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.
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.
Described by Wohlwend, Peppler, Keune and Thompson (2017) as “a range of activities that blend design and technology, including textile crafts, robotics, electronics, digital fabrication, mechanical repair or creation, tinkering with everyday appliances, digital storytelling, arts and crafts—in short, fabricating with new technologies to create almost anything” (p. 445), making can open new possibilities for applied, interdisciplinary learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Martin, 2015), in ways that decenter and democratize access to ideas, and promote the construction
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jill CastekMichelle Schira HagermanRebecca Woodland
Tinkering is an approach to learning increasingly adopted within informal learning settings to engage people with STEM learning (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). It builds on ideas in inquiry-based pedagogy and exploits some of the most engaging and motivational elements of learner-centered, immersive and hands-on learning approaches to develop 21st century skills such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, problem solving, communication, responsibility, self-confidence, digital literacy and entrepreneurship. In a Tinkering activity, the learner is presented with
The making and tinkering movement has become increasingly mainstream over the past decade, pioneered in part through the popularity of magazines like `Make', events such as Maker Faire and DIY websites including `Instructables'. Science centres and museums have been developing their own ideas, notably the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium. In this commentary piece, we reflect on why this movement has a strong appeal for the Life Science Centre in Newcastle upon Tyne and why we are in the process of developing a new making and tinkering space to help us enact our centre's vision to `Enrich
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 project will develop and research, as a feasibility study, a series of art-inclusive, pop-up Science, Art, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEAM) makerspaces in a high-poverty, primarily rural county in Oklahoma. A makerspace is a collaborative work space inside a library, school or other community space for making, learning, exploring and sharing that uses high tech to low tech tools. The makerspaces will be temporary workshops that are developed through a community planning process that assesses the needs and interests of citizen stakeholders. Scientists, artists and other experts will work together with the community to design a series of thematic pop-up makerspace sessions. The project builds a collaborative infrastructure and capacity for small and rural communities by bringing together resource providers and experts to identify and design science-oriented challenges. Long-term benefits for participants include sustained focus on new approaches for civic engagement through STEAM-driven making which could foster new role identities pertaining to science and art. The project deliverables include: (1) a theoretically informed model to build a community's capacity to collaborate toward fostering civic engagement through science-oriented pop-up makerspaces, (2) Pop-Up STEAM Studio makerspaces, (3) training for pop-up facilitators, and (4) visual documentation panels and web-based digital stories to communicate progress and process.
Project research will enhance knowledge-building of the process of developing a science-oriented community challenge that embraces STEAM and making. A key contribution of the proposed project will be the generation of insights into how community members establish consensus around the joint goal of designing, documenting, and facilitating integrated art and science making activities to address and communicate the challenge. Research will focus on the roles participants take when engaging in the making process through an identity-based model of motivated action. Analysis of advisory board meeting artifacts and focus group data will allow the researchers to identify processes of negotiation and consensus building at the collective level and in relation to each issue to which the group attends. Emergent themes (such as negotiation, shared learning, idea or project revisions, diverse perspectives coming to consensus, etc.) will be examined across individual and group units of analysis, from all data sources, and through the congruent theoretical lenses of role identity theory and negotiated learning pedagogy. The research outcomes should inform efforts to build infrastructure and capacity of community resources by providing a model for developing collaborative pop-up makerspaces.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sheri VasindaJoanna GarnerStephanie HathcockRebecca Brienen
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 will conduct a feasibility study of an informal youth STEM learning program. High school students from under served communities in New York City will use existing historical, cultural and environmental data to investigate selected UNESCO World Heritage sites. Participants will apply the skills and knowledge they have developed from their analysis of the UNESCO sites and apply them to their local communities. Participants will identify, map, and analyze their own community heritage sites, using relevant citizen science, environmental and cultural data. Throughout the program, the project will involve participants in maker-related activities. Participants will design devices to collect data, explore variables through model making, and communicate findings through models and artistic forms with the to spur both individual and community action for selected heritage sites.
The project will be implemented as a 9-month weekly after school program in Long Island City, New York. Most students from the school will be from low-income families and are youth of color. The research the question for the study is "How does access to STEM increase for historically underrepresented youth populations when culturally relevant curriculum connects citizen science and making practices?" During the first phase of the program, participants will engage with core STEM concepts and making/design processes through an engaging curriculum that explores damaged UNESCO World Heritage Sites. During the second phase, youth will identify, map, and plan enhancements for their own community heritage sites or environmental landmarks. A condensed version of the program will be piloted in the summer with youth from across the city. The Educational Development Corporation will conduct a process and summative evaluation of the project. Process evaluation, which will provide ongoing feedback to the project team, will include document review, observation of program implementation, and interviews with project partners. Summative evaluation will continue these methods, supplemented by pre- and post-participation participant surveys and focus-groups. Validated survey instruments, such as the Growth Mindset Scale, and the Common Instrument Suite (PEAR Institute) will be used. Resources from research and program practices will be disseminated through publications and conference presentations to the education research community, global learning and design fields, and practitioners from after school and other informal learning environments. Participants will share project results with their communities.
