partners. The project will use design-based research to develop a new theoretical model of facilitation strategies for supporting science learning in outdoor public spaces. For evaluation, the project will use mixed methods, including observations, interviews, surveys, and document review. Evaluation will assess success in attracting and engaging visitors; conveying social science concepts; prompting self-reflection of judgments and actions; and fostering empathy among those with different social identities. The project will assess the extent to which participants, particularly those from marginalized communities, experience feelings of belonging and inclusion. The project will be presented in three sites which represent the significant diversity, income levels, and urban environments of San Francisco. Facilitation strategies are being co-developed with Urban Alchemy, an organization that works within distressed urban communities in San Francisco. Project site partners and collaborators include the San Francisco Public Library, the Port of San Francisco, and the San Francisco Department of Parks and Recreation. The project will also measure partnership outcomes, through surveys and interviews, to look at the extent and ways the project integrates a co-creation model and develops an authentic, mutually beneficial, sustainable partnership. The project will generate and disseminate generalizable knowledge about the affordances of combining informal science learning, placemaking, and facilitation in a variety of free, outdoor STEM learning spaces in collaboration with local community groups. The project will also advance public understanding of the social and behavioral sciences.
This research project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and sssessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
A long history of research suggests that early informal STEM learning experiences such as block play, puzzles, visiting zoos and science museums can build a strong foundation for STEM learning and which leads to later STEM success. Yet, children from low-income and historically underserved communities have less access to these opportunities due to scarce resources and barriers to access such as transportation and cost. To address these challenges, this project will endeavor to infuse public urban spaces such as local parks, bus-stops, and grocery stores with playful and engaging informal STEM learning opportunities in low-income Latinx neighborhoods as a strategy for understanding how public spaces, when co-designed with community partners and informed by the science of learning, can foster rich, informal STEM learning experiences for young children in neighborhood places where families naturally spend time. 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. 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.
Using techniques of Community-Based, Participatory Design Research, researchers will collaborate closely with community families and partners in Santa Ana, California to achieve three aims: 1) Co-design a series of outdoor Playful Learning Landscape (PLL) exhibit installations with community partners that reflect the goals, values, and cultural capital of the Latino community. 2) Explore how caregivers and their children experience PLL exhibit installations and examine the development and changes in: a) caregiver-child STEM conversation and interactions, and b) caregiver attitudes about the importance of informal STEM learning and their beliefs about their role in facilitating STEM learning. 3) Leverage existing data from county partners to examine the potential effects of having multiple PLL installations within a specific neighborhood on promoting STEM learning and development across an array of cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes in early-childhood. This project will advance current knowledge on informal STEM learning by demonstrating new ways to understand the cultural assets that Latinx families bring to learning contexts, showing how the unique assets and needs of a local community can be incorporated into public infrastructure, and documenting the STEM-related learning experiences and interactions that occur in these settings. Due to a partnership with the Orange County Children and Families Commission, which collects data on child learning and development on every child in the county, researchers will examine the longitudinal impacts of a cluster of playful STEM-learning exhibit installations in a single neighborhood on children's developmental outcomes compared to matched neighborhoods without access to these installations. By leveraging everyday routines to promote playful STEM learning and caregiver-child STEM-related interactions, this project will: 1) empower caregivers to build a STEM learning foundation for children during early childhood; and 2) serve as a model for how cities can be re-designed to enhance ubiquitous STEM learning across public spaces, with the cultural capital of local families and children at the center of urban design and revitalization.
This Innovations in Development 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.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Andres BustamanteKathy Hirsh-PasekJune Ahn
Escape rooms are an engaging and increasingly popular game format in which a team of players is “locked” in a room and challenged to solve a series of narrative-embedded puzzles encoded in the room’s artifacts in order to “escape” within a set period of time. The University of California Museum of Paleontology, with partners University of Kansas Natural History Museum and the California Academy of Sciences, aim to develop, evaluate, and disseminate a “serious game” (i.e., a game designed for a purpose other than entertainment) based on the escape room model. Our traveling/loanable pop-up escape room and associated extension activities will engage diverse families (ages 8 and up) in museums and libraries in solving a biomedical mystery that teaches fundamental concepts in biology, engages critical-thinking and collaboration skills, and stimulates interest in biomedical careers. STEM Escape will address NGSS-aligned content central to medical research – in particular, it will communicate basic concepts regarding evolutionary relationships, a topic with relevance to a wide variety of medical applications, such as determining the source of emerging infectious diseases, tracking the progression of disease within a host, and identifying new medicines. The project is designed to lay the groundwork for extended family interactions surrounding scientific content and biomedical careers. The immersive game will be supplemented by a set of solo and docent-led follow-up activities that reinforce key concepts and emphasize connections between players’ experience in the game and biomedical research careers. Learners will also receive takeaway media (e.g., activity book) that highlights a diverse set of NIH-funded researchers whose work directly relies on evolutionary patterns/processes. Caregivers will have the option of receiving a follow-up email with free at-home activities. The themed inflatable pop-up room will be wheelchair-accessible and all materials will be bilingual in English and Spanish. The STEM Escape experience will be developed with and for the diverse audiences visiting urban/suburban natural history museums and libraries, as well as with and for rural families, whom we will reach through rural libraries. The project will also produce and evaluate a suite of support materials to facilitate institutional adoption and deployment of the experience. Nine host sites across the country have committed to hosting the room (with an additional two sites in the planning stages), and after the life of the grant, the room will continue to make an impact as a rentable traveling exhibit. Long term, this project will improve the public’s understanding of medically relevant evolutionary content, increase interest in biomedical careers, particularly among underserved groups targeted, and improve our understanding of how immersive games can be used to serve educational objectives.