This award is funded in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
This project will create the specification for a learner-controlled system to represent youth learning in Out-of-School-Time (OST) settings, to improve access to future Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities. For learners to pursue a STEM education, and STEM careers, they must be able to move through "gatekeeping" mechanisms that filter and sort students based on factors such as prior coursework and grades, teacher recommendations, and language proficiency assessments. Even though abundant evidence shows that such measures fail to capture all important aspects of STEM learning, they are traditionally relied upon in secondary and post-secondary STEM education contexts as indicators of preparation for future STEM learning. These systemic processes exclude certain minoritized groups, including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), low income, immigrant and refugee youth, and youth learning English, from high-quality secondary and post-secondary STEM learning experiences because existing measures do not validate their prior knowledge and experiences. Yet, minoritized youth often engage in OST STEM learning opportunities, where their readiness for future learning opportunities is nurtured and valued. One challenge is to reliably document this readiness in a usable format so youth can access new STEM learning opportunities, especially in post-secondary contexts. This project builds strategically upon earlier work focusing on the democratization of STEM learning through vehicles such as digital micro-credentials or badges, and upon digital portfolios. Missing from these earlier efforts was integration of these platforms with an infrastructure that connected youth learners to OST STEM learning organizations and to future STEM learning opportunities. This Innovations in Development project brings together minoritized youth and their families, OST providers, and admissions officials from higher education institutions to explore the needed design features for OST "transcripts," and user stories that describe how software systems can support their creation and sharing. Grounded in the concept of mastery-based learning, where learning is demonstrated via action, learners will control what is included in the transcript so that they create their own narratives about their learning experiences. Recognizing that documentation is not the key focus of most STEM OST organizations, this project will provide direct support for identifying and codifying learning goals or outcomes that learners and their families find relevant and important within different STEM activities. 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.
The project will take a Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) approach and proceed by convening representatives from three main stakeholder groups (youth and their families, OST providers, and admissions staff) to engage in a series of discovery and design activities. Project partners, including the Mastery Transcript Consortium (MA), STEAMville (IL), STUDIO (WA), and Wolverine Pathways (MI), will work together with the PIs to design templates learners can use to characterize STEM learning from each provider, aligned with different STEM learning foci (e.g., computer science, computational thinking, cross-cutting concepts, science and engineering practices, and mathematics). Data collected from these sessions will be used to address the following research questions: (1) How and why do youth and families from minoritized communities understand and choose to participate in STEM OST learning opportunities?, (2) How do youth understand and interact with STEM OST learning opportunities?, (3) How do OST providers characterize the STEM learning goals in the activities they provide?, and (4) How do college admissions personnel view the role of informal STEM learning as part of a holistic admissions process? This work has the potential to further the understanding of how OST learning can be documented and shared as a part of the larger ecosystem of STEM learning trajectories. By deeply engaging the perspectives and voices of minoritized youth and families, this project seeks to develop a valid and trustworthy instrument that recognizes and serves their STEM learning, thus broadening the participation of minoritized youth in STEM education and careers. This work will also benefit OST providers, by translating the documentation of youth STEM learning into forms that may help communicate the efficacy of their programs in ways that further their missions, including communicating evidence of effectiveness to both future participants and funders.
Informal STEM education spaces like museums can intentionally serve surrounding communities and support sustainable and accessible engagement. Building from this base, the project takes a stance that the intersection of the museum, home/family life and the youth’s internal practices and disciplinary sense of self are rooted in history and culture. Thus, this CAREER work builds on the following principles: Black families and youth have rightful presence in STEM and in STEM learning environments; Black families are valuable learning partners; and Black youths need counterspaces to explore STEM as one mechanism for creating future disciplinary agency. In partnership with the Henry Ford Museum and the Detroit-Area Pre-College Engineering Program, the project seeks to (a) expand the field's understanding of how Black youth engineer and innovate; (b) investigate the influence of a culturally relevant curriculum on their engineering practices and identity, knowledge, and confidence; and (c) describe the ways Black families and museums support youth in engineering learning experiences. The work will center on the 20-hour “Innovate” curriculum which was designed by the museum to bridge design, innovation, and creation practices with the artifacts of innovators throughout time. The project comprises six weekend “Innovate” sessions and an at-home innovation experience plus participation in an annual Invention Convention. By focusing on these aims, this research responds to the goals of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning opportunities for the public in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening engagement in STEM learning experiences and advancing innovative research on STEM learning in informal environments.
The main research questions of this multiphase CAREER award are: (1) What practices do Black youths and families engage in as they address engineering, design, and innovation challenges? (2) In what ways does a culturally relevant museum-based innovation program influence the design and innovation practices and assessment performance of Black youths and families as they engage in engineering, design, and innovation across learning settings? (3) How does teaching innovation, design, and engineering through historical re-telling and reconstruction influence a youth’s perception of their own identities, abilities, and practices? and (4) How do Black families engage with informal STEM learning settings and what resources best support their engineering, design, and innovation exploration? Youth in sixth grade are the focus of the research. The work is guided by ecological systems, sociocultural learning, culturally relevant pedagogy, and community cultural wealth theories. During phase one, the focus will be to refine the curriculum and logistics of the study implementation. The investigator will enhance the curriculum to include narratives of Black innovators and engineers. Fifteen families will be recruited to participate in the program enhancement pilot and initial research cycle for phase two. In phase three another cohort of families will be recruited to participate. Survey research, narrative inquiry and digital ethnography will comprise the approaches to explore the research questions. The evaluation has a two-pronged focus: to assess (1) how well the enhanced Innovate curriculum and museum/home learning experience supports Black families’ participation and (2) how well the separate phases of the study connect and operate together to meet the research aims. The study’s findings can help families and informal practitioners leverage evidence-based approaches to support Black youth in making connections between history and out-of-school contexts to model and develop their innovative engineering practices. Additionally, this work has implications for Black undergraduate students who will develop skills through their mentorship and researcher roles, studying cultural practices and learning experiences. The research study and findings can inform the design of future museum/home learning programs and research opportunities for Black learners in informal learning spaces.
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 research investigates how eight undergraduate African American women in science, math, and engineering (SME) majors accessed cultural capital and informal science learning opportunities from preschool to college. It uses the multiple case study methodological approach and cultural capital as frameworks to better understand the participants’ opportunities to engage in informal science learning or free-choice learning. The article demonstrates that African American women have access to cultural capital and informal science learning inside and outside of home and school environments in P-16
Xraise provides experiences that empower individuals by making science familiar and accessible. Immersed with scientists themselves, we facilitate hands-on, minds-on activities that involve the direct exploration of physics phenomena. Our relationship with K12 students, educators and community partners provides us with a platform for exploring personal intuitions, developing understandings and fostering excitement in science.