This research extends the investigator's prior NSF supported work to develop theoretical and empirical understanding of the double bind faced by women of color in STEM fields. That is, their race and gender present dual dilemmas as they move through STEM educational and career paths. The proposed study will identify gaps in our understanding, and identify some of the methodological problems associated with answering outstanding questions about the double bind. The major research question is: What strategies work to enable women of color to achieve higher levels of advancement in STEM academia and professions? The goal is to bring a clearer understanding of the issues which confront women of color as they pursue study of science and engineering, and what factors influence whether they leave or remain in STEM.
The work will employ a highly structured narrative analysis process to identify and quantify factors that have been successful in broadening the participation of minority women in STEM. The research design involves two separate tracks of work: 1) to conduct narrative analysis of primary documents associated with women of color in science; and 2) to conduct site visits and interviews to understand features of programs associated with successful support of women of color in undergraduate and graduate education. The first part is designed to inform the second, with the narrative analysis helping to identify features to look for in site visits and to use in development of interview protocols.
This research will focus on individual and programmatic factors that sustain women of color as they confront barriers to their career goals. It examines institutional strategies and support structures that help women of color ultimately to succeed, and social and pedagogic elements that influence their educational experiences. Although women of color have made some progress over the last three decades towards more equitable participation in STEM fields, the major efforts made to address this issue have not produced the desired outcomes; minority women continue to be underrepresented relative to white women and non-minority men. The factors that account for continued lower participation rates are not yet fully understood.
Beyond the Double Bind is designed to transform the intellectual basis for building future programs that will better enable women of color to be successful in STEM. While focused on women of color, the results will ultimately inform strategies and programs to expand the presence of all women and minorities in STEM.
The Math, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) outreach programs are partnerships between K-12 schools and higher education in eight states that for over forty years introduce science, mathematics and engineering to K-12 students traditionally underrepresented in the discipline. This exploratory study examines the influences that those MESA activities have on students' perception of engineering and their self-efficacy and interest in engineering and their subsequent decisions to pursue careers in engineering. The MESA activities to be studied include field trips, guest lecturers, design competitions, hands-on activities and student career and academic advisement.
About 1200 students selected from 40 MESA sites in California, Maryland and Utah are surveyed with instruments that build on those used in prior studies. Focus groups with a randomly selected subset of the students provide follow-up and probe the influence of the most promising activities. In the first year of the project the instruments, based on existing instruments, are developed and piloted. Data are taken in the second year and analyzed in the third year. A separate evaluation determines that the protocols are reasonable and are being followed.
The results are applicable to a number of organizations with similar aims and provide information for increasing the number of engineers from underrepresented populations. The project also investigates the correlation between student engagement in MESA and academic performance. This project provides insights on activities used in informal settings that can be employed in the classroom practice and instructional materials to further engage students, especially student from underrepresented groups, in the study of STEM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Christine HaileyCameron DensonChandra Austin
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of an interdisciplinary graduate training program in Cognitive, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience at Washington University in Saint Louis. Understanding how the brain works under normal circumstances and how it fails are among the most important problems in science. The purpose of this program is to train a new generation of systems-level neuroscientists who will combine experimental and computational approaches from the fields of psychology, neurobiology, and engineering to study brain function in unique ways. Students will participate in a five-course core curriculum that provides a broad base of knowledge in each of the core disciplines, and culminates in a pair of highly integrative and interactive courses that emphasize critical thinking and analysis skills, as well as practical skills for developing interdisciplinary research projects. This program also includes workshops aimed at developing the personal and professional skills that students need to become successful independent investigators and educators, as well as outreach programs aimed at communicating the goals and promise of integrative neuroscience to the general public. This training program will be tightly coupled to a new research focus involving neuro-imaging in nonhuman primates. By building upon existing strengths at Washington University, this research and training initiative will provide critical new insights into how the non-invasive measurements of brain function that are available in humans (e.g. from functional MRI) are related to the underlying activity patterns in neuronal circuits of the brain. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kurt ThoroughmanGregory DeAngelisRandy BucknerSteven PetersenDora Angelaki
Sustainability science, as described by the PNAS website, is “…an emerging field of research dealing with the interactions between natural and social systems, and with how those interactions affect the challenge of sustainability: meeting the needs of present and future generations while substantially reducing poverty and conserving the planet's life support systems.” Over the past 7 y, PNAS has published over 300 papers in its unique section on sustainability science and has received and reviewed submissions for many hundreds more. What kind of a science is sustainability science?
