This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).
Research shows that Black girls and women, regardless of their academic achievements and STEM interests, often encounter academic under-preparation, social isolation, exclusion, and race-gender discrimination that negatively impacts their ongoing engagement and retention in STEM. This project will provide innovative, culturally relevant learning environments to middle and high school Black girls to counter these negative trends. Using hands-on coding and robotics activities, project participants will develop positive attitudes toward science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project emphasizes peer-mentoring by providing opportunities for Black female high school (assistant coaches) and Black college students (coaches) to serve as counselors and mentors to participants. Additionally, engineers, scientists, and executives from STEM industries will serve as mentors and share their experiences to broaden participants’ STEM career aspirations. The project is a three-year collaborative effort between the University of California Davis C-STEM Center, the Umoja Community Education Foundation, and the 66 affiliated California community colleges, industry partners, and school districts in California. Over three years, nearly 2,000 females will participate in the project.
Learning environments for Black girls and women led by other Black girls and women are referred to as “counterspaces” where they are free to engage in STEM in ways that value their identities while promoting STEM engagement, interests, and career aspirations. The project’s curriculum will follow a research-based, culturally relevant multi-tiered mentoring approach. The curriculum is designed to develop participants’ STEM content knowledge, critical thinking, and logical reasoning capabilities through meaningful connections to real-life applications using hands-on coding and robotics. A mixed-method longitudinal study will examine the impact on participants’ STEM outcomes, emphasizing contributing new knowledge on the viability of multi-tiered, culturally relevant mentoring for increasing equity in informal STEM learning (ISL). The program's effectiveness will be evaluated using longitudinal assessments of mathematics standards, computer science and robotics conceptual knowledge, logical and critical thinking skills, STEM school achievements, interests and attitudes toward STEM subjects, advanced STEM course-taking, involvement in other ISL opportunities, and leadership in STEM in one’s school/university and community. The project will test a locally based informal learning model with projects hosted by other K-12 and college partners.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.
The Council for Opportunity in Education, in collaboration with TERC, seeks to advance the understanding of social and cultural factors that increase retention of women of color in computing; and implement and evaluate a mentoring and networking intervention for undergraduate women of color based on the project's research findings. Computing is unique because it ranks as one of the STEM fields that are least populated by women of color, and because while representation of women of color is increasing in nearly every other STEM field, it is currently decreasing in computing - even as national job prospects in technology fields increase. The project staff will conduct an extensive study of programs that have successfully served women of color in the computing fields and will conduct formal interviews with 15 professional women of color who have thrived in computing to learn about their educational strategies. Based on those findings, the project staff will develop and assess a small-scale intervention that will be modeled on the practices of mentoring and networking which have been established as effective among women of color who are students of STEM disciplines. By partnering with Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances and local and national organizations dedicated to diversifying computing, project staff will identify both women of color undergraduates to participate in the intervention and professionals who can serve as mentors to the undergraduates in the intervention phase of the project. Assisting the researchers will be a distinguished Advisory Board that provides expertise in broadening the representation of women of color in STEM education. The external evaluator will provide formative and summative assessments of the project's case study data and narratives data using methods of study analysis and narrative inquiry and will lead the formative and summative evaluation of the intervention using a mixed methods approach. The intervention evaluation will focus on three variables: 1) students' attitudes toward computer science, 2) their persistence in computer science and 3) their participant attitudes toward, and experiences in, the intervention.
This project extends the PIs' previous NSF-funded work on factors that impact the success of women of color in STEM. The project will contribute an improved understanding of the complex challenges that women of color encounter in computing. It will also illuminate individual and programmatic strategies that enable them to participate more fully and in greater numbers. The ultimate broader impact of the project should be a proven, scalable model for reversing the downward trend in the rates at which women of color earn bachelor's degrees in computer science.
The Council for Opportunity in Education, in collaboration with TERC, seeks to advance the understanding of social and cultural factors that increase retention of women of color in computing; and implement and evaluate a mentoring and networking intervention for undergraduate women of color based on the project's research findings. Computing is unique because it ranks as one of the STEM fields that are least populated by women of color, and because while representation of women of color is increasing in nearly every other STEM field, it is currently decreasing in computing - even as national job prospects in technology fields increase. The project staff will conduct an extensive study of programs that have successfully served women of color in the computing fields and will conduct formal interviews with 15 professional women of color who have thrived in computing to learn about their educational strategies. Based on those findings, the project staff will develop and assess a small-scale intervention that will be modeled on the practices of mentoring and networking which have been established as effective among women of color who are students of STEM disciplines. By partnering with Broadening Participation in Computing Alliances and local and national organizations dedicated to diversifying computing, project staff will identify both women of color undergraduates to participate in the intervention and professionals who can serve as mentors to the undergraduates in the intervention phase of the project. Assisting the researchers will be a distinguished Advisory Board that provides expertise in broadening the representation of women of color in STEM education. The external evaluator will provide formative and summative assessments of the project's case study data and narratives data using methods of study analysis and narrative inquiry and will lead the formative and summative evaluation of the intervention using a mixed methods approach. The intervention evaluation will focus on three variables: 1) students' attitudes toward computer science, 2) their persistence in computer science and 3) their participant attitudes toward, and experiences in, the intervention.
