The U.S. urgently needs the perspective and knowledge of females who are Latinx and African American in STEM fields. Providing early STEM interest pathways for these populations that are historically underrepresented in STEM fields is critical to creating gender equity in the STEM workforce. There are profound inequities in STEM fields for women of color that impact their interest and persistence in these fields. This Research in Service to Practice project will build important knowledge about early pathways for reducing these inequities by developing early interest in STEM. Gender stereotypes around who can do STEM are one of the sociocultural barriers that contributes to girls’ loss of interest in STEM. These stereotypes emerge early and steer young women away from STEM studies and pursuits. Exposing girls to role models is an effective strategy for challenging stereotypes of who belongs and succeeds in STEM. This project will explore how an afterschool program that combines narrative and storytelling approaches, STEM role models, and family supports, sparks elementary-age girls’ interest in STEM and fosters their STEM identity. The project targets K-5 students and families from underrepresented groups (e.g., Latinx and African American) living in poverty. The project will evaluate an inquiry-based, afterschool program that serves both elementary school girls and boys and explores if adding storytelling components to the out-of-school time (OST) learning will better support girls’ interest in STEM. The storytelling features include: 1) shared reading of books featuring females in STEM; 2) students’ own narratives that reminisce about their STEM experiences; and 3) video interviews of female parents and community members with STEM careers. A secondary aim of this project is to build capacity of schools and afterschool providers to deliver and sustain afterschool STEM enrichment experiences. Museum-based informal STEM experts will co-teach with afterschool providers to deliver the Children’s Museum Houston (CMH) curriculum called Afterschool Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (A’STEAM). Although A’STEAM has been implemented in over 100 sites and shows promise, to scale-up this and other promising afterschool programs, the team will evaluate how professional development resources and the co-facilitation approach can build afterschool educators' capacity to deliver the most promising approaches.
Researchers at the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at UTHealth will partner with Museum-based informal STEM educators at CMH, YES Prep, a high performing charter school serving >95% of underrepresented groups, and other afterschool providers serving mostly underrepresented groups experiencing poverty. Storytelling components that highlight females in STEM will be added to an existing afterschool program (A'STEAM Basic). This derivative program is called A’STEAM Stories. Both instantiations of the afterschool programs (Basic and Stories) include an afterschool educator component (ongoing professional development and coaching), a family component (e.g., home extension activities, in-person, and virtual family learning events), and two age-based groups (K-G2 and G3-G5). Further, the A’STEAM Stories professional development for educators includes training that challenges STEM gender stereotypes and explains how to make science interesting to girls. The 4-year project has four phases. In Phase 1, researchers, CMH, and afterschool educators will adapt the curriculum for scalability and the planned storytelling variation. During Phase 2, the research team will conduct an experimental study to evaluate program impacts on increasing STEM interest and identity and reducing STEM gender stereotypes. To this end, the project’s team will recruit 36 sites and 1200 children across Kindergarten through Grade 5. This experimental phase is designed to produce causal evidence and meet the highest standards for rigorous research. The researchers will randomly assign sites to one of three groups: control, A’STEAM Basic, or A’STEAM Stories. During Phase 3, researchers will follow-up with participating sites to understand if the inclusion of afterschool educators as co-facilitators of the program allowed for sustainability after Museum informal science educator support is withdrawn. In Phase 4, the team will disseminate the afterschool curriculum and conduct two training-of-trainers for local and national afterschool educators. This study uses quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data sources include educator and family surveys, focus groups, and interviews as well as observations of afterschool program instructional quality and analysis of parent-child discourse during a STEM task. Constructs assessed with children include STEM interest, STEM identity, and STEM gender stereotype endorsement as well as standardized measures of vocabulary, science, and math. Findings will increase understanding of how to optimize OST STEM experiences for elementary-age girls and how to strengthen STEM interest for all participants. Further, this project will advance our knowledge of the extent to which scaffolded, co-teaching approaches build capacity of afterschool providers to sustain inquiry-based STEM programs.
