In collaboration with a wide variety of non-profit organizations (Project SYNCERE, Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, Chicago Freedom School, Chicago Botanic Garden, Friends of the Chicago River, Institute for Latino Progress), the University of Chicago-Illinois seeks to prepare 30 new science teaching fellows (TFs) while building the capacity of 10 master teaching fellows (MTFs) to be leaders in urban science education. The project will address the professional development of all participants through a three-pronged mechanism which emphasizes (a) content-specific information that focuses on Next Generation Science Standards, (b) culturally relevant practices, and (c) teacher inquiry/research. The work will be performed in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools.
Recent graduates, career changers, and in-service Master Teachers will be provided with (a) a broad range of science concentrations including biology, chemistry, earth and space science, environmental science, and physics, (b) a unique urban perspective on science education that emphasizes diverse learning assets and equity, and (c) professional development opportunities within a community of faculty, teacher-leaders, and non-profit organizations. TFs will be prepared for licensure while earning a Master's in Instructional Leadership: Science Education, learning to teach and examine their practice as it relates to teaching, and learning within specific communities. MTFs will learn to conduct practitioner research and lead teacher inquiry groups examining essential and enduring challenges in STEM teacher practice and student learning. Formative and summative evaluation will focus on analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data related to degree and licensure attainment, the various teaching practice activities (lesson plans, participant surveys, etc.), and progress in meeting the overarching project goals. In doing so, the project will advance knowledge and understanding of the role played by community-based partnerships of university faculty, school teacher-leaders, and local non-profit entities in enhancing teacher education and development, and the circumstances that promote their success. The results of this work will be presented at national meetings of the American Educational Research Association and the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maria VarelasChandra JamesCarole MitchenerAixa AlfonsoDaniel Morales-Doyle
The art/science nexus has historically been approached through a challenge of aesthetics versus mathematics, and processes of knowledge production. Notably absent in this debate are the social sciences that explore human experience and perception. In particular, what has not been addressed clearly in the literature is how reasoning about the human experience can be provoked when people encounter content that does not assert itself as neatly defined in either an art or science discourse. By reflecting on one case study of a public art/science installation, we explore new fields of knowledge
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John FraserFiona MacDonaldNezam Ardalan
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?.”
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maritza MacdonaldMeryle WeinsteinRosamond KinzlerMordecai-Mark Mac LowEdmond MathezDavid Silvernail
This project, “Global, Local, Coastal”, will be led by Groundwork Hudson Valley and Sarah Lawrence College, to integrate and expand the work of three award-winning environmental education centers in Yonkers, NY – The Science Barge, Ecohouse and the Center for the Urban River (CURB). Its primary objective is to prepare low-income students for the impact of a changing climate so that they can participate both personally and professionally in a world in which these issues are increasingly prevalent. It reaches an audience that is not well served by traditional programs and is most vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. Over the course of two years, the project will serve 600-700 middle and high school youth, primarily from the Yonkers public school system, through a new, integrated curriculum that teaches about these issues from multiple perspectives. Beyond its impact on students, the project will have a broader impact on people in our region. Together, the Barge, Ecohouse and CURB are visited by close to 10,000 people each year and new exhibits will reinforce key themes related to resiliency and adaptation. Other partners include NOAA’s Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve, Lamont Doherty, and the Center for Climate Change in the Urban Northeast. The state’s NY Rising Program and Yonkers Public Schools are key partners too. The project will be carried out in a community that has been severely affected by extreme weather in the last decade, including three hurricanes. Outcomes will help create “an informed society to anticipate and respond to climate and its impacts.” It also addresses NOAA’s goal of a “Weather-Ready Nation,” and “Resilient Coastal Communities and Economies.
