The Discovery Center at Murfree Spring, in partnership with six science centers and museums, will promote and invest in science education in rural communities with limited museum access. This coalition will work with two cohorts of rural school communities (12 total) and focus on engaging, learning from, and supporting rural school districts, teachers, families, and communities through relationship building, asset mapping, and the collaborative integration and implementation of museum resources. Additional activities include the production of publications, virtual presentations, and a virtual tool kit. The project will illustrate the ways in which museums can collaborate to support STEM and literacy at the K-2 level, enhance teacher self-efficacy, attitudes and beliefs, and engage family and community, strengthening services for Americans who live in the most rural areas.
The Louisiana Children’s Museum is developing a comprehensive set of resources entitled “Water Dialogues–Living with Water,” designed around its new exhibits and landscape resources, to strengthen the community’s understanding of the challenges associated with water management. They are creating a new field trip series and water-based science curriculum, “Water Pathways” as well as an outreach program, “Steward’s Ship,” to bring the program’s environmental messages to schools and camps. The museum will also conduct a professional development training series on science education for local educators implementing the state’s new science standards, in addition to a series of literacy workshops where children ages four to eight will write “how-to” books and “water journals.” To further spread the associated environmental and sustainability messages, they will organize an annual “Water Fest” program for the community.
The Jackson Hole Children’s Museum will expand its K–5th grade STEAM programs, which serve more than 1,300 students in Teton County School District #1. The STEAM programs provide inquiry-based, hands-on programming to all K–5 District students in accordance with the Wyoming State Science Standards. An additional 500 students are reached through homeschool groups, summer school, childcare and therapy organizations, and nearby Idaho schools. Each two-hour program opens with interactive, student-centered, scientific method lab stations. Students are then challenged to use newly acquired vocabulary and knowledge to complete a hands-on building project. The program is designed to contribute to increasing science and engineering literacy in the community and to support the development of students’ 21st century skills.
The Pensacola MESS Hall will create and deliver “Science Sprouts”—a four-session classroom program for kindergarten students, including related professional development for teachers. The program will focus on 10 underserved elementary schools in the community, providing students and teachers access to quality math, engineering, and science experiences. Trained museum educators will engage children in hands-on exploration while engaging teachers in effective methods to enhance classroom learning. The lessons will include a story followed by small group activities that reinforce key concepts. To increase the teachers’ comfort in program delivery and application to other curricular units, the activities will utilize common materials and connect to children’s literature.
The Discovery Center, operated by the United States Space Foundation, will partner with the Pikes Peak Library District to implement Small Steps, Giant Leap: STEM Adventures for Little Space Explorers, a free early literacy program designed for children ages 3-6 that seeks to engage the target audience of low-income and military families, populations currently underserved by the Discovery Center. The program is an interactive storytelling experience with an associated hands-on craft that occurs twice monthly, once in person and once virtually, and is designed to enable early learners to grow in literacy via the lenses of science and space exploration while developing vital social skills and self-esteem.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kevin Orangers
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Developing solutions to large-scale collective problems -- such as resilience to environmental challenges -- requires scientifically literate communities. However, the predominant conception of scientific literacy has focused on individuals, and there is not consensus as to what community level scientific literacy is or how to measure it. Thus, a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, “Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences,” stated that community level scientific literacy is undertheorized and understudied. More specifically, the committee recommended that research is needed to understand both the i) contexts (e.g., a community’s physical and social setting) and ii) features of community organization (e.g., relationships within the community) that support community level science literacy and influence successful group action. This CAREER award responds to this nationally identified need by iteratively refining a model to conceptualize and measure community level scientific literacy. The model and metrics developed in this project may be applied to a wide range of topics (e.g., vaccination, pandemic response, genetically-modified foods, pollution control, and land-use decisions) to improve a community’s capacity to make scientifically-sound collective decisions. This CAREER award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and the EHR CORE Research (ECR) programs. It supports the AISL program goals to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It supports the ECR program goal to advance relevant research knowledge pertaining to STEM learning and learning environments.
