The Exploratorium will increase the museum community's understanding of the impact of a single science museum visit on "emerging adult" learners-young adults aged 18-29, who are not yet married and have no children. In particular, the study will attempt to understand how museum visits help young women build crucially important science self-confidence. The project will build on prior IMLS-funded research that found that a science museum visit mitigated a pre-existing gender gap in science confidence, or self-efficacy (SSE). The research team will replicate and investigate this effect further by observing male and female young adults during their visits, and over the course of the following three months. The study will gather data before, during, and after the visit through interviews, surveys, experience-sampling, and analysis of participants' social media posts. Results of this research will provide valuable information to the science museum community, as they seek to address the challenges of achieving gender equity in STEM education and the workforce.
This meta-article aims to explore the role of uncertainty in knowing in informal science learning contexts. Subjects (N=2591) were sixth-graders from four countries. In addition to the correct and incorrect questionnaire alternatives, there was a "don't know" option to choose if uncertain of the answer. The unique path-analysis finding showed that the role of motivation was uniformly positive on correct and negative on uncertainty of answers. In all contexts the number of correct answers increased, incorrect and uncertain answers decreased. Interestingly, although there was no more difference
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
This report summarizes the ideas and conversations of the CAISE Broadening Participation Task Force, which was led by the authors, along with James Bell, Principal Investigator and project director of CAISE (see informalscience.org/bp-task-force). The task force was instrumental in identifying key ideas and challenges to the field, providing edits and input into the report, developing and drafting the associated practice briefs, and piloting the materials.
Across the nation, many are undertaking efforts to significantly transform who participates in science, technology, engineering, and
This paper describes an NSF-funded study which explored the relationship between female-responsive exhibit designs and girls’ engagement. Across three participating science centers, 906 museum visitors ages 8 to 13 were observed at 334 interactive physics, math, engineering, and perception exhibits. We measured girls’ engagement based on whether they chose to use or return to the exhibits, opted to spend more time at them, or demonstrated deeper engagement behavior. Findings suggest that the design strategies identified in our previously developed Female-Responsive Design Framework can inform
This paper describes the development of a Female-Responsive Design Framework for Informal Science Education (ISE). The FRD Framework translates ideas from Culturally Responsive Pedagogy to discover and recommend pedagogical strategies that apply to females and design. This paper describes our synthesis of prior research about females’ social, historical, and cultural practices in STEM learning from a variety of fields. The paper further details our process of developing the FRD Framework with the help of museum practitioners, female youth, researchers, and experts from the fields of design
Gathering evidence for the long-term impact of programs for youth on their involvement in STEM studies and careers continues to be a challenge, especially for program interventions happening in earlier stages of development (e.g., elementary, middle, high-school years. Work that focuses on mechanisms for mitigating these challenges is important. The conference and associated activities aim to build a research action agenda that is rooted in practice to support better understanding of the long-term impacts of informal STEM programs for girls provided by cultural institutions, along with methods and approaches for measuring them. The project team will use a collaborative co-design approach to establish a STEM for Girls Research Alliance. The Alliance will include three levels of participants, with different levels of commitment: a core planning group (CPG) of 8-10 people, approximately 20-25 participating members (PM) and 50-60 interested stakeholder group representatives (SGR). The project team will utilize face-to-face meetings, digital engagement strategies, and surveys to develop the agenda and solicit multiple rounds of feedback and input. The CPG, consisting of leaders and representatives from state-based STEM for Girls organizations that are part of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) and members of the New York State STEAM for Girls Collaborative, will be responsible for setting priorities and guiding the action agenda. The PM will include representatives (educators and researchers) from informal STEM programs at cultural institutions that participate in the state-based collaboratives. The PM will be regularly consulted on important aspects of the action agenda that relate to their work. Finally, the SGR will include representatives from several audiences that are being served by or work with the participating members: girls and young women, parents, educators, funders, researchers and employers. The SG will be engaged via focus groups virtually or at national meetings to which these individuals attend.
To support broader involvement of professionals working in this sector, a comprehensive digital engagement plan using web and social media networks will be developed. The plan will utilize a consistent hashtag, #STEMeffect, allowing participants to follow the conversation across social media platforms. Social media platforms to be utilized will include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Snapchat and others. More than 60,000 people will be engaged via the networks of the NY STEAM Collaborative, NGCP, WSKG Public Media and project partners. A robust research action plan will position researchers to further explore the role of informal STEM education experiences in shaping the career choices of girls and identify where there are breaks in the hoped-for pathways to STEM college and careers. It also will benefit informal STEM organizations by yielding information that will help them to fine-tune their programs for girls and young women. Ultimately, contributions to the knowledge base will result in broadened participation of girls and women in STEM programs and careers. This work is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program as part of its strategy to enhance learning in informal environments and support innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings.
