The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), in collaboration with New York University's Institute for Education and Social Policy and the University of Southern Maine Center for Evaluation and Policy, will develop and evaluate a new teacher education program model to prepare science teachers through a partnership between a world class science museum and high need schools in metropolitan New York City (NYC). This innovative pilot residency model was approved by the New York State (NYS) Board of Regents as part of the state’s Race To The Top award. The program will prepare a total of 50 candidates in two cohorts (2012 and 2013) to earn a Board of Regents-awarded Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree with a specialization in Earth Science for grades 7-12. The program focuses on Earth Science both because it is one of the greatest areas of science teacher shortages in urban areas and because AMNH has the ability to leverage the required scientific and educational resources in Earth Science and allied disciplines, including paleontology and astrophysics.
The proposed 15-month, 36-credit residency program is followed by two additional years of mentoring for new teachers. In addition to a full academic year of residency in high-needs public schools, teacher candidates will undertake two AMNH-based clinical summer residencies; a Museum Teaching Residency prior to entering their host schools, and a Museum Science Residency prior to entering the teaching profession. All courses will be taught by teams of doctoral-level educators and scientists.
The project’s research and evaluation components will examine the factors and outcomes of a program offered through a science museum working with the formal teacher preparation system in high need schools. Formative and summative evaluations will document all aspects of the program. In light of the NYS requirement that the pilot program be implemented in high-need, low-performing schools, this project has the potential to engage, motivate and improve the Earth Science achievement and interest in STEM careers of thousands of students from traditionally underrepresented populations including English language learners, special education students, and racial minority groups. In addition, this project will gather meaningful data on the role science museums can play in preparing well-qualified Earth Science teachers. The research component will examine the impact of this new teacher preparation model on student achievement in metropolitan NYC schools. More specifically, this project asks, "How do Earth Science students taught by first year AMNH MAT Earth Science teachers perform academically in comparison with students taught by first year Earth Science teachers not prepared in the AMNH program?.”
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Maritza MacdonaldMeryle WeinsteinRosamond KinzlerMordecai-Mark Mac LowEdmond MathezDavid Silvernail
The National Museum of the American Indian, NY (NMAI-NY) contracted RK&A to conduct a two-phase formative evaluation of the museum’s upcoming Native New York exhibition. The study’s objectives for walk-in visitors and teachers were to understand their baseline knowledge, what piques their interest, potential barriers (confusion or misunderstanding), strategies to help make personal connections, and how/if they understand exhibition outcomes (such as appreciate who Native Americans are today and understand that Native peoples have powerfully shaped and defined New York’s geography, economy, and
The lack of equitable access to science learning for marginalized groups is now a significant concern in the science education community (Bell et al. 2009). In our commitment to addressing these concerns, we (the HERP Project staff) have spent four years exploring different ways to increase diverse student participation in our informal science programs called herpetology research experiences (HREs). We wanted the demographics of participants to mirror the racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic demographics of the areas where our HREs are held. To achieve this, project staff
Mongolia’s Darhad Valley and regions of Montana can be considered bioregions. A bioregion “encompasses landscapes, natural processes and human elements as equal parts of a whole” (BioRegions.org). Indigenous people live within both regions, and they respectively consider holistic interactions between landscapes, natural processes and humans. Both are faced with change related to developmental pursuits and globalism. Understanding and documenting language and mode of expression is an important way for community members to recognize the value of place and tradition, and how these things are
The Yellowstone Altai-Sayan Project (YASP) brings together student and professional researchers with Indigenous researchers and communities in domestic and international settings. 4 MSU and 2 tribal college student participants engaged research projects with their home communities in the western U.S.—Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux, Fort Berthold Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara—and with Indigenous communities in Mongolia Research was initiated with home communities in spring 2016, and with Indigenous researchers and herder (seminomadic) communities in the Darhad Valley of
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristin RuppelCliff MontagneLisa Lone FightBadamgarav DovchinTaylor ElderCamaleigh Old CoyoteJoaquin Small-RodriguezEsther HallTillie StewartKendra Teague
One common barrier to STEM engagement by underserved and underrepresented communities is a feeling of disconnection from mainstream science. This project will involve citizen scientists in the collection, mapping, and interpretation of data from their local area with an eye to increasing STEM engagement in underrepresented communities. The idea behind this is that science needs to start at home, and be both accessible and inclusive. To facilitate this increased participation, the project will develop a network of stakeholders with interests in the science of coastal environments. Stakeholders will include members of coastal communities, academic and agency scientists, and citizen science groups, who will collectively and collaboratively create a web-based system to collect and view the collected and analyzed environmental information. Broader impacts include addressing the STEM barriers to those who reside in the coastal environment but who are underrepresented in STEM education, vocations and policy-making. These include tribal communities (racial and ethnic inclusion), fishery communities (inclusion of communities of practice), and rural communities without direct access to colleges or universities. This project will create a physical, a social, and a virtual, environment where all participants have an equal footing in the processes of "doing science" - the Coastal Almanac. The Almanac is simultaneously a network of individuals and organizations, and a web-based repository of coastal data collected through the auspices