RISES (Re-energize and Invigorate Student Engagement through Science) is a coordinated suite of resources including 42 interactive English and Spanish STEM videos produced by Children's Museum Houston in coordination with the science curriculum department at Houston ISD. The videos are aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills standards, and each come with a bilingual Activity Guide and Parent Prompt sheet, which includes guiding questions and other extension activities.
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum will amplify its partnership with Hart Magnet School, a Title 1 elementary school in urban Stamford, Connecticut, by increasing exposure and access to the arts for first-fifth graders, their families, and educators. A new program model, leveraging the museum's artist exhibitions, will focus on technology and an inquiry-based approach to science. Students, educators, and families will be encouraged to see and think in new ways through on-site STEAM tours at the museum, artist-led workshops at Hart, teacher professional development, and afterschool family activities. Outside evaluators will work with the project team to develop goals and associated metrics to measure how the model of museum-school partnership can enhance student achievement, engage families more deeply in their child's school experience and community, and contribute to teacher professional development. The evaluator will also train museum staff on best practices for program assessment.
In partnership with early childhood service providers and elementary school systems, the Children's Museum of the Lowcountry will expand the reach of its programming to share its hands-on, play-based approach to STEM education with targeted children and educators. The museum will create a Power of Play curriculum with lesson plans that reflect best practices and focus on play-based activities to teach STEM concepts tied to grade level and state standards. The museum will train and support 40 teachers and educators from ten Head Start/First Steps early childhood centers and ten Title I elementary schools, and provide them with free Pop Up Tinker Shop (a museum on wheels) outreach visits. The trainings will build teacher confidence, promote best practices for play-based learning, support a community of practice, and enhance young learners' engagement, fascination, and attitude towards STEM. The Power of Play Curriculum will be published as a bound resource and shared with other children's museums and service providers.
Ruff Family Science is a project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) that aims to foster joint media engagement and hands-on science exploration among diverse, low-income parents and their 4- to 8-year-old children. Building on the success of the PBS series FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman, the project leverages FETCH’s funny and charismatic animated host, along with its proven approach to teaching science, to inspire educationally disadvantaged families to explore science together. The project is utilizing a research and design process to create resources that meet the needs of families
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. Informal STEM educational activities have proliferated widely in the US over the last 20 years. Additional research will further validate the long-term benefits of this mode of learning. Thus, elaborating the multitude of variables in informal learning and how those variables can be used for individual learning is yet to be defined for the circumstances of the learners. Thus, the primary objective of this work is to produce robust and detailed evidence to help shape both practice and policy for informal STEM learning in a broad array of common circumstances such as rural, urban, varying economic situations, and unique characteristics and cultures of citizen groups. Rather than pursuing a universal model of informal learning, the principal investigator will develop a series of comprehensive models that will support learning in informal environments for various demographic groups. The research will undertake a longitudinal mixed-methods approach of Out of School Time/informal STEM experiences over a five-year time span of data collection for youth ages 9-19 in urban, suburban, town, and rural communities. The evidence base will include data on youth experiences of informal STEM, factors that exert an influence on participation in informal STEM, the impact of participation on choices about educational pathways and careers, and preferences for particular types of learning activities. The quantitative data will include youth surveys, program details (e.g. duration of program, length of each program session, youth/facilitator ratio, etc.), and demographics. The qualitative data will include on-site informal interviews with youth and facilitators, and program documentation. This 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.
Project SYSTEMIC (A Systems Thinking Approach to STEM Ecosystem Development in Chicago) will apply systems thinking to a community-level STEM ecosystem development effort in one of Chicago's largest and most distressed neighborhoods. The project aims to broaden participation of African American and low-income Chicago Public School students (preK-12) in STEM learning opportunities. The proposed model of collaborative change for this project builds on the work of two coordinated collective impact initiatives--the Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative and Austin Coming Together, a network of local organizations committed to improving educational and economic outcomes for the community. A key feature of this project is that it adds innovative, interactive, visual problem structuring and solving strategies to highlight and uncover the systemic interdependencies that contribute to the BP challenge for African American youth. The project will convene a series of workshops to engage community stakeholders in the mapping of the STEM ecosystem. A broad and representative cross-section of community stakeholders will design and develop evidence-based STEM ecosystem organizing and implementation strategies. Key outcomes anticipated from this project are the development of a shared understanding, agenda, activities, and commitment to collectively address the underlying challenges of STEM access and participation for African American youth. The goal of this community-driven project is to develop a viable system model that elevates neighborhood voices, historically excluded from the problem-solving table and decision-making processes, to leverage existing assets, build local capacity, increase messaging and awareness of the value of STEM, identify needed new programs, and develop coordination/resource sharing mechanisms across partners to support implementation. The evaluation of this project will be grounded in systems thinking and culturally-responsive approaches that seek to understand the diverse perspectives of stakeholders while measuring progress toward project goals. Evaluation data will be used to assess the problem structuring process, to evaluate the organizational strategy designed to address the structured problem, and to support adaptive learning among stakeholders.