The proposed research will conceptualize, operationalize, and measure community level scientific literacy. This project will use a comparative multiple case study research design. Three coastal communities, faced with the need to make scientifically-informed land-use decisions, will be studied sequentially. A convergent mixed methods design will be employed, in which qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses are performed concurrently. To describe the i) context of each community case, this project will use qualitative research methods, including document analysis, observation, focus groups, and interviews. To measure the ii) features of community organization for each community case, social network analysis will be used. The results from this research will be disseminated throughout and at the culmination of the project through professional publications and conference presentations as well as with community stakeholders and the general public. The integrated education activities include a professional learning certificate for informal science education professionals and STEM graduate students. This certificate emphasizes high-quality community-engaged scholarship, placing students with partners such as museums, farmer’s markets, and libraries, to offer informal learning programs in their communities. This professional learning program will be tested as a model to provide training for STEM graduate students who would like to communicate their research to the public through outreach and extension activities.
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 project would expand the informal STEM learning field's understanding of how to use digital science media to increase STEM educational experiences and opportunities for English language learners. Across the U.S. there are significant STEM opportunity and achievement gaps for English learners with varying levels of English proficiency. This is at a time when the U.S. is facing a shortage of STEM professionals in the workforce including the life and physical science fields. This project aims to close these gaps and improve English learners' STEM learning outcomes using digital media. Within community colleges, there are multiple site-based programs to provide content to help English learners to learn English and to improve their math and literacy skills. Involving the state community college networks is a critical strategy for gathering important feedback for the pedagogical approach as well as for recruiting English learner research participants. The team will initially study an existing YouTube chemistry series produced by Complexly then produce and test new videos in Spanish using culturally relevant instructional strategies. The target audience is 18-34-year-old English learners. Project partners are Complexly, a producer of digital STEM media and EDC, a research organization with experience in studying informal STEM learning.
The project has the potential to advance knowledge about the use of culturally relevant media to improve STEM opportunities and success for English language learners. Using a Design-Based Implementation Research framework the research questions include: 1) what are the effective production and instructional strategies for creating digital media to teach science to English learners whose native language is Spanish? 2) what science content knowledge do English learners gain when the project's approach is applied to a widely available set of YouTube videos? and 3) how might the findings from the research be applied to future efforts targeting English learners? The project has the potential to significantly broaden participation in science and engineering. Phase 1 of the research will be an exploration of how to apply strategic pedagogical approaches to digital media content development. Interviews will be conducted with educators in 3 focal states with high numbers of English language learners (NY, CA, TX) to reflect on pedagogical foundations for teaching science to English learners. A survey of 30 English learners will provide feedback on the perceived strengths and weaknesses of a selection of existing YouTube chemistry videos. Phase 2 will create/test prototypes of 6 adapted chemistry videos. Forty students (ages 18-34) will be recruited and participate in cognitive interviews with researchers after viewing these videos. Based on this input additional videos will be produced with revised instructional strategies for further testing. Additional rounds of production and testing will be conducted to develop an English learners mini chemistry series. Phase 3 will be a pilot study to gauge the science learning of 75 English learners who will view an 11-episode chemistry miniseries. It will also identify gaps in expected learning to determine whether any further adjustments are necessary to the instructional approach.
This Innovations in Development 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kelsey SavageCeridwen RileyStan MullerHeather LavigneCaroline ParkerKatrina Bledsoe
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. This project will develop a national infrastructure of state and regional partnerships to scale up The Franklin Institute's proven model of Leap into Science, an outreach program that builds the capacity of children (ages 3-10) and families from underserved communities to participate in science where they live. Leap into Science combines children's science-themed books with hands-on science activities to promote life-long interest and knowledge of science, and does so through partnerships with informal educators at libraries, museums, and other out-of-school time providers. Already field-tested and implemented in 12 cities, Leap into Science will be expanded to 90 new rural and urban communities in 15 states, and it is estimated that this expansion will reach more than 500,000 children and adults as well as 2,700 informal educators over four years. The inclusion of marginalized rural communities will provide new opportunities to evaluate and adapt the program to the unique assets and needs of rural families and communities.
The project will include evaluation and learning research activities. Evaluation will focus on: 1) the formative issues that may arise and modifications that may enhance implementation; and 2) the overall effectiveness and impact of the Leap into Science program as it is scaled across more sites and partners. Learning research will be used to investigate questions organized around how family science interest emerges and develops among 36 participating families across six sites (3 rural, 3 urban). Qualitative methods, including data synthesis and cross-case analysis using constant comparison, will be used to develop multiple case studies that provide insights into the processes and outcomes of interest development as families engage with Leap into Science and a conceptual framework that guides future research. This project involves a partnership between The Franklin Institute (Philadelphia, PA), the National Girls Collaborative Project (Seattle, WA), Education Development Center (Waltham, MA), and the Institute for Learning Innovation (Corvallis, OR).