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.
“Tinkering EU: Building Science Capital for All” aims to develop activities and resources that support a learner-centred culture, improve science education and develop 21st century skills - all of which are fundamental for active citizenship, employability, and social inclusion. To do this, it adopts ‘Tinkering’, an innovative pedagogy developed in the USA, which is used by museums, and has proven able to create a lifelong engagement with science for everyone. Tinkering works particularly well for people who argue that “they are not good at science” or are disaffected from any formal teaching and learning process. It can be a powerful tool to tackle disadvantage. The project integrates Tinkering into the school curriculum to develop the science capital of disadvantaged youth through the use of museums. It addresses students from 8 to 14 years old (primary and junior high schools).
Coordinator: National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci
Partners:
University of Cambridge – UK
NEMO Science Museum – The Netherlands
Science Gallery Dublin – Ireland
CosmoCaixa – Spain
Science Center Network – Austria
NOESIS – Greece
This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot (named ALCSE-INCLUDES) project will develop and implement an innovative computer science (CS) education model that will provide all 8th grade students in 3 districts in Alabama's 'Black Belt' with exciting and structured hands-on activities intended to make CS learning enjoyable. The course will use an educational style called "learning CS by making" where students will create a CS-based product (such as a robot) and understand the concepts that make the product work. This hands-on approach has the potential to motivate diverse student populations to pursue higher level CS courses and related disciplines during and after high school, and to join the CS workforce, which is currently in need of more qualified workers.
ALCSE-INCLUDES Launch Pilot will unite the efforts of higher education institutions, K-12 officials, Computer Science (CS)-related industry, and community organizations to pursue a common agenda: To develop, implement, study, and evaluate a scalable and sustainable prototype for CS education at the middle school level in the Alabama Black Belt (ABB) region. The ABB is a region with a large African-American, low-income population; thus, the program will target individuals who have traditionally had little access to CS education. The prototype for CS education will be piloted with 8th grade students in 3 ABB schools, using a set of coordinated and mutually reinforcing activities that will draw from the strengths of all members of the ALCSE Alliance. The future scaled-up version of the program will implement the prototype in the 73 middle schools that comprise ALL 19 school districts of the ABB. The program's main innovation is to provide CS education using a makerspace, a dedicated area equipped with grade-appropriate CS resources, in which students receive mentored and structured hands-on activities. The goal is to engage ALL students, in learning CS through making, an evidence-based pedagogical approach expected to reinforce skills and promote deep interest in CS.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shaik JeelaniBruce CrawfordMohammed QaziJeffrey GrayJacqueline Brooks
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.
This project by California State University San Marcos and their collaborators will expand and continue to innovate on a pilot Mobile Making program with the goal of developing a sustainable, regional model for serving underserved, middle-school aged youth in twelve after-school programs in the San Diego region. Evaluation of the current Mobile Making program has documented positive impacts on participants' interest, self-efficacy, and perception of the relevance of Making/STEM in everyday life, and led to a model for engaging underserved youth in Making. The work will focus on implementing the program model sustainably at greater capacity by increasing the number of undergraduate activity leaders, after-school sites, and level of community engagement. The expanded Mobile Making program is expected to engage ~1800 middle school youth at 12 local school sites, with activities facilitated by ~1020 undergraduate CSU-SM STEM majors. The sites are in ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, with as many as 90% of students at some sites qualifying for free or reduced price lunch. The undergraduate facilitators are drawn from CSU-SM's diverse student body, which includes 44% underrepresented minorities. Outcomes are expected to include increases in the youth participants' interest, self-efficacy, and perception of the relevance of Making/STEM in everyday life. Positive impacts on the undergraduate facilitators will include broadened technical skills, increased leadership and 21st century skills, and increased lifelong interest in STEM outreach/informal science education. The program is designed to achieve sustainability through innovative means such as involving undergraduate facilitators via Community Service Learning (rather than paid positions), and increased community engagement via development and support of a community of practice including local after-school providers, teachers, Makers, and University members. Evaluation of the program outcomes and lessons learned are expected to result in a comprehensive model for a sustainable, university-based after-school Making program with regional impact in underserved communities. Dissemination to other regions will be leveraged via CSU-SM's membership in the California State University (CSU) system, yielding a potential statewide impact. The support of the CSU Chancellor's Office and input from a CSU implementation group will ensure the applicability of the model to other regional university settings, identify common structural barriers and solutions, and increase the probability of secondary implementations. This work 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.