This project will teach foundational computational thinking (CT) concepts to preschoolers by creating a series of mobile apps to guide families through sequenced sets of videos and hands-on activities. To support families at home it would also develop a new library model to build librarians' computational thinking content knowledge and self-efficacy so they can support parents' efforts with their children. Computational thinking is a an increasingly critical skill for learning and success in the workforce. It includes the ability to identify problems, brainstorm and generate solutions and processes that can be communicated and followed by computers or humans. There are few projects that introduce computational thinking to young children. Very little research has been done on the ways that parents can facilitate children's engagement in CT skills. And developing a model that trains and supports librarians to become virtual coaches of parents as they engage with their children in CT, will leverage and build the expertise of librarians. The project's target audience includes parents and children living in rural areas where access to CT learning may be very limited. Project partners include the EDC, a major research organization, the American Library Association, and BUILD, a national association that promotes collaborations across library, kindergarten readiness, and public media programming.
The formative research study asks: 1) What supports do parents of preschoolers in rural communities need in order to effectively engage in CT with their children at home? and 2) How can libraries in rural communities support joint CT exploration in family homes? The summative research study asks: 3) how can an intervention that combines media resources, mobile technology, and library supports foster sustained joint parent/child engagement and positive attitudes around CT? Researchers will develop a parent survey, adapting several scales from previously developed instruments that ask parents to report on children's use of CT-related vocabulary and CT-related attitudes and dispositions. Survey scales will assess librarians' attitudes towards CT, as well as their self-efficacy in supporting parents in CT in a virtual environment. During the formative study, EDC will pilot-test survey scales with 30 parents and 6 librarians in rural MS and KY. Analyses will be primarily qualitative and will be geared toward producing rapid feedback for the development team. Quantitative analyses will be used on parent app use, using both time query and back-end data, exploring factors associated with time spent using apps. The summative study will evaluate how the new media resources and mobile technology, in combination with the library virtual implementation model, support families' joint engagement with CT, and positive attitudes around CT. The researchers will recruit 125 low-income families with 4- to 5-year-old children in rural MS and KY to participate in the study. They will randomly assign families within each library to the full intervention condition, including media resources, mobile technology, and library support delivered through the virtual implementation model, or the media and mobile-technology-only condition. This design will allow researchers to understand more fully the additional benefit of library support for rural families' sustained engagement, and conversely, see the comparative impact of a media- and mobile-technology only intervention, given that some families might not be able to access virtual or physical library support.
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. This project is co-funded by the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program, which supports projects that build understandings of practices, program elements, contexts and processes contributing to increasing students' knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and information and communication technology (ICT) careers.
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.
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. An ongoing challenge to the design of effective STEM learning exhibits for diverse young children is the absence of reliable and evidence-based resources that designers can apply to the design of STEM exhibits that draw upon play as a child's primary pedagogy, while simultaneously engaging children with STEM content and processes that support development of STEM skills such as observation. To address these challenges, the project team will use a collaborative process in which learning researchers and informal STEM practitioners iteratively develop, design, and test the STEM for Play Framework that could then be applied to the design of STEM-focused exhibits that support play and STEM skill use among early learners.
This Research in Service to Practice project will address these questions: 1) What is a framework for play in early STEM learning that is inclusive of children's cultural influences?; 2) To what extent do interactions between early learners (ages 3-8) and caregivers or peers at exhibits influence the structure and effectiveness of play for supporting STEM skill development?; 3) How do practitioners link play to STEM skill development, and to what extent does a framework for play in early STEM learning assist in identifying types of play that supports early STEM skill development?; and 4) What do practitioners identify as best practices in exhibit design that support the development of STEM skills for early childhood audiences, and conversely, to what extent do practitioners perceive specific aspects of the design as influential to play? The project team will address these questions across four phases of study that will include (a) development of a critical research synthesis to inform the initial STEM for Play framework; (b) the use of surveys, focus groups, and interviews to solicit feedback from practitioners; (c) testing and revising the framework by conducting structured observations of STEM exhibits at multiple museums. The project team will use multiple analytic approaches including qualitative thematic analyses as well as inferential statistics. Results will be disseminated to children?s museums, science centers, and research communities.
