Informal STEM learning experiences (ISLEs), such as participating in science, computing, and engineering clubs and camps, have been associated with the development of youth’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics interests and career aspirations. However, research on ISLEs predominantly focuses on institutional settings such as museums and science centers, which are often discursively inaccessible to youth who identify with minoritized demographic groups. Using latent class analysis, we identify five general profiles (i.e., classes) of childhood participation in ISLEs from data
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Remy DouHeidi CianZahra HazariPhilip SadlerGerhard Sonnert
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Growth in the US Latinx population has outpaced the Latinx growth in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) degrees and occupation, further widening the ethnic gap in STEM. Mathematics has often identified as a bottleneck keeping many youth, especially minoritized youth, from pursuing STEM studies. Unequal opportunities to develop powerful math assets explain differences in math skills and understanding often experienced by minoritized youth. Implementing culturally responsive practices (CRP) in afterschool programs has the potential to promote math skills and motivation for youth from minoritized groups. However, extensive research is needed to understand which culturally responsive informal pedagogical practices (CIPPs) are most impactful and why. This project aims to identify and document such practices, shed light on the challenges faced by afterschool staff in implementing them, and develop training resources for afterschool staff to address these challenges. This 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.
The fundamental research questions addressed by the project focus on (1) which CIPPs matter most in the context of a STEM university-community partnership engaging Latinx youth, and (2) in what context(s) and under what conditions do these CIPPs relate to positive outcomes for both youth participants and college mentor/facilitator. A third aim is to build capacity of afterschool staff for implementing CIPPs in informal STEM afterschool programs. The first two aims are addressed through a mixed-methods research study which includes quantitative surveys and qualitative in-depth interviews with five cohorts of adolescent participants, parents, and undergraduate mentors. Each year, surveys will be collected from adolescents and mentors at four time points during the year; the in-depth interviews will be collected from adolescents, parents, and mentors in the spring. In total, 840 adolescents and 210 mentors will be surveyed; and 87 adolescents, 87 parents, and 87 mentors will be interviewed. The third aim will be addressed by leveraging the research findings and the collective knowledge developed by practitioners and researchers to create a public archive containing documentation of CIPPs for informal STEM afterschool programs and training modules for afterschool staff. The team will disseminate these resources extensively with informal afterschool practitioners in California and beyond. Ultimately, this project will lead to improved outcomes for minoritized youth in informal STEM afterschool programs across the nation, and increased representation of minoritized youth in STEM pursuits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alessandra PantanoSandra SimpkinsCynthia Sanchez Tapia
The project will develop and research an after-school program designed to engage rural, Latinx youth in design thinking and math through making. Making is a learner-centered environment where participants design, create, and develop projects. Latinx individuals are underrepresented in the STEM workforce. The project will engage Latinx youth during the critical middle school years when young people make choices that affect their futures. The project will work with community members, after school staff, and youth as co-designers to develop and pilot the complete after school program. The program will involve Latinx youth who live in the agricultural regions of the Southwest United States with the goal of developing agency and positive identity, as makers, mathematical doers and users, and active community members. They will engage in developmentally appropriate mathematics, such as the volume and surface area of geometric shapes, within the context of informal learning projects. The program will comprise four semester-long after school projects, involving participants for 2-4 hours each week, during which time youth will design and create objects to address typical community challenges. Each project will incorporate smaller modules to enable youth with different attendance needs to participate. Real community problems (e.g., drought) and solution paths (e.g., water catchment system) will motivate the making and the mathematics. The program, co-designed in partnership with the Cesar Chavez Foundation, promises to reach 100,000 youth over the next decade. Because the program can serve as a model for others with similar goals, this reach has the potential to be expanded in many other communities.
Project research will address a gap in the current literature on mathematics, making, and community membership. The project connects community mathematics—the rich mathematical knowledge and practices drawn from communities—to educational making to both enrich understanding of school mathematics and aid in developing students’ positive mathematical and cultural identities. The project will also result in a model of professional development that can be used and studied by after school programs and researchers, contributing to the limited body of knowledge of professional development on STEM making for after school facilitators. The research design for this project will follow a mixed methods approach where quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis will occur simultaneously. Results of both strands will be brought together at the interpretation and reporting level to compare and bring out the convergence, divergence, or complementarity of findings. The research will take place in two stages (co-design and pilot) over 3 years, with an additional half year for developing communications of the findings. Research will address the following questions: (1) What are the key features of projects for integrating community mathematics, school mathematics understanding, and design/making? (2) How do facilitators support the youth in engaging in program activities? (3) What math content and practices do youth learn through participation in program activities? and (4) How do youth’s agency and identity as makers, mathematics doers and users, and community members change with participation in the program? Program research and resources will be disseminated nationally through the Cesar Chavez Foundation and by sharing project research and resources through publications and conference presentations reaching researchers, educators, and program developers.