The concepts of sustainable development have experienced extraordinary success since their advent in the 1980s. They are now an integral part of the agenda of governments and corporations, and their goals have become central to the mission of research laboratories and universities worldwide. However, it remains unclear how far the field has progressed as a scientific discipline, especially given its ambitious agenda of integrating theory, applied science, and policy, making it relevant for development globally and generating a new interdisciplinary synthesis across fields. To address these
Comprehension of the nature and practice of science and its social context are important aspects of communicating and learning science. However there is still very little understanding among the non-scientific community of the need for debate in driving scientific knowledge forward and the role of critical scrutiny in quality control. Peer review is an essential part of this process. We initiated and developed a pilot project to provide an opportunity for students to explore the idea that science is a dynamic process rather than a static body of facts. Students from two different schools
The interview concerns the role of scientific books in the Italian society from the 19th century until today. Having played an important role in the formation of a national scientific community, science popularization has offered a ceaseless high-quality production during the past two centuries. On the other hand, even today scientific publications do reach only a narrow élite. In the author’s opinion, only the school system has the power to widen the public for science in Italy.
This is an efficacy study through which the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Denver Zoo, the Denver Botanic Gardens, and three of Denver's urban school districts join efforts to determine if partnerships among formal and informal organizations demonstrate an appropriate infrastructure for improving science literacy among urban middle school science students. The Metropolitan Denver Urban Advantage (UA Denver) program is used for this purpose. This program consists of three design elements: (a) student-driven investigations, (b) STEM-related content, and (c) alignment of schools and informal science education institutions; and six major components: (a) professional development for teachers, (b) classroom materials and resources, (c) access to science-rich organizations, (d) outreach to families, (e) capacity building and sustainability, and (e) program assessment and student learning. Three research questions guide the study: (1) How does the participation in the program affect students' science knowledge, skills, and attitudes toward science relative to comparison groups of students? (2) How does the participation in the program affect teachers' science knowledge, skills, and abilities relative to comparison groups of teachers? and (3) How do families' participation in the program affect their engagement in and support for their children's science learning and aspirations relative to comparison families?
The study's guiding hypothesis is that the UA Denver program should improve science literacy in urban middle school students measured by (a) students' increased understanding of science, as reflected in their science investigations or "exit projects"; (b) teachers' increased understanding of science and their ability to support students in their exit projects, as documented by classroom observations, observations of professional development activities, and surveys; and (c) school groups' and families' increased visits to participating science-based institutions, through surveys. The study employs an experimental research design. Schools are randomly assigned to either intervention or comparison groups and classrooms will be the units of analysis. Power analysis recommended a sample of 18 intervention and 18 comparison middle schools, with approximately 72 seventh grade science teachers, over 5,000 students, and 12,000 individual parents in order to detect differences among intervention and comparison groups. To answer the three research questions, data gathering strategies include: (a) students' standardized test scores from the Colorado Student Assessment Program, (b) students' pre-post science learning assessment using the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures for Academic Progress (science), (c) students' pre-post science aspirations and goals using the Modified Attitude Toward Science Inventory, (d) teachers' fidelity of implementation using the Teaching Science as Inquiry instrument, and (e) classroom interactions using the Science Teacher Inquiry Rubric, and the Reformed Teaching Observation protocol. To interpret the main three levels of data (students, nested in teachers, nested within schools), hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), including HLM6 application, are utilized. An advisory board, including experts in research methodologies, science, informal science education, assessment, and measurement oversees the progress of the study and provides guidance to the research team. An external evaluator assesses both formative and summative aspects of the evaluation component of the scope of work.
The key outcome of the study is a research-informed and field-tested intervention implemented under specific conditions for enhancing middle school science learning and teaching, and supported by partnerships between formal and informal organizations.
This research oriented project integrates the informal and formal science education sectors, bringing their combined resources to bear on the critical need for well-prepared and diverse urban science teachers. It represents a partnership among The City College of New York (CCNY), the New York Hall of Science (NYHOS), and the City University of New York Center for Advanced Study in Education (CUNY-CASE). It integrates the Science Career Ladder, a sustained program of informal science teaching training and employment at the NYHOS, with the CCNY science teacher preparation program. The longitudinal and comparative research study being conducted is designed to examine and document the effect of this integrated program on the production of urban science teachers. Outcomes from this study include a new body of research related to the impact of internships in science centers on improving classroom science teaching in urban high schools. Results are being disseminated to both the informal science education community (through the Association for Science and Technology Centers and the Center for Informal Learning in Schools, an NSF supported Center for Learning and Teaching situated at the San Francisco Exploratorium) and the formal education community (through the National Science Teachers Association and the American Educational Research Association).