People of color who live in low income, urban communities experience lower levels of educational attainment than whites and continue to be underrepresented in science at all educational and professional levels. It is widely accepted that this underrepresentation in science is related, not only to processes of historical exclusion and racism, but to how science is commonly taught and that investigating authentic, relevant science questions can improve engagement and learning of underrepresented students. Approaching science in these ways, however, requires new teaching practices, including ways of relating cross-culturally. In addition to inequity in science and broader educational outcomes, people of color from low income, urban communities experience high rates of certain health problems that can be directly or indirectly linked to mosquitoes. Recognizing that undertaking public health research and preventative outreach efforts in these communities is challenging, there is a critical need for an innovative approach that leverages local youth resources for epidemiological inquiry and education. Such an approach would motivate the pursuit of science among historically-excluded youth while, additionally, involving pre-service, in-service, and informal educators in joint participatory inquiry structured around opportunities to learn and practice authentic, ambitious science teaching and learning.
Our long-term goal is to interrupt the reproduction of educational and health disparities in a low-income, urban context and to support historically-excluded youth in their trajectories toward science. This will be accomplished through the overall objective of this project to promote authentic science, ambitious teaching, and an orientation to science pursuits among elementary students participating in a university-school-community partnership promise program, through inquiry focused on mosquitoes and human health. The following specific aims will be pursued in support of the objective:
1. Historically-excluded youth will develop authentic science knowledge, skills, and dispositions, as well as curiosity, interest, and positive identification with science, and motivation for continued science study by participating in a scientific community and engaging in the activities and discourses of the discipline. Teams of students and educators will engage in community-based participatory research aimed at assessing and responding to health and well-being issues that are linked to mosquitoes in urban, low-income communities. In addition, the study of mosquitoes will engage student curiosity and interest, enhance their positive identification with science, and motivate their continued study.
2. Informal and formal science educators will demonstrate competence in authentic and ambitious science teaching and model an affirming orientation toward cultural diversity in science. Pre-service, in-service, and informal educators will participate in courses and summer institutes where they will be exposed to ambitious teaching practices and gain proficiency, through reflective processes such as video study, in adapting traditional science curricula to authentic science goals that meet the needs of historically excluded youth.
3. Residents in the community will display more accurate understandings and transformed practices with respect to mosquitoes in the urban ecosystem in service of enhanced health and well-being. Residents will learn from an array of youth-produced, culturally responsive educational materials that will be part of an ongoing outreach and prevention campaign to raise community awareness of the interplay between humans and mosquitoes.
These outcomes are expected to have an important positive impact because they have potential for improving both immediate and long-term educational and health outcomes of youth and other residents in a low-income, urban community.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine Richardson BrunaLyric Colleen Bartholomay
The primary goal of Project TRUE is to increase the interest of high school students in pursuing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, by increasing their exposure to urban ecology research conducted with college mentors. Project TRUE also establishes a research and education partnership between the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Fordham University, to implement and evaluate the effectiveness of a tiered mentorship educational model. The model leverages both formal (Fordham) and informal (WCS) educational practices and expertise. This evaluation report from
This project takes an ethnographic and design-based approach to understanding how and what people learn from participation in makerspaces and explores the features of those environments that can be leveraged to better promote learning. Makerspaces are physical locations where people (often families) get together to make things. Some participants learn substantial amounts of STEM content and practices as they design, build, and iteratively refine working devices. Others, however, simply take a trial and error approach. Research explores the affordances are of these spaces for promoting learning and how to integrate technology into these spaces so that they are transformed from being makerspaces where learning happens, but inconsistently, into environments where learning is a consistent outcome of participation. One aim is to learn how to effectively design such spaces so that participants are encouraged and helped to become intentional, reflective makers rather than simply tinkerers. Research will also advance what is known about effective studio teaching and learning and advance understanding of how to support youth to help them become competent, creative, and reflective producers with technology(s). The project builds on the Studio Thinking Framework and what is known about development of meta-representational competence. The foundations of these frameworks are in Lave and Wengers communities of practice and Rogoff's, Stevens et al.'s, and Jenkins et al.'s further work on participatory cultures for social networks that revolve around production. A sociocultural approach is taken that seeks to understand the relationships between space, participants, and technologies as participants set and work toward achieving goals. Engaging more of our young population in scientific and technological thinking and learning and broadening participation in the STEM workplace are national imperatives. One way to address these imperatives is to engage the passions of young people, helping them recognize the roles STEM content and practices play in achieving their own personal goals. Maker spaces are neighborhood spaces that are arising in many urban areas that allow and promote tinkering, designing, and construction using real materials, sometimes quite sophisticated ones. Participating in designing and successfully building working devices in such spaces can promote STEM learning, confidence and competence in one's ability to solve problems, and positive attitudes towards engineering, science, and math (among other things). The goal in this project is to learn how to design these spaces and integrate learning technologies so that learning happens more consistently (along with tinkering and making) and especially so that they are accessible and inviting to those who might not normally participate in these spaces. The work of this project is happening in an urban setting and with at-risk children, and a special effort is being made to accommodate making and learning with peers. As with Computer Clubhouses, maker spaces hold potential for their participants to identify what is interesting to them at the same time their participation gives them the opportunity to express themselves, learn STEM content, and put it to use.