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 will develop and test intergenerational science media resources for parents that are participating in adult education programs and their young children. The materials will build on the research-based and successful children's television program, Fetch with Ruff Ruffman. The target audience includes parents enrolled in adult education programs who lack a high school diploma or are in English as a Second Language classes. These resources will support parents' engagement in science activities with their children both in the adult education settings as well as at home. Adult and family educators will receive professional development resources and training to support their integration of the parent/child activities. Project partners include the National Center for Families Learning, Kentucky Educational Television, and Alabama Public Television,
The goals of the Ruff Family Science project are to: (1) investigate adult education settings that feature an intergenerational learning model, in order to learn about the unique characteristics of adults and families who are enrolled in these programs; (2) examine the institutional circumstances and educator practices that support joint parent/child engagement in science; (3) iteratively develop new prototype resources meet the priorities and needs of families and educators involved in intergenerational education settings; and (4) develop the knowledge needed to create a fuller set of materials in the future that will motivate and support diverse, low-income parents to investigate science with their children. The research strategy is comprised of three main components: Phase 1: Needs Assessment: Determine key motivations and behaviors common to adult education students who are also parents; surface obstacles and assets inherent in these parents' current practices; and examine the needs and available resources for supplementing parents' current engagement in family science learning. Phase 2: Prototype Development: Iteratively develop two prototype Activity Sets, along with related educator supports and training materials, designed to promote joint parent-child engagement with English and Spanish-speaking families around physical science concepts. Phase 3: Prototype Field Test: Test how the two refined prototype Activity Sets work in different educational settings (adult education, parent education, and parent and child together time). Explore factors that support or impede effective implementation. Sources of data for the study include observations of adult and parent education classes using an expert interview protocol, focus groups, adult and family educator interviews, and parent surveys.
This one-year Collaborative Planning project seeks to bring together an interdisciplinary planning team of informal and formal STEM educators, researchers, scientists, community, and policy experts to identify the elements, activities, and community relationships necessary to cultivate and sustain a thriving regional early childhood (ages 3-6) STEM ecosystem. Based in Southeast San Diego, planning and research will focus on understanding the needs and interests of young Latino dual language learners from low income homes, as well as identify regional assets (e.g., museums, afterschool programs, universities, schools) that could coalesce efforts to systematically increase access to developmentally appropriate informal STEM activities and resources, particularly those focused on engineering and computational thinking. This project has the potential to enhance the infrastructure of early STEM education by providing a model for the planning and development of early childhood focused coalitions around the topic of STEM learning and engagement. In addition, identifying how to bridge STEM learning experiences between home, pre-k learning environments, and formal school addresses a longstanding challenge of sustaining STEM skills as young children transition between environments.
The planning process will use an iterative mixed-methods approach to develop both qualitative and quantitative and data. Specific planning strategies include the use of group facilitation techniques such as World Café, graphic recording, and live polling. Planning outcomes include: 1) a literature review on STEM ecosystems; 2) an Early Childhood STEM Community Asset Map of southeast San Diego; 3) a set of proposed design principles for identifying and creating early childhood STEM ecosystems in low income communities; and 4) a theory of action that could guide future design and research. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program supports new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This project will meet this goal through rigorous research and the broad implementation of an environmental science literacy professional development and learning program for informal educators and youth engaged in outdoor science programs (OSP). With growing support from the literature and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), much attention has been placed on creating and leveraging interdisciplinary science learning opportunities beyond science classrooms. As such, an estimated 300 residential OSPs currently exist in the United States. Unfortunately, the informal educators often charged with facilitating these deep and impactful science learning experiences often lack robust formal training in evidenced-based, age-appropriate environmental science content knowledge and pedagogy specific for the youth in their programs. This issue is often more pronounced in under-resourced and under-served programs and communities. This project will directly address these pervasive challenges in the field by not only providing much needed science focused professional development and resources to informal educators but also by specifically targeting and training informal leaders and educators serving youth in predominately rural areas, low-income communities, and underrepresented communities.
