The Colleges of Science & Engineering and Graduate Education, and the Metro Academies College Success Program (Metro) at San Francisco State University in partnership with San Francisco Unified School District and the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce develop an integrated approach for computing education that overcomes obstacles hampering broader participation in the U.S. science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workforce. The partnership fosters a more diverse and computing-proficient STEM workforce by establishing an inclusive education approach in computer science (CS), information technology, and computer engineering that keeps students at all levels engaged and successful in computing and graduates them STEM career-ready.
Utilizing the collective impact framework maximizes the efficacy of existing regional organizations to broaden participation of groups under-educated in computing. The collective impact model establishes a rich context for organizational engagement in inclusive teaching and learning of CS. The combination of the collective impact model of social agency and direct engagements with communities yields unique insights into the views and experiences of the target population of students and serves as a platform for national scalable networks.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Keith BowmanIlmi YoonLarry HorvathEric HsuJames Ryan
Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and programming has become a priority in our nation. In the United States, the STEM pipeline is considered "leaky" as many students disengage from STEM at various points during their lives. In particular, women, Latinos, and African Americans are more likely to disengage from the STEM pipeline. American students are less likely to earn STEM postsecondary and graduate degrees compared to other nations. As careers in STEM fields are expected to increase at a faster rate than other occupations, there is growing concern about the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Annette ShtivelbandAmanda Wallander RobertsRobert Jakubowski
This NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project, STEPs to STEM, will create a statewide STEM pipeline within an integrated program of community college education throughout the state prisons of New Jersey. The Pilot leverages a long-standing collaboration among education, government, and volunteer sectors including NJ-Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (STEP), all of whom commit to work together to accredit and ensure articulation (transferability) of the required STEM courses. The broadening participation challenge that will be addressed by this Pilot is to extend college-level STEM education to incarcerated persons, who are overwhelmingly minorities from the lowest socioeconomic levels of American society. Education in general and STEM education in particular equips students for high-level workforce readiness, offering improved quality of life for formerly incarcerated persons and their families and contributing to American economic success.
Technical Abstract:
Four major goals of the Pilot are: 1. consolidate and ensure articulation of STEM A.A. courses in NJ state prisons with a seamless path to B.A. study at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey; 2. begin teaching new accredited STEM courses and offering REU and internship opportunities to released students; 3. implement tracking of students in STEM courses while incarcerated and beyond, enabling a supplementary research goal to evaluate student and teacher performance in comparison with mainstream educational settings; 4. work with partners in business, government, non-profit, development, and public sectors to build a complete STEM pipeline with a long-term goal of enabling formerly incarcerated students to clear their records through education and workforce participation in STEM. Implementation of the goals will proceed as follows. Senior personnel from each of the cooperating institutions and a jointly-supervised postdoctoral trainee will negotiate the terms of accreditation and articulation across the state system with our partner, the lead accreditation institution, Raritan Valley Community College. Teaching of STEM courses by our established team of volunteers will commence as each course is accredited. Our industry and research partners will begin offering REU and training internships in the first summer. Educational research professional on the team will guide the design, implementation, and analysis of student and teacher performance. New partners will be brought in to the collective from the non-profit, business, and public sectors to extend the reach and impact of this initiative.
While interest in citizen science as an avenue for increasing scientific engagement and literacy has been increasing, understanding how to effectively engage underrepresented minorities (URMs) in these projects remains a challenge. Based on the research literature on strategies for engaging URMs in STEM activities and the project team’s extensive experience working with URMs, the project team developed a citizen science model tailored to URMs that included the following elements: 1) science that is relevant to participants’ daily lives, 2) removal of barriers to participation, such as
STEM learning is a process that unfolds through dynamic interactions over time and across settings. Formal education in schools is not the only—or necessarily the most significant—context for STEM learning.