This 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.
A makerspace is a place where participants explore their own interests and learn by creating, tinkering, and inventing artifacts through the use of a rich variety of tools and materials. This project will develop and research a flexible model for makerspaces that can be adapted to local settings to support informal STEM learning for hospitalized, chronically ill patients in pediatric environments who are predominantly youth of color from low-income backgrounds. These youth are subject to health disparities and healthcare inequities. Their frequent absence from school and other activities disrupt friendship formations, reduce their opportunities for social support, reduce their access to environments where they can feel a sense of self-agency through learning and creative activities. Through patient centered co-design, this project will build adaptable STEM makerspace environments conducive to STEM-rich learning, the exercise of self-agency, and development of STEM identity. Project design will focus on the sensitive nature of working with vulnerable populations (i.e., immunocompromised patients). The project will develop and disseminate several resources: (1) a flexible makerspace model that can be adapted to work in different pediatric settings; (2) research methods for conducting research in highly sensitive environments with and alongside young patients; and (3) professional development resources and a playbook including guidebook and facilitators guide that will articulate principles and processes for designing, implementing and sustaining makerspaces in pediatric settings. These resources will be widely disseminated through maker and other informal STEM networks.
The project will pursue two innovations. First, the project will develop the physical design of adaptable informal STEM makerspaces in pediatric settings. Second, the project will develop innovative patient-centered methodologies for studying approaches to physical design and the effects of makerspace installations for informal STEM-learning, self-agency, and STEM identity development. Using a design-based research approach, the project will investigate: (1) the extent to which physical makerspace designs support access to material, relational, and ideational resources for STEM-learning and well-being; (2) the extent to which makerspace installations, researchers, and medical care staff support patients in accessing and generating tools and other resources for personal learning and a sense of agency; and (3) the extent to which makerspace design with a focus on affording material, relational, and ideational resources provide rich opportunities for young patients to explore their own interests and cultivate STEM identities. One of the project's innovations, beyond development of adaptable makerspace model involves developing an innovative patient-centered methodology for conducting educational research toward broadening participation in STEM in highly sensitive medical care environments. The project will employ a mixed-methods research design and collect a variety of data to address these areas of research including documentation of makerspace design plans and renderings, observational data gathered through fieldnotes, video and audio recordings, informal interviews with patients, their families, and child-care staff, and patient generated artifacts. Articles for researchers and practitioners will be submitted for publication to appropriate professional journals and peer-reviewed publications.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings.
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.
This RAPID project will study connections between children's hygiene habits and learning about science, such as the science of disease transmission. It builds upon findings from the investigator's prior research of parent-child interactions observed in children's museums and will extend this research to home settings. This research will focus on understanding how goal-setting, whether it is parent-directed, child-directed, or jointly-directed, affects children's engagement with a handwashing activity and their subsequent learning about handwashing behavior and preventing the spread of disease. More specifically, the intent is to examine how goal-setting during an interactive demonstration between parents and children relates to children's recollection of the activity and their handwashing behavior afterwards. 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.