of the network. During the testing phase, the researchers will implement the "rules of engagement" through multiple interaction pathways in the growing Coastal Almanac network: increases in rigorous citizen science, development of specific community-scientist partnerships to collect and/or use Almanac data, development of K-12 programs to collect and/or use Almanac data. The proposed work will significantly scale up citizen science and community-based science programs on the West Coast, broadening participation by targeting members of coastal communities with limited access to mainstream science, including participants from non-STEM vocations, and Native Americans. The innovation of the Coastal Almanac is in allowing the process of deepening involvement in science, and through that process increasing agency of community members to be bona fide members of the science team, to evolve organically, in the manner dictated by community members and the situation, rather than a priori by the project team and mainstream science. The project has the potential in the long-term to increase participation in marine science education, workforce, and policy-making by underrepresented groups resident in the coastal environment. Contributions by project citizen scientists will also provide valuable data to mainstream science and to resource management efforts.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Julia ParrishMarco HatchSelina Heppell
This innovative research project promotes the progress of science, enhances the national STEM workforce, and benefits society by helping to overcome the challenge of broadening participation of those who are underrepresented in STEM fields. Although many programs designed to broaden participation exist, few individuals in "STEM-disenfranchised" populations -- individuals who feel alienated, marginalized, or incapable of participating in STEM -- choose to make use of these opportunities, due mainly to their own self-identities. This project's focus is on three STEM-disenfranchised groups: 1) adults who have been recently released from incarceration; 2) youth who have been released from juvenile custody; and 3) refugee youth, and builds on existing science education programs. The research team will establish the "Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSiST)" -- with members from academia, workforce agencies, NGOs, and government agencies -- to explore how individuals who have an identity prematurely tied to failure in science might benefit from novel interventions that promote a shift of self-identity to becoming science learners, which will then lead them to explore STEM education and job training resources that already exist. Three novel interventions will involve drama activities, story- telling, and ecological restoration projects. This bold approach is designed to help these populations interweave their diverse ways of knowing with STEM workforce, higher education, and to become science-aware citizens, which will enhance U.S. leadership in STEM. ASSisT will create a strategic plan that can be interwoven with those of other NSF INCLUDES Alliances, and identify pathways to distribute outcomes to a national level. This work will provide pathways to bring other groups that are disenfranchised and who -- if motivated and directed -- could strengthen the STEM workforce and education tapestry.
Investments to broaden participation in science in the USA have supported abundant programs and resources, but few individual in "STEM-disenfranchised" populations -- individuals who feel alienated, marginalized, or incapable of participating in STEM -- choose to make use of these opportunities, due most significantly to their own self-identities. The proposed "Alliance to Strengthen the STEM Tapestry (ASSisT)" will carry out research on novel interventions that are designed to lead these individuals to avail themselves of the science education and training resources that already exist. The initial focus is on: 1) adults who have been recently released from incarceration; 2) youth who have been released from juvenile custody; and 3) refugee youth. Using a collective impact approach, ASSisT will carry out early-exploratory research to investigate how the project's novel interventions -- 1) ecological restoration, 2) story-telling/autoethnography, and 3) devised theater -- might shift participants towards self-identification and subsequent involvement with the STEM community. The Intellectual Merit of our approach is grounded in social science research, specifically, identity theory, social cognitive theory, and resilience theory. Using a one-group pretest-posttest design, qualitative research techniques will identify which elements are most critical to foster change, e.g., perceived competence in STEM subjects, congruence of self-perception with those in STEM, mastery of STEM workforce skills, and/or the importance of being a STEM-aware citizen. Broader impacts relate directly to NSF's call for greater STEM participation of women and underrepresented ethnic and socioeconomic minorities with impacts on the initial 30 cohort members for this pilot project. ASSisT will: create a common agenda; recruit cohorts of each STEM-disenfranchised group; design and implement research to test novel interventions; populate a STEM opportunities map; evaluate and analyze outcomes; articulate a strategic plan that can be interwoven with those of other NSF INCLUDES Alliances; and identify pathways to disseminate outcomes and benchmarks to a national level.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Nalini NadkarniJordan GertonDiane PatakiSydney Cheek-O'DonnellRussell Isabella
The Yellowstone Altai-Sayan Project (YASP) brings together student and professional researchers with Indigenous communities in domestic (intermountain western U.S.) and international (northwest Mongolian) settings. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, MSU and tribal college student participants performed research projects in their home communities (including Crow, Northern Cheyenne, Fort Peck Assiniboine & Sioux, and Fort Berthold Mandan, Hidatsa and Sahnish) during spring semester 2016. In the spirit of reciprocity, these projects were then offered in comparative research contexts during summer 2016, working with Indigenous researchers and herder (semi-nomadic) communities in the Darhad Valley of northwestern Mongolia, where our partner organization, BioRegions International, has worked since 1998. In both places, Indigenous Research Methodologies and a complementary approach called Holistic Management guided how and what research was performed, and were in turn enriched by Mongolian research methodologies. Ongoing conversations with community members inspire the research questions, methods of data collection, as well as how and what is disseminated, and to whom. The Project represents an ongoing relationship with and between Indigenous communities in two comparable bioregions*: the Big Sky of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and the Eternal Blue Sky of Northern Mongolia.