Approximately 200 OSP leaders at 100 OSPs around the country will participate in a week-long, intensive training in the professional development model at one of five regional residential leadership institutes. OSP leaders will then redeliver the training to the approximately 1,500 OSP educators/field instructors in their home institutions. The OSP educators/field instructors will then use what they learn through the professional development to facilitate the environmental science learning program (i.e., curriculum, field experiences, resources, pedagogy) to over 1 million youth (grades 3-8) enrolled in their residential outdoor science programs. In addition, a rigorous implementation study, efficacy study and evaluation will be conducted. The implementation study will investigate: (a) Which of the professional learning model practices were implemented and (b) What successes and challenges the programs faced implementing the model. The mixed methods efficacy study will explore: (a) if outdoor science programs contribute to the development of science learning activation and environmental literacy? and (b) what are the features of these experiences that are correlated with increases in science learning activation and environmental literacy. Approximately 25-35 youth will be randomly selected from each of 50 randomly selected sites to participate in the efficacy study. The data and findings from the research and evaluation produced by this project will contribute to a relatively sparse knowledge and research base specific to youth efficacy and implementation processes and practices across nearly 1/3 of the estimated 300 existing residential outdoor science programs in the United States.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. The National Association of Math Circles (NAMC) will convene the Math Circle-Mentor and Partnership (MC-MAP) Workshop in late 2016. The proposed MC-MAP workshop will build the field's understanding of the training content and mechanisms that enhance the knowledge and skill development of participants in Math Circles. The workshop will bring mentors from experienced Math Circle leaders together with novice Math Circle leaders to develop the expertise of the notice leaders and their group to develop their expertise in facilitating math circle activities and in organizing related events. The approximately 180 Math Circles currently operating across the nation enlist mathematics professionals to share their passion for mathematics with K-12 students, teachers, and the general public in contexts that emphasize exploration, problem solving and discovery. This initial conference and Math Circle trainings informed by this conference will help build a community of practice around Math Circles through which novice and existing leaders are connected, encouraged and inspired.
The MC-MAP workshop will include structured planning as well as guided observation and structured debriefing of a demonstration Math Circle sessions. The workshop design will be grounded in research related to effective adult learning and to discovery-based mathematics. The workshop will serve as a training prototype that will assist the National Association of Math Circles to identify effective training formats and materials for both experienced and novice Math Circle leaders. Pre- and post- conference surveys of Math Circle leaders will produce data to be used in planning and designing future trainings. The NAMC will share key findings from the workshop evaluation and workshop resources not only with its membership, but also with other mathematics K-12 outreach programs. Workshop materials will address recruiting and serving diverse participants in Math Circles, including girls and women, persons with disabilities, students from varied socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented minorities in STEM.
STEM Pathways is a collaboration between five Minnesota informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education organizations—The Bakken Museum, Bell Museum of Natural History, Minnesota Zoo, STARBASE Minnesota, and The Works Museum—working with Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) and advised by the Minnesota Department of Education. STEM Pathways (logo shown in Figure 1) aims to provide a deliberate and connected series of meaningful in-school and out-of-school STEM learning experiences to strengthen outcomes for students, build the foundation for a local ecosystem of STEM
This full-scale project addresses the need for more youth, especially girls, to pursue an interest in engineering and eventually fill a critical workforce need. The project leverages museum-based exhibits, girls' activity groups, and social media to enhance participants' engineering-related interests and identities. The project includes the following bilingual deliverables: (1) Creative Solutions programming will engage girls in group oriented engineering activities at partner community-based organizations, where the activities highlight altruistic, personally relevant, and social aspects of engineering. Existing community groups will use the activities in their regular meeting structure. Visits to the museum exhibits, titled Design Your World will reinforce messages; (2) Design Your World Exhibits will serve as a community hub at two ISE institutions (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and the Hatfield Marine Science Center). They will leverage existing NSF-funded Engineer It! (DRL-9803989) exhibits redesigned to attract, engage, and mobilize a more diverse population by showcasing altruistic, personally relevant, and social aspects of engineering; (3) Digital engagement through targeted use of social media will complement program and exhibit content and be an online portal for groups engaged in the project; (4) A community action group (CAG) will provide professional development opportunities to stakeholders interested in girls' STEM identity (e.g. parents, STEM-based business professionals) to promote effective engineering messaging throughout the community and engage them in supporting project participants; and (5) Longitudinal research will explore how girls construct and negotiate engineering-related identities through discourse across the project activities and over time.