During a pandemic, it is vital that children establish good hygiene habits and understand the importance of handwashing for the prevention of disease transmission. What is most important is that young children wash their hands frequently and follow good hygiene habits, such as using soap, when doing so. This study examines the role parents might play in engaging children to wash their hands. The project team has developed a short 10 minute intervention that parents and children can participate in while using everyday household items. Utilizing remote technology, parents and children will be guided through this intervention while video recording their behavior. Families will be presented with a structured activity for parents and children to participate in together. This activity will be focused on how handwashing, and particularly the use of soap during handwashing, helps prevent the spread of germs. Parent-child interactions will be coded using schemes for goal setting that the investigator developed in prior work. Directly after their participation and one week later, children will be asked to reflect on the activity to understand what they remember about it, and to understand whether they have encoded the importance of handwashing for preventing the transmission of disease. Parents will also be asked to track their children's handwashing to see whether aspects of these reflections, as well as individual differences in how parents and children interact during the activity, promote better engagement with handwashing. The data generated will allow researchers to develop best practices for interventions centered on children's handwashing and the prevention of disease transmission. Knowing such practices is critical for reintegrating children into social settings such as schools and children's museums.
This 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.
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
Parents and adult caregivers play a significant role in young children's understanding of (and participation in) science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Research suggests that early engagement with STEM can have a profound impact on children's use of STEM process skills such as exploration, observation, and problem-solving, as well as future academic success. An immediate yet ongoing challenge facing informal STEM learning providers is to understand how limited resources can be used to support effective STEM learning opportunities and experiences for all children and families. Through a collaboration between researchers, Head Start, two science centers (one rural, one urban), and educators, this project aims to foster STEM access and engagement with specific attention to young children and their caregivers. 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 Pilot and Feasibility study will apply an experimental, mixed-methods design to examine parent/caregiver and child (ages 4-5) interactions before, during, and after informal STEM experiences to identify which factors influence children's transfer of learning STEM process skills across multiple informal contexts. Research results will lay the foundation for a future longitudinal study. The project team will ask: (1) What types of parent/caregiver-child engagement at the science center are most predictive of children's application of STEM process skills in subsequent problem-solving tasks and school readiness? (2) How do variations in parent/caregiver-child conversational strategies during the science center visit influence children's memory and learning? and (3) How can informal educators best support Head Start family engagement and children's emerging STEM knowledge? This study will collect data on 240, 4-5-year-old children, with their caregivers, in two different science centers that serve a largely rural and largely urban population. Data sources will include video/audio of caregiver-child interactions at the science centers and at home, as well as children's recall, engagement with a problem-solving task, and school readiness scores. Coding and analysis of the tasks during and after the science center visit will detail mechanisms underlying children's memory, learning, and application of STEM process skills that transfer to the problem-solving task. The project will be implemented by a research-practice partnership, leveraging the expertise of project partners and communities to ensure the use of culturally responsive research practices. This research has the potential to strategically impact how science centers and Head Start grantees work together on Family Engagement programming to achieve equitable STEM learning opportunities, broadening participation for low-income young children and their families.
This 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.
This RAPID was submitted in response to the NSF Dear Colleague letter related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This award is made by the AISL program in the Division of Research on Learning, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The goal of this award is to advance understanding of how children's science podcasts can provide families with information to help ease children's anxiety and fears during a pandemic. The project's hypothesis is that through listening to Brains On! coronavirus-related episodes, children will increase their understanding of science concepts related to the pandemic. As they gain this understanding, it is predicted that their overall fear and anxiety about the pandemic will diminish, they will feel empowered to ask pandemic-related questions and will engage in more science- based conversations with their family members. The project will develop three Brains On! podcast episodes focused specifically on the COVID-19 pandemic for kids aged 5 to 12 and their families. The research questions include:
How and to what extent do Brains On!'s coronavirus-based episodes help children and their families understand and talk about science-related pandemic topics? What kind of conversations are sparked by these episodes?
What kinds of questions do children have after listening to the Brains On! coronavirus episodes and what are the reasons for their questions? What can the questions tell us about the impact of listening on kids' science engagement and learning?
What resources do parents need to answer children's questions and help them understand science topics related to the pandemic?
This project is a collaboration between a media producer, Minnesota Public Radio and researchers at The Science Museum of Minnesota. Brains On! already has a large listening audience, with 7 million downloads a year, and more than 200,000 unique listeners a month and these new episodes are likely to increase listenership further. The research findings will be quickly disseminated to a wide range of audiences that can immediately apply the findings to create media and other coronavirus-related educational resources for families.