*A ‘bioregion’ encompasses landscapes, natural processes and human elements as equal parts of the whole (see http://bioregions.org/).
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Kristin RuppelClifford MontagneLisa Lone Fight
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
A frequently missing element in environmental education programs is a concerted effort by communities, organizations, government, and academic stakeholders to build meaningful partnerships and cultivate informal science learning opportunities via public participation in environmental research. This collaborative approach not only makes scientific information more readily available, it also engages community members in the processes of scientific inquiry, synthesis, data interpretation, and the translation of results into action. This project will build a co-created citizen science program coupled with a peer education model and an extensive communication of results to increase environmental STEM literacy. The project targets historically underrepresented populations that are likely to be disproportionately impacted by climate, water scarcity, and food security. Based upon past needs assessments in the targeted communities, gardens irrigated by harvested rainwater will become hubs for environmental STEM education and research. For this project, gardens irrigated by harvested rainwater will serve as hubs for environmental literacy education efforts. Researchers from the University of Arizona and Sonora Environmental Research Institute will work alongside community environmental health workers, who will then train families residing in environmentally compromised areas (urban and rural) on how to monitor their soil, plant, and harvested water quality. The project aims to: (1) co-produce environmental monitoring, exposure, and risk data in a form that will be directly relevant to the participants' lives, (2) increase the community's involvement in environmental decision-making, and (3) improve environmental STEM literacy and learning in underserved rural and urban communities. The project will investigate and gather extensive quantitative and quantitative data to understand how: (1) participation in a co-created citizen science project enhances a participant's overall environmental STEM literacy; (2) a peer-education model coupled with a co-created citizen science program affects participation of historically underrepresented groups in citizen science; and (3) the environmental monitoring approach influences the participant's environmental health learning outcomes and understanding of the scientific method. In parallel, this project will evaluate the role of local-based knowledge mediators and different mechanisms to communicate results. These findings will advance the fields of informal science education, environmental science, and risk communication. Concomitantly, the project will facilitate the co-generation of a robust dataset that will not only inform guidelines and recommendations for harvested rainwater use, it will build capacity in underserved communities and inform the safe and sustainable production of food sources. This research effort is especially critical for populations in arid and semiarid environments, which account for ~40% of the global land area and are inhabited by one-third of the world's population. This program will be available in English and Spanish and can truly democratize environmental STEM research and policy. This project 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.
As part of its National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico (the Trust) hired Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to evaluate its Citizen Science Project. The goal of the study was to measure the project’s success against an Impact Framework, the organizing framework NSF requires for evaluation. During the life of the project, an Impact Framework serves several functions, including to (1) articulate the project goals for the NSF proposal; (2) act as a roadmap for the Trust to align project practices with the impact it intends to achieve on specific
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. This proposed effort embraces broad participation by the three Ute tribes, History Colorado, and scientists in the field of archaeology to investigate and integrate traditional ecological knowledge and contemporary Western science. The project will preserve knowledge from the Ute peoples of Colorado and Utah, including traditional technology, ethnobotany, engineering and math. Results from this project will inform educational efforts in similar communities.
This project will build on the long-standing collaborations between History Colorado (HC), the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and Ute Indian Tribe, Uintah & Ouray Reservation, and the Dominguez Archaeological Research Group DARG). HC will implement and evaluate a regional informal learning collaboration focused on Ute traditional and contemporary STEM knowledge serving over 128,000 learners through tribal programs, local history museums and educational networks. This project will advance the understanding of integrated knowledge and the role of Ute people as STEM learners and practitioners. This Informal Science Learning project will increase lifelong STEM learning in rural communities and create a replicable model for collaboration among tribes, history museums, and scientists.