This project extends the PIs' previous NSF-funded work on factors that impact the success of women of color in STEM. The project will contribute an improved understanding of the complex challenges that women of color encounter in computing. It will also illuminate individual and programmatic strategies that enable them to participate more fully and in greater numbers. The ultimate broader impact of the project should be a proven, scalable model for reversing the downward trend in the rates at which women of color earn bachelor's degrees in computer science.
Counterspaces in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are often considered “safe spaces” at the margins for groups outside the mainstream of STEM education. The prevailing culture and structural manifestations in STEM have traditionally privileged norms of success that favor competitive, individualistic, and solitary practices—norms associated with White male scientists. This privilege extends to structures that govern learning and mark progress in STEM education that have marginalized groups that do not reflect the gender, race, or ethnicity conventionally associated with
Computing fields are foundational to most STEM disciplines and the only STEM discipline to show a consistent decline in women's representation since 1990, making it an important field for STEM educators to study. The explanation for the underrepresentation of women and girls in computing is twofold: a sense that they do not fit within the stereotypes associated with computing and a lack of access to computer games and technologies beginning at an early age (Richard, 2016).
Informal coding education programs are uniquely situated to counter these hurdles because they can offer additional
Overlaying Computer Science (CS) courses on top of inequitable schooling systems will not move us toward “CS for All.” This paper prioritizes the perspectives of minoritized students enrolled in high school CS classrooms across a large, urban school district in the Western United States, to help inform how CS can truly be for all.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jean RyooTiera TanksleyCynthia EstradaJane Margolis
This award takes an innovative approach to an ongoing, pervasive, and persistent societal issue: women are still drastically underrepresented in computing careers. This project targets middle school-aged girls because it is a time when many of them lose interest and confidence in pursuing technical education and computing careers. This project will design, develop, and deploy a one-week experience focused on middle school girls that targets this issue with a novel combination of teaching techniques and technology. The project will use wearable computing devices to support girls' social interactions as they learn computing and solve technical challenges together. The goals of the project are to raise interest, perceived competence, and involvement in the computational ability of girls. Additionally, the project aims to increase a sense of computational community for girls that makes pursuing computational skills more relevant to their identities and lives, and that helps continued participation in computing. The project will deploy a one-week experience four times per year with a socioeconomically diverse range of campers. The project will also develop a 'program in a box' kit that can be broadly used by others wishing to deliver a similar experience for girls.
The planned research will determine if a one-week experience that uses social wearable construction in the context of live-action role play can use the mediating process of computational community formation to positively impact middle school girls' engagement with and interest in computation. Computational community is defined as girls engaging together in the process of learning computation, trading resources and knowledge, and supporting growth. Research participants will include 100 6th to 9th-grade girls. At least 75% of the participants will be either low income, first-generation college-bound, or underrepresented in higher education. Students will be recruited through the longstanding partnerships with title one schools in the Salinas Valley, the Educational Partnership Center, and in the Pajaro Valley Unified School district, where 82% of the students are Hispanic/Latinx, 42% are English Learners, and 73% are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The research questions are: 1) Does the proposed experience increase girls' self-reported competence, self-efficacy, and interest in computational skills and careers? and 2) Will the proposed experience lead to activity-based evidence of learning and integration of computational skills at the group social level? The project will use a mixed-methods, design-based research approach which is an iterative design process to rapidly collect and analyze data, and regularly discuss the implications for practice with the design team. Data will be collected using observations, interviews, focus groups, surveys, and staff logs. Quantitative data will be analyzed using frequencies, means, and measures of dispersion will be applied to survey data from both time points. Pearson correlation coefficients will be used to describe the bivariate relationship between continuous factors. ANOVAs will assess whether there are significant differences in continuous measures across groups. Qualitative data will be analyzed using a constant comparison method.
This Innovations in Development award 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.
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.
We found that the learners seeking out resources to teach themselves to code were generally college educated women who were motived either by the desire to be able to read and understand the code written by hired developers or the desire to become developers themselves. The importance of a female-focused learning setting was mixed; while most women acknowledged a more comfortable atmosphere created by such a setting, very few cited that as a primary reason for joining the group.
All learner participants in this study persisted through the ten weeks of the Women’s Coaching and Learning
In 2016, ETR received a National Science Foundation grant to study, under Principal Investigator Louise Ann (“Lou Ann”) Lyon, PhD, a newly formed, real-world organization dedicated to helping women in the workforce learn to write computer code. This project formed a partnership between a research team with experience in computer science (CS) education and learning sciences research and a newly fashioned practitioner team focused on building a grassroots, informal, volunteer group created to help women help themselves and others learn to write computer code. This research-practitioner
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
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
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