Mentoring is a widely accepted strategy for helping youth see how their interests and abilities fit with education and career pathways; however, more research is needed to better understand how different approaches to mentoring impact youth participants. Near-peer mentoring can be a particularly impactful approach, particularly when youth can identify with their mentors. This project investigates three approaches to near-peer mentoring of high-school-aged Hispanic youth by Hispanic undergraduate mathematics majors. Mentoring approaches include undergraduates' visits to high school classrooms, mathematics social media, and a summer math research camp. These three components of the intervention are aimed at facilitating enjoyment of advanced mathematics through dynamic, experiential learning and helping high school aged youth to align themselves with other doers of mathematics on the academic stage just beyond them, i.e., college.
Using a Design-Based Research approach that involves mixed methods, the research investigates how the three different near-peer mentoring approaches impact youth participants' attitudes and interests related to studying mathematics and pursuing a career in mathematics, the youth's sense of whether they themselves are doers of mathematics, and the youth's academic progress in mathematics. The project design and research study focus on the development of mathematical identity, where a mathematics identity encompasses a person's self-understanding of himself or herself in the context of doing mathematics, and is grounded in Anderson (2007)'s four faces of identity: Engage, Imagine, Achieve, and Nature. The study findings have the potential to uncover associations between informal interactions involving the near-peer groups of high school aged youth and undergraduates seen to impact attitudes, achievement, course selection choices, and identities relative to mathematics. It also responds to an important gap in current understandings regarding effective communication of mathematics through social media outlets, and results will describe the value of in-person mathematical interactions as well as online interactions through social media. The study will result in a model for using informal near-peer mentoring and social media applications for attracting young people to study and pursue careers in STEM. This project will also result in a body of scripted MathShow presentations and materials and Math Social Media content that will be publicly available to audiences internationally via YouTube and Instagram.
This Research in Service to Practice 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.
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:
Aaron WilsonSergey GrigorianXiaohui WangMayra Ortiz
Well-designed out-of-school time experiences can provide youth with rich opportunities to learn. However, to design effective out-of-school time experiences, it is critical to have a research basis that clarifies the features of programs that support increased youth engagement that then leads to better outcomes for youth. This project explores the features of programming that integrates sports, mathematics and science concepts, and growth mindset for 4th through 8th grade aged Latinx and African American youth. To accomplish this, the investigators refine curricular resources for out-of-school time programs and develop a model for professional learning experiences for informal educators and facilitators to support their implementation of integrated sports and STEM programming. To identify critical features of the programming, the researchers explore the ways that the program activities are implemented in two different contexts as well as the impact of the programming on youth participants' mindset, understanding of science and mathematics concepts, STEM interests, and self-perceived science and mathematics abilities. Additionally, researchers will explore the ways that the sports-themed programming supports (or could better support) girls' engagement.
The project builds on the University of Arizona researchers' existing partnerships with Major League Baseball (MLB) and Boys/Girls Club programs and an existing school-based MLB program for schools to (a) expand and refine Science of Baseball activities to enhance engagement among girls and incorporate growth mindset experiences that focus on the value of effort, determination, and learning from mistakes in both athletics and STEM; (b) study the enactment and outcomes of the program with 4th-8th grade aged youth in the two distinct informal learning settings; and (c) develop and refine a model for professional learning that includes in-person and on-line components for training informal STEM learning facilitators. The work will focus on two study contexts: afterschool programs of Boys and Girls Clubs in AZ, CA, and MO and summer programs of MLB in CA and MO. Participants will include 300 youth and up to 28 informal STEM learning facilitators split across the two contexts. Design-Based Implementation Research (DBIR) will be used to a) iteratively refine the activities and professional development model, and b) study the enactment and outcomes of the program. Research questions focus on outcomes for youth participants (i.e., impact on growth mindset, STEM dispositions, and understanding of science/math concepts), and the elements of effective professional development for informal STEM educators. Outcomes of the project include empirical evidence of what works and what doesn't work in the design, implementation, and professional development for STEM learning programs that integrate sports and growth mindset principles. In addition, outcomes of the project will advance knowledge of how different out-of-school program structures with similar sports-focused STEM programming can similarly (or differentially) support youth learning.