The PI's prior NSF funded projects have found that previous Brains On! podcasts with a range of STEM content increase the number and sophistication of the science questions children ask and lead to science-based conversations with family members. This project will study the impacts in relation to a singular topic, COVID-19. Three online surveys of Brains On! listeners (families with children ages 5 - 12 years old) will be conducted. The first survey to be conducted as soon as the project begins will focus on parents reflecting on what information is needed at that stage of the pandemic. Two additional listener surveys will occur immediately after new COVID-19 podcast episodes are released. These surveys will ask content-specific questions to understand how well the episode conveys that information to children and their families, what conversations were sparked from the content, and what additional information needs families have. Prior to administering each of the three surveys, video-based think-aloud interviews with 10 families will test and revise survey questions.
Survey participants will be recruited using language in Brains On! episodes, social media, website, and newsletters. A sample size of around 1,000 for each of the surveys is planned (based on a 95% confidence interval and ±3% sampling error). Analyses will include descriptive statistics and thematic coding of open-ended survey questions. Subgroup samples, when large enough will look at differences in responses by demographic variables (e.g. race/ethnicity, household income, highest level of education in the household, an adult in the household with a STEM career, gender of child, geographic location). The researchers and Brains On! staff will work together to identify how the findings can be applied to the development of subsequent coronavirus-related episodes and shared with the ISE field to further support families? education and information needs.
This 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.
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), in collaboration with neuroscientists at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), museum professionals, and community partners, proposes to create a 1,000 to 1,500-square-foot traveling exhibition, accompanying website, and complementary programming to promote public understanding of neuroscience research and its relevance to healthy brain development in early childhood. The exhibition and programs will focus on current research on the developing brain, up to age 5, and will reach a national audience of adult caregivers of young children and their families, with a special emphasis on Latino families. The project will be developed bi-culturally and bilingually (English/Spanish) in order to better engage underrepresented Latino audiences. The exhibition and programs will be designed and tested with family audiences.
The exhibition project, Interactive Family Learning in Support of Early Brain Development, has four goals that primarily target adult caregivers of children up to age 5:
Foster engagement with and interest in neurodevelopment during early childhood
Enhance awareness of how neuroscience research leads to knowledge about healthy development in early childhood
Inform and empower adult caregivers to enrich their children’s early learning experiences
Reach diverse family audiences, especially Latino caregivers and their families
A collaborative, multidisciplinary team of neuroscience researchers, experts in early childhood education, museum educators, and OMSI personnel with expertise in informal science education and bilingual exhibit development will work together to ensure that current science is accurately interpreted and effectively presented to reach the target audiences. The project will foster better public understanding of early brain development and awareness and confidence in caregivers in using play to enrich their children’s experiences and support healthy brain development. Visitors will explore neuroscience and early childhood development through a variety of forms—multi-sensory, hands-on interactive exhibits, graphic panels, real objects, facilitated experiences, and an accompanying website.
Following the five-year development process, the exhibition will begin an eight-year national tour, during which it will reach more than one million people.
The goals of this proposal are: 1) to provide opportunities for underrepresented students to consider careers in basic or clinical research by exciting them through an educational Citizen Science research project; 2) to provide teachers with professional development in science content and teaching skills using research projects as the infrastructure; and 3) to improve the environments and behaviors in early childcare and education settings related to healthy lifestyles across the state through HSTA students Citizen Science projects. The project will complement or enhance the training of a workforce to meet the nation’s biomedical, behavioral and clinical research needs. It will encourage interactive partnerships between biomedical and clinical researchers,in-service teachers and early childcare and education facilities to prevent obesity.