While the term 'failure' brings to mind negative associations, there is a current focus on failure as a driver of innovation and development in many professional fields. It is also emerging from prior research that for STEM professionals and educators, failure plays an important role in designing and making to increase learning, persistence and other noncognitive skills such as self-efficacy and independence. By investigating how youth and educators attend to moments of failure, how they interpret what this means, and how they respond, we will be better able to understand the dynamics of each part of the experience. The research team will be working with youth from urban, suburban and rural settings, students from Title I schools or who qualify for free/reduced-price lunches, those from racial and ethnic minority groups, as well as students who are learning English as a second language. These youth are from groups traditionally underrepresented in STEM and in making, and research indicates they are more likely to experience negative outcomes when they experience failure.
The intellectual merit of this project centers on establishing a baseline understanding of how failure in making is triggered and experienced by youth, what role educators play in the process, and what can be done to increase persistence and learning, rather than failure being an end-state. The research team will investigate these issues through the use of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In particular, the team will design and evaluate the effectiveness of interventions on increasing the abilities of youth and educators in noticing and responding to failures and increasing positive (e.g., resilience) outcomes. Research sites are selected because they will allow collection of data on youth from a wide range of backgrounds. The research team will also work to test and revise their hypothesized model of the influence of factors on persistence through failures in making. This project is a part of NSF's Maker Dear Colleague Letter (DCL) portfolio (NSF 15-086), a collaborative investment of Directorates for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE), Education and Human Resources (EHR) and Engineering (ENG).
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.
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.
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.
The Wayne State University Math Corps is a mathematics enrichment and mentoring program that operates during summers and on Saturdays. The curriculum and the teach pedagogies in this informal learning program have documented success of supporting youths' mathematics learning as well as raising achievement levels in school. Through rigorous research and evaluation, this project seeks to analyze and understand the nature, extent, and reasons for Math Corps' success with youth learning in Detroit as well as the processes of program replication in three sites: Cleveland, OH; Utica, NY; and Philadelphia, PA. As such, this project will deepen understandings of program replication and of addressing the needs of youth in economically-challenged communities in order to promote mathematics learning.
The project's research studies will assess the multiple factors that make Math Corps successful with youth in Detroit and document the implementation of the program to the three replication sites. Research methods include discourse analyses, surveys, interviews, and pre/post-tests. The project will also conduct a retrospective evaluation of Math Corps based on quantitative datasets regarding both near-term and long-term youth outcomes.
This projects is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understandings of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Steve KahnStephen ChrisomalisTodd KubicaCarol Philips-BeyFrancisca Richter
The achievement gap begins well before children enter kindergarten. Research has shown that children who start school having missed critical early learning opportunities are already at risk for academic failure. This project seeks to narrow this gap by finding new avenues for bringing early science experiences to preschool children (ages 3-5), particularly those living in communities with few resources. Bringing together media specialists, learning researchers, and two proven home visiting organizations to collaboratively develop and investigate a new model that engages families in science exploration through joint media engagement and home visiting programs. The project will leverage the popularity and success of the NSF-funded PEEP and the Big Wide World/El Mundo Divertido de PEEP to engage both parents and preschool children with science.
To address the key goal of engaging families in science exploration through joint media engagement and home visiting programs, the team will use a Design Based Implementation Research (DBIR) approach to address the research questions by iteratively studying the intervention model (the materials and implementation process) and assessing the impact of the intervention model on parents/caregivers. The intervention model will include the PEEP Family Engagement Toolkit that will support 20 weeks of family science investigations using new digital and hands-on science learning resources. It will also include new professional development resources for home educators as well as and the implementation process and strategies for developing and implementing the Toolkit with families.
The proposed research focuses first on refining and improving program design and implementation, and second, on investigating whether the intervention improves the capacity of parent/caregivers to support young children's learning in science. Ultimately this research will accomplish two important aims: it will inform the design of the PEEP family engagement intervention model, and, more broadly, it will build practical and theoretical understanding of: 1) effective family engagement models in science learning; 2) the types of supports that families and home educators need to implement these models; and 3) how to implement these models across different home visiting programs. Given the reach of the home visiting programs and the increasing interest in supporting early science learning the potential for broad impact is significant. 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.