This 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.
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.
Children’s storybooks are a ubiquitous learning resource, and one with huge potential to support STEM learning. They also continue to be a primary way that children learn about the world and engage in conversations with family members, even as the use of other media and technology increases. Especially before children learn to read, storybooks create the context for in-depth learning conversations with parents and other adults, which are the central drivers of STEM learning and development more broadly at this age. Although there is a body of literature highlighting the benefits of storybooks
African American and Latinx youth are often socialized towards athletic activity and sports participation, sometimes at the expense of their exploration of the range of potential career paths including those in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. This project will immerse middle school youth in the rapidly growing world of sports data analytics and build their knowledge of statistics concepts and the data science process. The project will focus on the STEM interests and knowledge development of African American and Latinx youth, an underrepresented and underserved group in STEM. Researchers will explore the ways youths' social identities can and should serve as bridges towards future productive academic and professional identities including those associated with STEM learning and the STEM professions. The outcomes of the project will advance knowledge in promoting elements of informal learning experiences that build adolescents' motivation and persistence for productive participation in STEM courses and careers. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning program (AISL), which seeks to advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning opportunities for the public in informal environments, and the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers program (ITEST), which funds projects that leverage innovative uses of technologies to prepare diverse youth for the STEM workforce, with a focus on broadening participation among underrepresented and underserved groups in STEM fields.
Over a three-year period, 250 middle school learners in the West Baltimore, Maryland and Hyattsville, Maryland areas will engage in three main learning activities: Summer Camp (three weeks), Sports Day Saturdays, and a Spring Summit. Through a partnership between the University of Maryland and Coppin State University, the project will utilize resources in multiple departments and units across both universities, and engage with youth sports leagues such as the American Athletic Union (AAU) to support participants' engagement in the data science process including collection of raw data, exploration of data, development of models, visualization, communication, and reporting of data, and data-driven decision making. Furthermore, youth participants will attend local AAU, college, and professional sporting events, and interact with members of coaching staffs to better understand the ways performance data technologies are utilized to inform recruitment and team performance. The mixed-methods research agenda for this project is guided by three main questions: (1) What elements of the project's model are most successful at supporting congruence of adolescents' academic identity, including STEM identity and social identity including athletic identity? (2) What elements support adolescents' motivation, and persistence for productive participation in current and future STEM courses? (3) To what extent did the project appear to influence participants' perceptions of their future professions? At multiple points throughout the experience, participants will complete surveys designed to document and assess statistics and data science knowledge; interest in STEM careers; academic, social and athletic identity development; and STEM course taking patterns. Researchers will also observe project activities, interview a focal group of participants, and survey participants' parents to identify elements of learning experiences that encourage and support adolescents' interest in STEM disciplines and STEM professions. The project team will develop conceptual and pedagogical frameworks that support middle school youth' engagement and interest in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics through repurposing spaces where these youths frequent. A major outcome of the project will be workforce preparation and offers a promising approach for encouraging youth to persist along STEM pathways, which may ultimately result in broadened participation in STEM workforces.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
This award was provided as part of NSF's Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowships (SPRF) program and is supported by SBE's Developmental Sciences program and the Directorate for Education and Human Resources' (EHR) Advancing Informal STEM Learning program. The goal of the SPRF program is to prepare promising, early career doctoral-level scientists for scientific careers in academia, industry or private sector, and government. SPRF awards involve two years of training under the sponsorship of established scientists and encourage Postdoctoral Fellows to perform independent research. NSF seeks to promote the participation of scientists from all segments of the scientific community, including those from underrepresented groups, in its research programs and activities; the postdoctoral period is considered to be an important level of professional development in attaining this goal. Each Postdoctoral Fellow must address important scientific questions that advance their respective disciplinary fields. Under the sponsorship of Dr. Sandra D. Simpkins at the University of California, Irvine, this postdoctoral fellowship award supports an early career scientist exploring high-quality and culturally responsive, math afterschool program (ASP) practices for under-represented minority (URM) youth. Mathematical proficiency is the foundation of youth's STEM pursuits. Yet today, far too many youth do not pursue STEM based on a perception that they are "not good at math". Students need to engage in contexts that spark their interest and their continued mastery and growth. ASPs are settings for such dynamic opportunities, particularly for URM students such as Latinos who attend lower quality schools and do not feel supported. In college, URM students often struggle with uninspiring and culturally incongruent STEM learning environments. The intergenerational nature of university-based STEM ASPs, whereby younger students are paired with undergraduate (UG) mentors, are opportunities to support both K-12 and UG students' motivational beliefs in math and STEM more broadly. This project will examine these intergenerational developmental processes in the context of a math enrichment ASP located at a Hispanic-Serving Institution. By studying how ASPs can serve as an important lever for promoting URM students' access and success in STEM, this project seeks to meaningfully inform efforts to broaden the participation of underrepresented groups in these fields.