This Research in Service to Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
Computing and computational thinking are integral to the practice of modern science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); therefore, computational skills are essential for students' preparation to participate in computationally intensive STEM fields and the emerging workforce. In the U.S., Latinx and Spanish speaking students are underrepresented in computing and STEM fields, therefore, expanding opportunities for students to learn computing is an urgent need. The Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Puerto Rico will collaborate on research and development that will provide Latinx and Spanish speaking students in the continental U.S. and Puerto Rico, opportunities to learn computer science and its application in solving problems in STEM fields. The project will use a creative approach to teaching computer science by engaging Latinx and Spanish speaking students in learning how to code and reprogram in a music platform, EarSketch. The culturally relevant educational practices of the curriculum, as a model for informal STEM learning, will enable students to code and reprogram music, including sounds relevant to their own cultures, community narratives, and cultural storytelling. Research results will inform education programs seeking to design culturally authentic activities for diverse populations as a means to broaden participation in integrated STEM and Computing. This Broad Implementation 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, including multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
As part of the technical innovation of the project, the EarSketch platform will be redesigned for cultural and linguistic authenticity that will include incorporating traditional and contemporary Latin sound beats and musical samples into the software so that students can remix music and learn coding using sounds relevant to their cultures; and developing a Spanish version of the platform, with a toggle to easily switch between English and Spanish. Investigators will also develop an informal STEM curriculum using best practices from Culturally Relevant Education and Cultural Sustaining Pedagogy that provides authentic, culturally and linguistically rich opportunities for student engagement by establishing direct and constant connections to their cultures, communities and lived experiences. The curriculum design and implementation team will work collaboratively with members of Latinx diverse cultural groups to ensure semantic and content equivalency across diverse students and sites. Validating the intervention across students and sites is one of the goals of the project. The model curriculum for informal learning will be implemented as a semester long afterschool program in six schools per year in Atlanta and Puerto Rico, and as a one-week summer camp twice in the summer. The curricular materials will be broadly disseminated, and training will be provided to informal learning practitioners as part of the project. The research will explore differences in musical and computational engagement; the interconnection between music and the computational aspects of EarSketch; and the degree to which the program promotes cultural engagement among culturally and linguistically heterogenous groups of Latinx students in Atlanta, and more culturally and linguistically homogenous Latinx students in Puerto Rico. Investigators will use a mixed method design to collect data from surveys, interviews, focus groups, and computational/musical artifacts created by students. The study will employ multiple case study methodology to analyze and compare the implementation of the critical components of the program in Puerto Rico and Atlanta, and to explore differences in students' musical and computational thinking practices in the two regions. Results from the research will determine the impact of the curriculum on computer science skills and associated computational practices; and contribute to the understanding of the role of cultural engagement on educational outcomes such as sense of belonging, persistence, computational thinking, programming content knowledge and computer science identity. Results will inform education programs designing culturally authentic and engaging programming for diverse populations of Latinx youths.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Diley HernandezJason FreemanDouglas EdwardsRafael Arce-NazarioJoseph Carroll-Miranda
resourceprojectWebsites, Mobile Apps, and Online Media
The intent of this five-year project is to design, deliver, and study professional development for Informal Science Learning (ISL) educators in the arena of equity-focused STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) teaching and learning. While the strategy of integrating art and science to promote interest, identity, and other STEM-related learning has grown in recent years, this domain is still nascent with respect to a guiding set of best practices. Through prior work, the team has developed and implemented a set of design principles that incorporate effective practices for broadening participation of girls in science via science-art integration on the topic of the biology, chemistry and optics of "Colors in Nature." The continued initiative would impact the ISL field by providing a mechanism for ISL educators in museums, libraries and after-school programs to adopt and implement these STEAM design principles into their work. The team will lead long-term (12-18 months) professional development activities for ISL educators, including: 1) in-person workshops that leverage their four previously developed kits; 2) online, asynchronous learning activities featuring interactive instructional videos around their STEAM design principles; 3) synchronous sessions to debrief content and foster communities of practice; and 4) guided design work around the development or redesign of STEAM activities. In the first four years of the project, the team will work with four core institutional partners (Sitka Sound Science Center, Sno-Isle Libraries, the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District after-school program, and the Pima County Public Library system) across three states (Alaska, Washington, and Arizona). In the project's later stages, they will disseminate their learning tools to a broad, national audience. 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. 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.
The project has three main goals: (1) To support ISL educators in offering meaningful STEAM activities, (2) To create institutional change among the partner organizations, and (3) To advance the ISL field with respect to professional development and designing for STEAM Programming. The research questions associated with the professional development activities address the ways in which change occurs and focus on all three levels: individual, institutional, and the ISL field. The methods are qualitative and quantitative, including videotaped observations, pre and post interviews, surveys and analysis of online and offline artifacts. In addition, the project evaluation will assess the implementation of the project's professional development model for effectiveness. Methods will include observations, interviews, surveys and Website analytics and program data.