With the suite of environmental challenges faced by today’s society growing ever more imminent, the potential role of science and natural history museums as social institutions to promote environmental stewardship is being realized. A recent collaborative effort between the
EcoTarium in Worcester, MA and six other institutions across the country, the NSF funded City Science exhibit serves to introduce the public to new research on human-ecology interactions in urban settings. The project also supports the inclusion of Public Participation in Science Research (PPSR) elements in museum exhibits
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marissa GallantShana HawrylchakJacqueline DeLisa
Calabrese Barton, Tan, and Rivet provide valuable insights on supporting girls (and young people generally) as they negotiate the practices of formal science learning, establish learning identities, and engage with science. Analysis of rich ethnographic data shows how middle school girls created hybrid spaces between school and home that enabled them to draw on funds of knowledge in order to participate fully in school science.
Our Sky is a series of Out-of-School Time and museum educational programs that inspire an appreciation and understanding of Earth and Space Science (ESS) in a diverse population of children ages 3-10 and their parents, caregivers and educators. All resources are developed through a partnership between Boston Children’s Museum and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The vision for Our Sky is that children ages 3-10 and their adult caregivers will gain an appreciation for celestial objects and phenomena as a foundation for understanding of Earth and Space Science. All resources and activities will be designed to realize this vision, and to:
Serve a diverse range of audiences, with an emphasis on urban and low-income children and families;
Increase appreciation among diverse adults and children of the sky as an accessible science learning resource;
Share NASA resources with, and help develop foundational STEM skills in children;
Encourage adults to engage in and guide ESS learning experiences with children;
Inspire practical application of STEM skills by children and adults as they explore celestial objects together; and
Expand the capacity of museum staff and afterschool educators to engage families in learning STEM skills through ESS exploration.
Our Sky activities will result in:
A series of museum-based programs that incorporate NASA resources and ESS activities across a range of content areas; and
A series of new ESS-focused activities for the award-winning “Beyond the Chalkboard” afterschool curriculum that include NASA resources and will reach hundreds of thousands of children around the world.
Positive youth development and youth organizing are strengths-based approaches to the lives, needs, and contributions of young people (Damon & Gregory, 2003). These approaches privilege the voices of youth as they engage with issues in their communities and challenge institutions to respond. Few studies, however, have explored the role of positive youth development and youth organizing initiatives among immigrant youth of color. The challenging terrain of modern urban life requires these youth to navigate the political, economic, and legal demands confronted by their families; to understand
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Anthony de JesusSofia OviedoScarlett Feliz
Brookfield Zoo will expand its "Zoo Adventure Passport" (ZAP!) program for urban families with children ages 3-12 to serve additional families and increase informal science learning opportunities in the two Chicago suburbs of Cicero/Berwyn and Melrose Park. The program will serve as a gateway to new family experiences, teaching families and children about their local and world environments, and providing an opportunity for family enrichment in a community-centered learning environment. The zoo will use presentations and activities to enhance science learning, offer field trips that reconnect urban families with wildlife and nature, and provide STEM content through multigenerational science learning. Through this project, the zoo will increase family participation by 25%; improve student performance in school; increase family interest in and enthusiasm about science, nature, and the environment, and increase family participation in their children's education.