The Da Vinci Science Center will expand its Women in Science and Engineering Network by partnering with community organizations, colleges, and universities to enhance the STEM learning and support ecosystem for women and girls in the Lehigh Valley and surrounding communities in eastern Pennsylvania. The museum will assess the needs of K-12 girls, undergraduate women, and women in STEM employment, and map opportunities for cross-sector collaborations to support them. The project team will identify marketing and recruitment messages that encourage STEM-interested girls and women to participate in programs and follow developmental pathways within a STEM learning ecosystem. Based on identified needs and messages, the museum will pilot and evaluate new STEM programs for girls and women, and train educators and mentors to sustain this work.
This Smart and Connected Community (SCC) project will partner with two rural communities to develop STEMports, an innovative Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning game for workforce development. The game's activities will take players on localized Augmented Reality (AR) missions to both engage in STEM learning challenges and discover emerging STEM careers in their community, specifically highlighting innovations in the fields of sustainable agriculture and aquaculture, forest products, and renewable energy. Community Advisory Teams (CATs) and co-design teams, including youth, representatives from the targeted emerging STEM economies, and decision-makers will partner with project staff to co-design STEMports that reflect the interests, cultural contexts, and envisioned STEM industries of the future for each community.
The project will: (a) design and pilot an AR game for community STEM workforce development; (b) develop and adapt a community engagement process that optimizes community networking for co-designing the gaming application and online community; and (c) advance a scalable process for wider applications of STEMports. This project is a collaboration between the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance and the Field Day Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to both build and research the co-designing of a SCC based within an AR environment. The project will contribute knowledge to the informal STEM learning, community development, and education technology fields in four major ways:
Deepening the understanding of how innovative technological tools support rural community STEM knowledge building as well as STEM identity and workforce interest.
Identifying design principles for co-designing the STEMports community related to the technological design process.
Developing social network approaches and analytics to better understand the social dimensions and community connections fostered by the STEMport community.
Understanding how participants' online and offline interactions with individuals and experiences builds networks and knowledge within a SCC.
With the scaling of use by an ever-growing community of players, STEMports will provide a new AR-based genre of public participation in STEM and collective decision making. The research findings will add to the emerging literature on community-wide education, innovative education technologies, informal STEM learning (especially place-based learning and STEM ecosystems), and participatory design research.
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 Teen Science Café is an out-of-school program that brings together teens and science professionals to engage in discussion and activities related to the scientist’s work. The Cafés are highly interactive, incorporating hands-on activities and discussion with scientists; each is co-organized by an adult and a group of Teen Leaders. The model was developed and refined in several different locations in New Mexico between 2008 and 2010.
This pilot study took advantage of the 10-year history of Café Sci NM, and sought to answer the question: What are the long-term influences of participation
A Teen Science Café is an out-of-school program in which teens and STEM experts engage in conversation and activities to explore a topic related to the STEM professional’s expertise. Teen Science Cafés are independently run and organized at more than 100 sites nationwide – from museums to libraries to aquariums. Prior evaluation of the Teen Science Café model has demonstrated a range of impacts achieved with youth participants, but relatively little research has focused on the experience of the scientist-presenters.
This report presents findings of a sequential mixed-methods study that
Brokering Youth Pathways was created to share tools and techniques around the youth development practice of “brokering” or connecting youth to future learning opportunities and resources.
This toolkit shares ways in which various out-of-school educators and professionals have approached the challenge of brokering. It provides a framework, practice briefs and reports that focus on a particular issue or challenge and provide concrete examples, as well as illustrate how project partners partners worked through designing new brokering routines in partnership with a research team.
The Multi-Site Public Engagement with Science—Synthetic Biology (MSPES) initiative was an Innovations in Development project funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1421179) through the Advancing of Informal STEM Learning program (AISL). MSPES promoted public engagement with science (PES)—a model of mutual dialogue and learning between public and scientist audiences—through the creation and distribution of PES kits to nearly 200 informal science education sites around the country. Kits included two types of learning experiences: (1) forum programs during which scientists and teen or
Please join us in celebrating Citizen Science Day, which falls this year on Saturday, April 14th. This issue of Connected Science Learning is dedicated to highlighting effective citizen science programs that involve classroom students in collecting data for research scientists, while also engaging them in key STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) content and practices. Students get a “front row seat” to what scientists do and how scientists work, plus develop the reasoning skills and practices used by scientists.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), SciStarter 2.0 was launched to enhance, diversify, and validate participant engagement in scientific research in need of the public’s help. SciStarter’s leadership is part of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee, Designing Citizen Science to Support Science Learning, which is developing guidelines and a research agenda for citizen science in education. This article briefly introduces educators to SciStarter 2.0.
Project SYSTEMIC (A Systems Thinking Approach to STEM Ecosystem Development in Chicago) will apply systems thinking to a community-level STEM ecosystem development effort in one of Chicago's largest and most distressed neighborhoods. The project aims to broaden participation of African American and low-income Chicago Public School students (preK-12) in STEM learning opportunities. The proposed model of collaborative change for this project builds on the work of two coordinated collective impact initiatives--the Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative and Austin Coming Together, a network of local organizations committed to improving educational and economic outcomes for the community. A key feature of this project is that it adds innovative, interactive, visual problem structuring and solving strategies to highlight and uncover the systemic interdependencies that contribute to the BP challenge for African American youth. The project will convene a series of workshops to engage community stakeholders in the mapping of the STEM ecosystem. A broad and representative cross-section of community stakeholders will design and develop evidence-based STEM ecosystem organizing and implementation strategies. Key outcomes anticipated from this project are the development of a shared understanding, agenda, activities, and commitment to collectively address the underlying challenges of STEM access and participation for African American youth. The goal of this community-driven project is to develop a viable system model that elevates neighborhood voices, historically excluded from the problem-solving table and decision-making processes, to leverage existing assets, build local capacity, increase messaging and awareness of the value of STEM, identify needed new programs, and develop coordination/resource sharing mechanisms across partners to support implementation. The evaluation of this project will be grounded in systems thinking and culturally-responsive approaches that seek to understand the diverse perspectives of stakeholders while measuring progress toward project goals. Evaluation data will be used to assess the problem structuring process, to evaluate the organizational strategy designed to address the structured problem, and to support adaptive learning among stakeholders.
