As part of an overall strategy to enhance learning within maker contexts in formal and informal environments, the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) and Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) programs partnered to support innovative models for making in a variety of settings through the Enabling the Future of Making to Catalyze New Approaches in STEM Learning and Innovation Dear Colleague Letter. This Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) will test an innovative approach to bringing making from primarily informal out-of-school contexts into formal science classrooms. While the literature base to support the positive outcomes and impacts of design-based making in informal settings at the K-12 level is emerging, to date, minimal studies have investigated the impacts of making design principles within formal contexts. If successful, this project would not only add to this gap in the literature base but would also present a novel model for bridging the successful engineering design practices of making and tinkering primarily found in informal science education into formal science education classrooms. The model would also demonstrate an innovative, highly interactive way to engage high school students and their teachers in engineering based design principles with immediate real-world applications, as the scientific instruments developed in this project could be integrated directly into science classrooms at relatively minimal costs.
Through a multi-phased design and implementation model, high school students and their teachers will engage deeply in making design principles through the design and development of their own scientific instruments using Arduino-compatible hardware and software. The first phase of the project will reflect a more traditional making experience with up to twenty high school students and their teachers participating in an after-school design making club, in this case, focused on the development and testing of scientific instrument prototypes. During the second phase of the project, the first effort to transpose the after school making experience to a more formalized experience will be tested with up to eight students selected to participate in two week summer research internships focused on scientific instrument design and development through making at Northwestern University. A two-day summer teacher workshop will also be held for high school teachers participating in the subsequent pilot study. The collective insights gleaned from the after school program, student internships, and teacher workshop will culminate to inform the full implementation of the formal classroom pilot study. The third and final phase will coalesce months of iterative, formative research, design and development, resulting in a comprehensive pilot investigation in up to seven high school physics classrooms.
Using a multi-phased, mixed methods exploratory design-based research approach, this 18-month EAGER will explore several salient research questions: (a) How and to what extent does the design & making of scientific instrumentation serve as useful tasks for learning important science and engineering knowledge, practices, and epistemologies? (b) How engaging is this making activity to learners of diverse abilities and prior interests? What can be generalized to other types of making activities? (c) How accessible is the Arduino hardware and coding environment to learners? What combination of hardware and software materials and tools best support accessibility and learning in this type of digital making activity? and (d) What types of scaffolding (for students and teachers) are required to support the effective use of maker materials and activities in a classroom setting? Structured interviews, artifacts, video recordings from visor cameras, student design logs, logfiles, and ethnographic field notes will be employed to garner data and address the research questions. Given the early stage of the proposed research, the dissemination of the findings will be limited to a few select journals, teacher forums and workshops, and professional conferences.
This EAGER is well-poised to directly impact up to 125 high school physics students (average= 25 students/class), approximately 7 high school physics teachers, 6-8 high school summer interns, nearly 20 high school students participating in the after-school design making club, and indirectly many more. The results of this EAGER could provide the basis and evidence needed to support a more robust, expanded future investigation to further substantiate the findings and build the case for similar efforts to bring making into formal science education contexts.
NatureStart Network brought together early childhood educators and environmental educators to support nature play, exploration, and inquiry for young children and their families within urban environments. Project partners included the Forest Preserves of Cook County and two established Head Start programs in the Chicago area, Mary Crane Center and El Valor. The foundation of the project was a series of three two-day professional learning sessions that took place over an eighteen month period. Through hands-on, collaborative learning and reflection activities, the participating educators
Science from the Start (SFTS) was a two-year early childhood program funded by IMLS, with matching funds from the Sciencenter. The goal of SFTS was to empower teachers, parents, and caregivers to do more science with their students and children. Although the SFTS program continues today,this final summary report describes the results of the initial two-year pilot project only.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Using a combination of Peg + Cat, an animated math-based PBS television series for preschoolers; professional development (PD); family engagement resources; and the existing infrastructure of a regional Head Start system, this project aims to increase participating educators’ and families’ comfort and engagement with mathematics.
Cañada College will implement the STEM 4 ECE program, which will engage early childhood education (ECE) students in activities to increase their understanding of a comfort with STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) subjects. Through partnerships with the San Mateo County Office of Education, the Redwood City Public Library, and with ECE and STEM faculty, the program will offer workshops, online tutorials, and one-on-one support to assist ECE students in using library research to incorporate STEM topics in their coursework. The program will also expand the role of the library to serve as a place for interdisciplinary faculty collaboration while providing STEM resources to groups that have historically had limited access to them, specifically in minority communities.
Brookfield Zoo will develop a model for formal and informal early childhood educators in the Chicago metropolitan area to promote children and family learning (nature play, exploration, and scientific inquiry) within urban environments. In collaboration with the Forest Preserve District of Cook County and the Mary Crane and El Valor Head Start centers in Chicago, Brookfield Zoo will train 80 early childhood educators in its established nature play curriculum; facilitate networking opportunities between participants and organizations; and host a two-day symposium for 150 early childhood educators at the end of the project. This partnership has built-in capacity for expansion within Chicago and throughout the region, and can serve as a replicable model for zoos, nature preserves, and Head Start programs throughout the country to increase opportunities children have to play, explore, and learn in nature as a basis for developing lifelong environmental stewardship.
The animated series PEEP and the Big Wide World (PEEP), developed by WGBH Boston, is designed to teach science and math to children aged three to five years old. WGBH recently completed a total redesign of the PEEP website that was intended make the site more accessible to Spanish-speakers, more supportive of extended informal science and math exploration, and more functional for users of tablets and mobile devices. This work included:
• The transformation of PEEP into a fully dual language website via the translation of all games and website text into Spanish and the debut of a new Spanish
Perot Museum of Nature and Science will expand its museum-based professional development offerings for Dallas-area teachers by launching, testing, and evaluating a scalable Perot Museum STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) Teacher Institute and Mentor Program. Participating K-12 teachers will attend a weeklong, intensive "Summer Academies at the Museum" designed to measurably improve the quality of formal science instruction in public, charter, private, and parochial schools by creating and sustaining a collaborative formal and informal STEM learning community. The museum aims to increase teachers' knowledge of science content as well as their competence, confidence, creativity, and consistency in science instruction through this program, and ultimately increase interest and engagement among their students in STEM subjects.