The Children’s Museum will collaborate with six Hartford Public Library branches, three Hartford Family Centers, and the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center to provide hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) - based programs to over 1,000 local 3 to 14-year old children and their care givers. Program design and development will include planning for field trips to the museum. All participants will be given age-specific, supplemental STEAM materials to continue their learning activities at home, and families can attend more than one week of library programs, or more than three Saturdays of family center programs. The goal will be to help urban Hartford youths find new pathways toward responsible citizenry and fiscal stability.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
Persons who are deaf or hard of hearing are underrepresented in the STEM workforce. A key factor is lack of awareness of STEM careers or of examples of STEM professionals. SWS has developed 8 video stories for viewing at home or while attending a boys and girls club. Evaluation will provide new knowledge about design, use, and potential impact of the stories on our audience’s interest in pursuing STEM and possibly a STEM career.
Identity development frameworks provide insight into why and to what extent individuals engage in STEM related activities. While studies of “STEM identity” often build off previously validated disciplinary and/or science identity frameworks, quantitative analyses of constructs that specifically measure STEM identity and its antecedents are scarce, making it challenging for researchers or practitioners to apply a measurement-based perspective of participation in opportunities billed as “STEM.” In this study, we tested two expanded structural equation models of STEM identity development
An individual's sense of themselves as a “STEM person” is largely formed through recognition feedback. Unfortunately, for many minoritized individuals who engage in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in formal and informal spaces, this recognition often adheres to long-standing exclusionary expectations of what STEM participation entails and institutionalized stereotypes of what it means to be a STEM person. However, caregivers, who necessarily share cultural backgrounds, norms, and values with their children, can play an important role in recognizing their children's
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Heidi CianRemy DouSheila CastroElizabeth Palma-D'souzaAlexandra Martinez
This is a survey we developed in 2018 for our exploratory research study of listeners and their parents/guardians of the children's science podcast, Brains On!. The survey includes questions about who listens, when and where children listen, children's listening behaviors, motivations for listening, activities after listening, household information, and demographic questions.
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 pilot and feasibility project addresses the needs of youth (ages 10-19) who are deaf or hard of hearing and use either English or American Sign Language as their preferred method of communication. The project will develop and study video stories from members of the STEM workforce who are deaf or hard of hearing. Youth will view these videos on the web at home or at an afterschool program. These stories will help the youth become aware of the range of STEM careers that are available and their potential to pursue and succeed in these occupations. One of the biggest challenges young persons who are deaf or hard of hearing face is not having role models who are members of the STEM workforce. Without these role models they are not aware of the possibility that they could work in these fields. Several studies indicate that seeing other people with disabilities having success in STEM boosts self-confidence. Exposure to deaf role models allows deaf student to identify with successful deaf people and consequently believe they themselves could accomplish goals they previously thought out of their reach. Project collaborators include Gallaudet University Regional Center, Northeast Deaf & Hard of Hearing Service, Boys & Girls Club of Lynn, MA, and Bridge Multimedia.
The project will advance knowledge in the field of deaf education in informal settings. The research questions are: 1) How do adolescents who are deaf or hard of hearing integrate and use digital versions of firsthand stories from members of the STEM workforce? 2) How do parents and club leaders make use of the stories? 3) What kind of outcomes are made possible by using the stories such as interest in STEM careers 4) What modifications and additional would improve the stories to make them more useful and effective? 5) What dissemination strategies would maximize story use? The project will do a formative evaluation of the pilot videos using a sample of 30 family groups and 10 boys? and girls? participants. Families will meet with researchers at one of the collaborating institutions (Gallaudet University Regional Center East, Northeast Deaf & Hard of Hearing Service or TERC) depending on where they live. The researcher will work with one family or adolescent at a time. They will view the videos on a computer while the researchers observe and record data. After viewing the videos, researchers will ask them questions about what they learned, what might be added, changed, or improved. They will be asked to look at the videos later on their home computers and do things such as select a STEM career for further research. Additional data collection will involve completing a post-use online survey for adolescents and their parents.
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.
As new technologies continue to dominate the world, access to and participation in science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), and computing has become a critical focus of education research, practice, and policy. This issue is exceptionally relevant for American Indians, who remain underrepresented as only 0.2% of the STEM workforce, even though they make up 2% of the U.S. population. In response to this need, this Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) project takes a community-driven design approach, a collaborative design process in which Indigenous partners maintain sovereignty as designers, to collaboratively create three place-based storytelling experiences, stories told in historical and cultural places through location-based media. The place-based storytelling experiences will be digital installations at three culturally, politically, and historically significant sites in the local community where the public can engage with Indigenous science. The work is being done in partnership with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation (NWBSN).
The principal investigator and the NWBSN will investigate: (a) what are effective strategies and processes to conduct community-driven design with Indigenous partners?; (b) how does designing place-based storytelling experiences develop tribal members' design, technical, and computational skills?; (c) how does designing these experiences impact tribal members' scientific, technological, and cultural identities? The goals are to establish a process of community-driven design, build infrastructure to support this process, and understand how this methodological approach can result in culturally-appropriate ways to engage with science through technology. The principal investigator will work with the tribe to complete three intergenerational design cycles (a design cycle is made up of multiple design iterations). Each design cycle will result in one place-based storytelling experience. The goal is to include roughly 15 youth (ages 6-18), 10 Elders, and 10 other community members (i.e. members ages 18-50, likely parents) in each design cycle (35 tribal members total). Some designers are likely to participate in multiple design cycles. The tribe currently has 48 youth ages 6-18 and the project aims to engage at least 30 across all three design cycles. Over four years of designing three different experiences, the NWBSN aims to recruit at least 100 tribal members (just under 20% of the tribe) to make contributions (as designers, storytellers, or to provide cultural artifacts or design feedback).
This CAREER award 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.
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 Science Fairs Under the 'Scope Study's key findings are summarized here on the topics of:
Models And Elements Of Middle School Science Fairs
Science And Engineering Practices
Cost Of Science Fairs
Parent Involvement In Science Fairs
Science Interest And Identity.
The independent evaluators at Knight Williams Inc. developed a front-end survey to gather background and baseline information about the 16 partner organizations selected to conduct outreach programs as part of SciGirls CONNECT2. The goal was for two people from each partner organization to complete the online survey about their background and prior use of the SciGirls Seven and related strategies. A total of 30 partner representatives completed the survey by the requested deadline, resulting in a response rate of 94%. The majority identified as program leaders, with smaller groups saying they
In 2018, the Croucher Foundation conducted its third annual mapping exercise for the out-of-school STEM learning ecosystem in Hong Kong.
The study reveals a rich and vibrant ecosystem for out-of-school STEM in Hong Kong with over 3,000 discrete activities covering a very wide range of science disciplines. This third report indicates extremely rapid growth in available out-of-school STEM activities compared to 2016 and an even larger increase in the number of organisations offering out-of-school STEM activities in Hong Kong.
STEM educators are eager to foster long term collaboration with
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Siu Po LeeDavid FosterThe Croucher Foundation