Diversity, Equity, Access and Inclusion (DEAI) work in museums is multifaceted, but typically approached from the perspective of external audiences and outcomes rather than a change in internal organizational culture. This article discusses findings from a research study examining what happened in five US science museums that were making a concerted, officially recognized effort towards internal change, and explores what those findings reveal about field-wide barriers to appreciable systemic change along with the impacts of the current status quo on marginalized staff. This study focused
This 4-year project addresses fundamental equity issues in informal Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning. Access to, and opportunities within informal STEM learning (ISL) remain limited for youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds in both the United States and the United Kingdom. However, there is evidence that ISL experiences can expand opportunities for youth learning and development in STEM, for instance, increase positive attitudes towards educational aspirations and future careers/pursuits, improve grades and test scores in school settings, and decrease disciplinary action and dropout rates. Through research and development, this project brings together researchers and practitioners to focus on the experiences, practices and tools that will support equitable youth pathways into STEM. Working across conceptual frameworks and ISL settings (e.g. science centers, community groups, zoos) and universities in four urban contexts in two different nations, the partnership will produce a coherent knowledge base that strengthens and expands research plus practice partnerships, builds capacity towards transformative research and development, and develops new models and tools in support of equitable pathways into STEM at a global level. This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The goal of this joint funding effort is to make transformational steps toward improving the knowledge base and practices of informal STEM experiences. Within NSF, Science Learning+ is part of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that seeks to enhance learning in informal environments and to broaden access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences.
This Equity Pathways project responds to three challenges at the intersections of ISL research and practice in the United States and the United Kingdom: 1) lack of shared understanding of how youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds perceive and experience ISL opportunities across national contexts, and the practices and tools needed to support empowered movement through ISL; 2) limited shared understanding and evidence of core high-leverage practices that support such youth in progressing within and across ISL, and 3) limited understanding of how ISL might be equitable and transformative for such youth seeking to develop their own pathways into STEM. The major goal of this Partnership is for practitioners and researchers, working with youth through design-based implementation research, survey and critical ethnography, to develop new understandings of how and under what conditions they participate in ISL over time and across settings, and how they may connect these experiences towards pathways into STEM. The project will result in: 1) New understandings of ISL pathways that are equitable and transformative for youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds; 2) A set of high leverage practices and tools that support equitable and transformative informal science learning pathways (and the agency youth need to make their way through them); and 3) Strengthened and increased professional capacity to broaden participation among youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds in STEM through informal science learning. The project will be carried out by research + practice partnerships in 4 cities: London & Bristol, UK and Lansing, MI & Portland, OR, US, involving university researchers (University College London, Michigan State University, Oregon State University/Institute for Learning Innovation) practitioners in science museums (@Bristol Science Centre, Brent Lodge Park Animal Centre, Impressions 5, Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) and community-based centers (STEMettes, Knowle West Media Centre, Boys & Girls Clubs of Lansing, and Girls, Inc. of the Pacific Northwest).
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. There are few empirical studies of sustained youth engagement in STEM-oriented making over time, how youth are supported in working towards more robust STEM related projects, on the outcomes of such making experiences among youth from historically marginalized communities, or on the design features of making experiences which support these goals. The project plans to conduct a set of research studies to develop: a theory-based and data-driven framework for equitably consequential making; a set of related individual-level and program-level cases with exemplars (and the associated challenges) that can be used by researchers and practitioners for guiding the field; and an initial set of guiding principles (with indicators) for identifying equitably consequential making in practice. The project will result in a framework for equitably consequential making with guiding principles for implementation that will contribute to the infrastructure for fostering increased opportunities to learn among all youth, especially those historically underrepresented in STEM.
Through research, the project seeks to build capacity among STEM-oriented maker practitioners, researchers and youth in the maker movement around equitably consequential making to expand the prevailing norms of making towards more transformative outcomes for youth. Project research will be guided by several questions. What do youth learn and do (in-the-moment and over time) in making spaces that work to support equity in making? What maker space design features support (or work against) youth in making in equitably consequential ways? What are the individual and community outcomes youth experience in STEM-making across settings and time scales? What are the most salient indicators of equitably consequential making, how do they take shape, how can these indicators be identified in practice? The project will research these questions using interview studies and critical longitudinal ethnography with embedded youth participatory case study methodologies. The research will be conducted in research-practice partnerships involving Michigan State University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and 4 local, STEM- and youth-oriented making spaces in Lansing and Greensboro that serve historically underrepresented groups in STEM, with a specific focus on youth from lower-income and African American backgrounds.
Trauma infiltrates all of society – including museums. For guests, the trauma may lie in the context of the visit or what they bring with them from their everyday lives. Staff can develop trauma through daily interaction with stressful content or secondary trauma through interaction with traumatized guests. During the COVID19 pandemic, trauma also developed from workplace issues regarding personal health safety and job security. This is a case study about how one museum educated itself about the presence and impact of trauma through exploration of a framework developed by the Trauma Responsive
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Aaron PriceLeila MakdisiGail HutchinsonDaniel LancasterMicere Keels
The ICBOs (Independent Community-based Organizations), a group of fifteen community representatives from communities historically excluded from the sciences, share results from eight years of community-led de-colonial participatory action research. We wrote this white paper to share our findings and recommendations with funders like the National Science Foundation. These findings, recently published in BioScience (https://doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biac001), along with preliminary results from our current research, and our lived experiences point towards a critical need to change the existing
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen PurcellBobby WilsonMakeda CheatomJohn AnnoniTanya Schuh
The KQED science news team began a study with Texas Tech University to find out whether stories aimed at generating “awe” would drive deeper engagement with news features. From a preliminary study the team learned people can feel experiences like connectedness and vastness, not only through images but through a written story. The team intended to write their own science stories through an "awe" framework, but the pandemic redirected the team's work, and halted testing of participants’ response to the articles, which would have required the use of Texas Tech's Psychophysiology Lab.
Here are
KQED, the Northern California PBS and NPR member station, and the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University have recently completed a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the project Cracking the Code (CTC): Influencing Millennial Science Engagement. The three-year grant provided funding for an unprecedented science media research initiative between science media professionals and science communication academics with the goal of identifying how best to engage younger, more diverse audiences with science media.
This report is the final process
KQED, the Northern California PBS and NPR member station, and the College of Media & Communication at Texas Tech University have recently completed a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for the project Cracking the Code (CTC): Influencing Millennial Science Engagement. The three-year grant provided funding for an unprecedented science media research initiative between science media professionals and science communication academics with the goal of identifying how best to engage younger, more diverse audiences with science media.
This is the final outcomes report.
KQED, a San Francisco based public media organization, is interested in broadening participation and attracting and engaging a younger and more diverse audience, especially millennials, for their science media. The KQED science team is one of the largest reporting teams in the West with a focus on science news and it’s YouTube series, Deep Look.
This is a summary of Cracking the Code: Influencing Millennial Science Engagement, a three year media research project supported by NSF. The project brought together KQED science media professionals, academic science media researchers from Texas
This is the third of three guides for media practitioners, evaluators and researchers about some of what was learned through the project Cracking the Code: Influencing Millennial Science Engagement. This guide focuses on steps for conducting media research and research protocals.
This is the second of three guides for media practitioners, evaluators and researchers about some of what was learned through the project Cracking the Code: Influencing Millennial Science Engagement. This guide focuses on ways to identify your missing audience.
This is the first of three guides for media practioners, evaluators and researchers about some of what was learned through the project Cracking the Code: Influencing Millennial Science Engagement. This guide focuses on possible practices for creating an audience research collaboration for media professionals, evaluators and communication researchers.