The Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico is creating citizen science projects in five research areas (insect monitoring; coastal/river system management; bird communities; bat assemblages; and cultural resources) that allow 140 Hispanic residents of Puerto Rico (age 14 and older) to move along a continuum of research involvement from contributor to collaborator to co-creator. As citizen scientists engage in scientific research that measures the effects of urban development on the Manati River watershed in northern Puerto Rico, the project team is evaluating the degree to which participants show changes in science knowledge, skills, attitudes, communication, and behavior. The proposed project is accelerating the development of citizen science activities in Puerto Rico. New scientific knowledge generated by citizen scientists will have practical importance within and beyond the Manati watershed because Puerto Rico is undergoing rapid urban development, resulting in the loss of biodiversity and emergence of environmental problems such as lower water quality. Environmental data collected by citizen scientists will form an environmental database that permits long-term watershed monitoring and informs land use decision making.
Poster presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a project that is designed to engage Hispanic students in grades K-5 in STEM in afterschool programs within community-based organizations (CBOs).
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Patricial and Phillip Frost Museum of ScienceCheryl Juarez
Parent-child 'everyday' conversations have been suggested as a source of children's early science learning (Ash, 2003; Callanan & Jipson, 2001). If such conversations are important then it would be pertinent to know whether children from different family backgrounds have different experiences talking about science in informal settings. We focus on the relation between parents' schooling and both their explanatory talk in science-related activities, and the styles of interaction they use with their children. Families from different schooling backgrounds within one underrepresented group in
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Deborah SiegelJennifer EsterlyMaureen CallananRamser Wright
This article examines the construction of identity among African American adolescents. Narrative theories of personality help elucidate the complexity of success.
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Cynthia WinstonDavid Wall RiceBrandi BradshawLloyd DerekLasana HarrisTanisha BurfordGerard ClodimirKarmen KizzieKristin Joy CarothersVetisha McClairJennifer Burrell
Research indicates that young children, unlike adults, have a generalized tendency to view not only artifacts but also living and nonliving natural phenomena as existing for a purpose. To further understand this tendency's origin, the authors explored parents' propensity to invoke teleological explanation during explanatory conversations with their children. Over 2 weeks, Mexican-descent mothers were interviewed about question-answer exchanges with their preschool children. Analyses revealed that children asked more about biological and social phenomena than about artifacts or nonliving
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Deborah KelemenKrista CaslerMaureen CallananDeanne Perez-Granados
Despite the many hours students spend studying science, only a few relate to these subjects in such a manner that it becomes a part of their essential worldview and advances their education in a larger sense - one in which they make a connection to the subject matter so that it becomes a source of inspiration and occupies a formative position in their life. Using the hermeneutic/phenomenological sense of lifeworld as our being in the world, we explore questions of identity in the teaching and learning of science. We suggest that by taking the notion of identity in science to include students'
Deals with the success of the Rural Girls in Science Program at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington State, which uses science to address local issues through long-term research projects. Source of funding for the program; Components of the research projects; Factors which contributed to the success of the program.
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Angela GinorioJanice FournierKatie Frevert
In this paper I focus on the transition from everyday to scientific ways of reasoning, and on the intertwined roles of meaning-making dialogue and science content as they contribute to scientific literacy. I refer to views of science, and how scientific understanding is advanced dialogically, by Hurd (Science Education, 1998, 82, 402-416), Brown (The Journal of Learning Sciences, 1992, 2(2), 141-178), Bruner (Acts of Meaning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), Roth (In J. Brophy (Ed.), Social Constructivist Teaching: Affordances and Constraints (Advances in Research on Teaching
In the United States, African Americans are underrepresented in science careers and underserved in pre-collegiate science education. This project engaged African American elementary students in culturally relevant science education through archaeology and thereby increased positive dispositions toward science. While imagining what the lives of their ancestors were like, students practiced scientific inquiry and used natural sciences to analyze archaeological sites. The project helped to improve science literacy among African American elementary students through archaeological inquiry and
This article focuses on three approaches to STEM in out-of-school time that would be instructive for any organization seeking to develop STEM opportunities for teen girls. While Techbridge and Queens Community House focused on reaching populations most underrepresented in STEM—girls of color and those from immigrant and low-income families—the strategies they used could be applied to any population of adolescent girls.
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Harriet MosatcheSusan Matloff-NievesLinda KekelisElizabeth Lawner
This article reflects on the author's experience leading the 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) program, which aimed to create a "culture of STEM" for both participants and staff. The author describes the experience of the children, the training of staff, and places for improvement.
This paper sketches the context for participation in science by girls from historically underrepresented populations and offers a detailed description of Sisters4Science (S4S) and its personalized, girl-centered pedagogy. The S4S example suggests a need to complement current out-of-school science programs with lessons from girl-centered practice and research.