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:
Lynda KennedyAlicia SantiagoBabette Moeller
This Innovations in Development 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 Designing Our Tomorrow project will develop a framework for creating exhibit-based engineering design challenges and expand an existing model of facilitation for use in engineering exhibits. The project seeks to broaden participation in engineering and build capacity within the informal science education (ISE) field while raising public awareness of the importance of sustainable engineering design practices. The project focuses on girls aged 9-14 and their families and is co-developed with culturally responsive strategies to ensure the inclusion and influence of families from Latino communities. The project will conduct research resulting in theory-based measures of engineering proficiencies within an exhibit context and an exhibit facilitation model for the topic area of engineering. Based on the research, the project will develop an engineering design challenge framework for developing design challenges within an exhibit context. As the context for research, the project will develop a bilingual English/Spanish 2,000-square foot traveling exhibition designed to engage youth and families in engineering design challenges that advance their engineering proficiencies from beginner to more informed, supported by professional development modules and a host-site training workshop introducing strategies for facilitating family engineering experiences within a traveling exhibition. The project is a collaboration of Oregon Museum of Science and Industry with the Biomimicry Institute, Adelante Mujeres, and the Fleet Science Center.
Designing Our Tomorrow builds on a theory-based engineering teaching framework and several previous NSF-funded informal education projects to engage families in compelling design challenges presented through the lens of sustainable design exemplified by biomimicry. Through culturally-responsive co-development and research strategies to include members of Latino communities and provide challenges that highlight the altruistic, creative, personally relevant, and collaborative aspects of engineering, the Designing Our Tomorrow exhibition showcases engineering as an appealing career option for women and helps families support each other's engineering proficiencies. To better understand and promote engineering learning in an ISE setting, the project will conduct two research studies to inform and iteratively develop effective strategies. In the first study, measurement development will build on prior research and practice to design credible and reliable measures of engineering proficiency, awareness, and collaboration, as well as protocols for use in exhibit development and the study of facilitation at engineering exhibits, and future research. The second study will explore the effects of facilitation on the experience outcomes.
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.
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 exploratory Pilot study project brings together a diverse set of partners that include the Watertown Children's Theatre (WCT) which is west of Boston, and, from Boston College a team of science educators, learning science researchers, and positive youth development experts. The goal is to design and develop a project for middle school-aged youth. The pilot project, which integrates hands-on science learning experiences, experiments, and field trips with the student-led production of short plays, will engage youth in expressing their beliefs, passions, and their own identities about STEM by examining how the intersection of skills and practices used in both domains (science and theatre) can enable them to learn about science concepts, principles and methods as well as to develop science-focused identities. Middle-school youth will be engaged in a three-week summer program where they will be led by science teachers, playwrights, and high school students to conduct hands-on investigations in science in conjunction with developing original, ten-minute plays around a specific scientific theme relevant to their life experience, for example, the potential impact on their lives of heavy metals in water and poor air quality. After a science theme is chosen, the principal investigators will identify the big ideas that are important for youth to understand and be able to explain. Upon identification of the key science ideas, youth will then engage in pertinent science activities, visits to local sites, reading current news articles and then in identifying the local impacts and how the underlying science relates to those local impacts. The youth will perform their ten-minute plays at the end of the summer program. Following this showcase event, they will engage in additional science learning experiences and also revise their productions throughout the academic year in preparation for a youth science festival, where their creations will be performed by professional adult actors as a part of the Cambridge Science Festival taking place in the spring. The broader impact of the work focuses on broadening participation in STEM, specifically, the engagement of youth from under-represented populations in the sciences, such as African-Americans, Latinxs, and women with partner Boston Public Schools. The Pilot study will investigate the student learning and organizational dimensions of the model being developed.
The Boston College researchers will study youth's sense of purpose and identity toward science, particularly how youth's identity discrepancy changes through participation in the project. The work places youth voice at the center of the creation of STEM-based theatre plays. The theoretical foundation of the work is grounded in part in the concept of "path to purpose." The major research questions are: How do youth perceptions (interest, science anxiety, identity) toward science shift as they participate in the project? What is the residual impact on parents (family members) and youth on their discussions about science, and how does participation in the project impact those discussions? Research methods include surveys, interviews and observations. The external evaluation study will focus on understanding project implementation and progress toward meeting the project goals, in particular, how well the initiative works to establish a model for the informal STEM learning field that the team and others can apply beyond the Pilot study.
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.
Why do scientists volunteer to be involved in public engagement in science? What are the barriers that can prevent them participating in dialogue with society? What can be done to facilitate their participation? We report the outcomes of a series of focus groups conducted with the young scientists who volunteered in SISSA for schools (S4S), the Children's University program of the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste, Italy.
S4S is based on the contribution of PhD students as volunteers, has a participatory character, and is attentive to social and gender inclusion
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Simona CerratoValentina DaelliHelena PertotOlga Puccioni
resourceresearchGames, Simulations, and Interactives
It is a well-documented fact that women and minorities are currently underrepresented in STEM higher education degree programs and careers. As an outreach measure to these populations, we established the Hexacago Health Academy (HHA), an ongoing summer program. Structured as an informal learning environment with a strong youth initiated mentoring component, HHA uses game-based learning as both a means of health education and stimulating interest in careers in medicine among adolescents from underrepresented minority populations. In this article, we describe the 2015 session of the Hexacago
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Megan MacklinPatrick JagodaIan B. JonesMelissa Gilliam
Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) conducted an outreach partner evaluation for Design Squad Global (DSG). DSG is produced and managed by WGBH Educational Foundation. WGBH partnered with FHI360, a nonprofit human development organizations working in 70 countries, to implement DSG around the globe.
In the DSG program, children in afterschool and school clubs explored engineering through hands-on activities, such as designing and building an emergency shelter or a structure that could withstand an earthquake. Through DSG, children also had the chance to work alongside a partner club from another