Specific Aim I is the Biomedical Summer Institute for Teachers led by university faculty. This component is a one week university based component. The focus is to enhance teacher knowledge of biomedical characteristics and problems associated with childhood obesity, simple statistics, ethics and HIPAA compliance, and the principles of Citizen Science using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The teachers, together with the university faculty and staff, will develop the curriculum and activities for Specific Aim II.
Specific Aim II is the Biomedical Summer Institute for Students, led by HSTA teachers guided by university faculty. This experience will expose 11th grade HSTA students to the biomedical characteristics and problems associated with obesity with a focus on early childhood. Students will be trained on Key 2 a Healthy Start, which aims to improve nutrition and physical activity best practices, policies and environments in West Virginia’s early child care and education programs. The students will develop a meaningful project related to childhood obesity and an aspect of its prevention so that the summer institute bridges seamlessly into Specific Aim III.
Specific Aim III is the Community Based After School Club Experiences. The students and teachers from the summer experience will lead additional interested 9th–12th grade students in their clubs to examine their communities and to engage community members in conducting public health intervention research in topics surrounding childhood obesity prevention through Citizen Science. Students and teachers will work collaboratively with the Key 2 a Healthy Start team on community projects that will be focused on providing on-going technical assistance that will ultimately move the early childcare settings towards achieving best practices related to nutrition and physical activity in young children.
There are several critical reasons to understand and support interest development in early childhood: (a) as a primary motivator of engagement and learning; (b) interest development in preschool predicts important learning outcomes and behaviors in early elementary school; and (c) early childhood interests motivate ongoing interest development. Thus, there is growing recognition that interest is not just important but fundamental to education and learning. Head Start on Engineering (HSE) is a multi-component, bilingual (Spanish/English), family-focused program designed to (1) foster long-term interest in the engineering design process for families with preschool children from low-income backgrounds and (2) support family development and kindergarten readiness goals. The HSE program, co-developed with the Head Start community, provides families with developmentally appropriate, story-based engineering design challenges for the home and then connects these to a system of strategically aligned Informal STEM Education (ISE) experiences and resources. This current project, HSE Systems, builds on a previous HSE Pathways project which (a) established that participating families develop persistent engineering-related interests; (b) highlighted the value that the Head Start community has for the program and partnership; and (c) generated a novel, systems perspective on early childhood interest development. The aim of HSE Systems is to develop and test a model of early childhood STEM engagement and advance knowledge of how the family as a system develops interest in STEM from preschool into kindergarten.
Through the Design Based Implementation Research (DBIR) process, the team will iteratively refine and improve the HSE program and theory of change using ongoing feedback and data from staff, families, and partners. It is also designed to explore program impacts on family interest development over a longer period, as children enter kindergarten. The DBIR work will focus primarily on the program model questions, while the case study research will focus on the family interest questions, with both strands informing each other. The initial work is organized around a series of feedback and design-testing cycles to gather input from families and other stakeholders, update the program components and activities in collaboration with families and staff, and prepare for full implementation. During the next phase, the team will implement the full program model with six Head Start classrooms and track family experiences and interest development into kindergarten. During final implementation phase, the team will finish data collection, conduct retrospective analysis with all the data, and update the program model and theory of change.
This project will directly address the AISL program goals by broadening access to early childhood informal STEM education for low-income communities, with a focus on Spanish-speaking families, and building long-term skills and learning dispositions to support STEM learning inside and outside of school. Beyond the topic of engineering, HSE supports Head Start school readiness and child and family development goals, which are the foundation of lifelong success.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
A large body of research highlights the benefits of storybooks for children's learning. In the context of preschool classrooms, the use of storybooks to engage young children in STEM is a frequent topic of practitioner-oriented articles. There is also an increasing number of informal STEM education (ISE) projects exploring how to leverage storybooks to engage young children and their families in different STEM content domains. While there is universal excitement for the potential of storybooks in ISE, there is an acknowledgment of a critical need for more cross-project sharing, more research, and more efforts to synthesize and share findings. This award will catalyze new research studies and partnerships to advance efforts in ISE contexts, including the role of books in the overall learning experience or program, how books are selected or designed, and how the reading is facilitated by teachers and families. Participants will be educators and researchers working with or studying family learning for preschool-age children (three to five years) using early childhood fiction books as a tool for engaging families in STEM topics and skills.