This project seeks to understand how participating in a math enrichment ASP supports both youth participants' and UG mentors' motivational beliefs in math; to describe high-quality and culturally responsive practices; and to understand how to support the effectiveness of youth-staff relationships. To accomplish these research objectives, data will be collected from both youth participants and UG mentors through multiple methods including surveys, in-depth interviews, participant-observations, and video observations of youth-staff interactions. This project will add to our understanding of university-ASP partnerships. Further, the knowledge gained from this study will impact the larger landscape of practice and research on STEM ASPs by 1) addressing critical gaps in the current literature on high-quality and culturally responsive STEM ASP practices and 2) informing ASP staff development training. Overall, this mixed methods project will provide critical and rich information on the ways that ASPs can effectively deliver on its promise of promoting positive development for all youth, especially URM youth who may need and benefit from these spaces the most. The invaluable insight garnered from this study will be disseminated to traditional academic audiences to advance knowledge, as well as to local, state, and national organizations to inform the larger landscape of practice in STEM ASPs.
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.
WNET, working with Education Development Center, will lead a small scale Innovations in Development effort to develop, research, and evaluate a new model to engage underserved families in STEM learning. The new endeavor, Cyberchase: Mobile Adventures in STEM, will build on the proven impact of the public media mathematics series Cyberchase and the growing potential of mobile technology and texting to reach underserved parents. WNET will produce two new Cyberchase episodes for 6-9 year olds, focused on using math to learn about the environment. Drawing on these videos and an existing Cyberchase game, the team will produce a bilingual family engagement campaign that will combine an in-person workshop followed by a 6-8 week "text to parent" campaign, in which parents receive weekly text messages suggesting family STEM activities related to the media content. The engagement model will be piloted in three cities with large low-income/Latino populations, along with one texting campaign offered without the workshop. This project will build knowledge about how to deploy well-designed public media assets and text messaging to promote fun, effective STEM learning interactions in low-income families. While past research on educational STEM media has tended to focus on children, especially preschool age, this project will focus primarily on text messaging for parents, and on learners age 6-9, and the wider scope of parent/child STEM interactions possible at that age.
The primary goal of the project will be to develop, test and refine a family engagement model that includes a face-to-face workshop, rich narrative Cyberchase content, and text-message prompts for parents to engage in short, playful STEM activities with children. The project team will explore which features of the mobile text-and-media program have most value for low-income and Latino families and prompt STEM learning interactions, including a comparison of workshop-based and text-only variants. The project will have three phases: needs assessment and preliminary design; an early-stage test in New York and development and testing of media; and three late-stage tests in contrasting locations, two including workshops and one "text-only," and analysis of findings. Ultimately, the project will share knowledge with the field about the opportunities and challenges of using mobile texting and public media to reach underserved families effectively. This knowledge will also inform a future proposal for production and outcomes research, which, based on the study results, may include a scaled-up version in ten locations and a ten-city Randomized Control Test. This 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 Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), located in Portland, is a hands-on science museum. In 2013, OMSI received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project Researching the Value of Educator Actions for Learning (REVEAL) to study how museum educators can better help families learn math while interacting with museum exhibits. Through REVEAL, OMSI was able to partner with Adelante Mujeres, a non-profit community organization located in Forest Grove that educates and empowers Latina women and their families. Here we share some of the lessons learned from the