The Science Career Ladder program engages undergraduates as inquiry-based interpreters (Explainers) for visitors to the NY Hall of Science. Integrating this experience with a formal teacher certification program enables participants to coordinate experiences in the science center, college science and education classes, and K-12 classrooms. Participants receive a license to teach science upon graduating. The approach has its theoretical underpinnings in the concept of situated learning as noted by Kirshner and Whitson (1997, Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic and Psychological Perspectives, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum). Through apprenticeship experiences, situated learning recreates the complexity and ambiguity of situations that learners will face in the real world. Science centers provide a potentially ideal setting for situational learning by future teachers, allowing them to develop, exercise and refine their science teaching and learning skills as noted by Gardner (1991, The Unschooled Mind, New York: Basic Books).
There is a well-documented shortage of science teachers in urban school districts. The causes of this shortage relate to all phases of the teacher professional continuum, from recruitment through training and retention. At the same time, the demographic composition of American teachers is increasingly out of synch with the demographics of the student population, raising concerns that a critical shortage of role models may be at hand, contributing to a worsening situation in urban schools. In the face of these challenges many innovative teacher recruitment and teacher preparation programs have been developed to augment traditional pathways to teaching. These programs range from high school academies for students expressing an interest in teaching to the recruitment and training of individuals making mid-life career changes. The CLUSTER program described above represents a new alternative. There are more than 250 science centers in the United States. Many of these have extensive youth internship programs and collaborative relationships with local colleges. Therefore, the proposed model is widely applicable.
The Ross Sea Project was a Broader Impact projects for an NSF sponsored research mission to the Ross Sea in Antarctica. The project, which began in the summer of 2010 and ended in May 2011, consisted of several components: (1) A multidisciplinary teacher-education team that included educators, scientists, Web 2.0 technology experts and storytellers, and a photographer/writer blogging team; (2) Twenty-five middle-school and high-school earth science teachers, mostly from New Jersey but also New York and California; (3) Weeklong summer teacher institute at Liberty Science Center (LSC) where teachers and scientists met, and teachers learned about questions to be investigated and technologies to be used during the mission, and how to do the science to be conducted in Antarctica; (4) COSEE NOW interactive community website where teachers, LSC staff and other COSEE NOW members shared lesson plans or activities and discussed issues related to implementing the mission-based science in their classrooms; (5) Technological support and consultations for teachers, plus online practice sessions on the use of Web 2.0 technologies (webinars, blogs, digital storytelling, etc.); (6)Daily shipboard blog from the Ross Sea created by Chris Linder and Hugh Powell (a professional photographer/writer team) and posted on the COSEE NOW website to keep teachers and students up-to-date in real-time on science experiments, discoveries and frustrations, as well as shipboard life; (7) Live webinar calls from the Ross Sea, facilitated by Rutgers and LSC staff, where students posed questions and interacted directly with shipboard researchers and staff; and (8) A follow-up gathering of teachers and scientists near the end of the school year to debrief on the mission and preliminary findings. What resulted from this project was not only the professional development of teachers, which extended into the classroom and to students, but also the development of a relationship that teachers and students felt they had with the scientists and the science. Via personal and virtual interactions, teachers and students connected to scientists personally, while engaged in the science process in the classroom and in the field.
Researchers have now acquired so much information about how the brain learns that a new academic discipline has been born, called “educational neuroscience” or “mind, brain, and education science.” This field explores how research findings from neuroscience, education, and psychology can inform our understandings about teaching and learning, and whether they have implications for educational practice. This interdisciplinary approach ensures that recommendations for applying these findings to instructional practices have a foundation in solid scientific research. It also ensures that teachers
In this interview, author and professor R. Keith Sawyer describes the importance of and interconnections among creativity, collaboration, and the science of learning. He explains that the older paradigm of schooling from 50 years ago where rote learning was predominant is no longer relevant in a knowledge-based society. We now have to prepare students for jobs that require adaptability, flexibility, and creativity. He endorses an approach to education that fosters a deeper conceptual understanding, especially through collaborative creativity. He maintains that true innovation usually comes