Storybook STEM will be implemented in four phases: (1) pre-convening activities to plan, synthesize existing resources, engage a broader group of educators and researchers beyond convening attendees, and prepare convening participants to maximize the value of the in-person discussions; (2) in-person convening to catalyze cross-project discussions, outline promising practices, and identify questions and ideas for the future; (3) evaluation of the impact and value of the convening, from the perspective of participants and a project steering committee; and (4) dissemination of findings and recommendations to educators and researchers within and beyond the ISE field. Outcomes include: (1) documenting current and past work in ISE and other fields; (2) summarizing key recommendations and resources from the reading, literacy, and early childhood development fields; and (3) outlining promising directions for future work.
The findings from this project will provide a critical resource to help broadening participation efforts be more effective and inclusive for audiences across the country. Research studies motivated by the convening will address the lack of empirical work on storybooks as a tool for ISE programs and advance the ISE field's knowledge of how to integrate these books effectively. Because storybooks are a highly accessible and almost universally used family learning resource, the topic of the convening will be relevant to a wide range of audiences and will help educators broaden access to ISE for traditionally underserved and under-resourced communities.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
This project responds to the Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) solicitation (NSF 17-537) and is sponsored by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program at the National Science Foundation. CAREER: Talking Science: Early STEM Identity Formation Through Everyday Science Talk (Talking Science) addresses the critical issue of the development of children's identification with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields and the limited knowledge about the development of STEM identity through conversations, particularly among very young children from underserved and underrepresented populations. Talking Science is based on the premise that individuals who develop STEM interests and identify with STEM at a young age tend to participate in STEM fields more so than individuals who develop these later in life. This study investigates how STEM-related conversations outside of school with friends and family during formative years (i.e., 7 - 12 years old) shape youths’ STEM identity later in life and their engagement in STEM. The goals of Talking Science are (1) To develop an understanding of the features and context of conversations held between children and their caregivers/teachers that support STEM identity development in both majority and Hispanic/Latine populations; and (2) To translate the research outcomes into informal STEM learning practices that positively contribute to young people's perceptions of STEM fields in their future.
To achieve its goals, this work addresses the following research questions: (1) What is the content, context, and structure of STEM-related conversations with friends and family that youth ages 7 - 12 participate in?; (2) How do the features of conversation (i.e., content, context, structure) relate to the development of youth's STEM interests, sense of recognition as STEM people, and self-identification with STEM?; (3) How do the cultural values and science talk experiences of Hispanic/Latine youth shape conversation features related to youth's STEM interests, sense of recognition as STEM people, and self-identification with STEM?; and (4) Does professional development for practitioners that focuses on encouraging youth to engage in STEM-related conversations with friends and family positively contribute to youth's STEM interest, sense of recognition, and self-identification with STEM? To address these questions, the study adopts a qualitative research approach that applies phenomenological strategies in research design, data collection, and analysis to allow for exploration of the meaning of lived experiences in social and cultural contexts. Participants include elementary-age youths (ages 7 - 12) and caregivers from socially, culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse backgrounds. To inform the development of interview protocols in terms of the kinds of childhood talk that leave a long-term impact on students, including the kinds of talk experiences remembered by students who choose or persist towards a STEM career in college, the project also recruits college students pursuing STEM degrees as participants. Data gathering and interpretation strategies include surveys and interviews. The outcomes of this research will constitute a theoretical framework and models that guide the development of both professionals and programmatic activities at informal learning institutions, particularly around scaffolding participation in STEM through family science talk.
This 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.