This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot is to expand the Navajo Nation Math Circle model to other sites, and to develop and launch a network of math circles based on the NNMC model. The Navajo Nation Math Circle model is a novel approach to broadening the participation of indigenous peoples in mathematics that, ultimately, seeks to improve American Indian students' attitudes towards mathematics, persistence with challenging problems, and grades in math courses. Navajo Nation Math Circles bring teachers, students, and mathematicians together to work collaboratively on challenging, but meaningful and fun, math problems. Through this NSF INCLUDES project, additional math circles across the Navajo Nation will be launched and a mirror site in Washington State serving additional tribes (such as Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Tulalip, and Stillaguamish) will be established.
Originating approximately a century ago in Eastern Europe as a means to engage students in mathematical thinking, math circles bring teachers, students, and math professionals together to work collaboratively on challenging, but relevant and interesting, math problems. Navajo Nation Math Circles, established math circles in various Navajo Nation communities, are the foundation of this INCLUDES project. One goal of this effort is to launch a network with the capacity to support the replication and adaption of math circles in multiple sites as an innovative strategy for encouraging indigenous math engagement through culturally enriched open-ended group math explorations. In addition, the Navajo Nation Math Circle model will be expanded to new math circles in the Navajo Nation, as well as in Washington State to serve additional tribes. Cells in the network will implement key elements of the Navajo Nation Math Circle model, adapting them to their particular contexts. Such elements include facilitation of open-ended group math explorations, incorporating indigenous knowledge systems; a Mathematical Visitor Program sending mathematicians to schools to work with students and their teachers; inclusion of mathematics in public festivals to increase community mathematical awareness; a two-week summer math camp for students; and teacher development opportunities ranging from workshops to immersion experiences to a mentoring program pairing teachers with mathematicians.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
David AucklyHenry FowlerJayadev Athreya
In this NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot the institutions of "Building on Strengths" propose to build and pilot the infrastructure, induction process, and early implementation of the Mathematician Affiliates of Color network. This network will consist of mathematicians of color from across academia and industry who want to invest time in, share their expertise with, and learn from students of color and their teachers. Building on Strengths will draw on basic needs cognitive theory to support these interactions and will focus narrowly on short and moderate term collaborations (from one month to a semester) between visiting mathematicians, students, and collaborating teachers that will involve three specific types of interactions: doing mathematics together as a habits-of-mind practice, talking about the discipline of mathematics and the experiences of mathematicians of color in that discipline, and relationship-building activities. The foundational infrastructure developed in the project will include systems for recruitment, selection and induction, a process for pairing affiliate mathematicians with classrooms, and support structures for the collaborations. To support the goals of the network a prototype virtual space will be developed in which real-time artifacts can be collected and shared from the classroom interactions. While Building on Strengths will pilot this program in the secondary context, once a viable model is established, scaling to K-16, as well as to other STEM fields, will be possible.
The research study in the project uses an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design and will be conducted in two phases. In the first, quantitative, phase of the study the following questions will be addressed: (1) Is the teacher-mathematician collaboration associated with a change for students in perception of basic human needs being met, mathematical or racial identities, or beliefs about mathematics or who can do mathematics? (2) Is the teacher-mathematician collaboration associated with a change for adults in perceptions of the role of basic needs or in adults' identities or beliefs about mathematics or who can do mathematics? In the second, qualitative, phase of the study, two types of interactions will be selected for in-depth qualitative study, identifying cases where groups of students experienced changes in their needs, identity, and beliefs. In this qualitative case-centered phase, the following questions will be explored: (1) What is the nature of the mentor-student interaction? (2) What aspects of the intervention do students feel are most relevant to them? (3) How did the implementation of the intervention differ from the anticipated intervention? The results of the study will help improve the infrastructure for, and better support the interactions between, mathematicians of color, students of color and their mathematics teachers; the outcomes will also shed light on how students experience their interactions.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael YoungMaisha MosesAlbert CuocoEden Badertscher
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Aligning for Impact: Computer Science Pathways Across Contexts [CS-PAC] is an NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot. It broadens participation of students who are underrepresented in computer science by using the convening and policy-making power of the Georgia State Department of Education to coalesce school district leaders to implement K-12 computer science education. The project provides a national model for how to work toward systemic change. With the State Department of Education's coordination, several school districts will collaboratively seek improvements in their own student participation rates. The coordination of data reporting and analysis, resources, communications, and policy promote more equitable participation in computer science education. Research emerging from this project informs other states about how to collaboratively shape computer science education policy and policy implementation.
Using a Collective Impact approach to systemic change, the project creates sustainable institutional change at the community, state, and national levels. Qualitative and quantitative data provide descriptions about how to utilize alignment strategies within Collective Impact in three different contexts: rural, suburban, and urban. Outcomes utilize a regression discontinuity analysis to justify successful implementation as well as qualitative analysis of implementation efforts that were deemed most effective by all stakeholders. The project outputs directly affect over 88,000 students across five districts and indirectly affect over 1.7 million in Georgia alone. The culminating project goal is the development of a coherent framework for aligning K-12 computer science education pathways.