From a strategic communication perspective, for any communication to be effective, it must be audience-centered, with content and delivery channels that are relevant to its intended target. When trying to reach culturally specific communities or other groups that are not otherwise connected with science research, it is crucial to partner with community members to co-create content through media that is appealing and culturally competent. This commentary considers some examples including storytelling through ‘fotonovelas’ and radio stories, community drama and serious games.
The independent evaluation firm Knight Williams, Inc. conducted a formative evaluation during Year 2 of the SciGirls CONNECT2 program in order to gather information about the partner educators’ use of, reflections on, and recommendations relating to the draft updated SciGirls Strategies. The evaluation aimed for two educators from each of 14 partner organizations – specifically the program leader and one educator who was familiar with the original SciGirls Seven – to provide reflections on their use of the draft SciGirls Strategies in their programs through an online survey and follow-up
Twin Cities PBS BRAINedu: A Window into the Brain/Una ventana al cerebro, is a national English/Spanish informal education project providing culturally competent programming and media resources about the brain’s structure and function to Hispanic middle school students and their families. The project responds to the need to eliminate proven barriers to Hispanic students’ STEM/neuroscience education, increase Hispanic participation in neuroscience and mental health careers and increase Hispanic utilization of mental health resources.
The program’s goals are to engage Hispanic learners and families by
empowering informalSTEM educators to provide culturally competent activities about the brain’s structure and function;
demonstrating neuroscience and mental health career options; and
reducing mental health stigma, thus increasing help-seeking behavior.
The hypothesis underpinning BRAINedu’s four-year project plan is that participating Hispanic youth and families will be able to explain how the brain works and describe specific brain disorders; demonstrate a higher level of interest of neuroscience and mental health careers and be more willing to openly discuss and seek support for brain disorders and mental health conditions.
To achieve program goals, Twin Cities PBS (TPT) will leverage existing partnerships with Hispanic-serving youth educational organizations to provide culturally competent learning opportunities about brain health to Hispanic students and families. TPT will partner with neuroscience and mental health professionals, cultural competency experts and Hispanic-serving informal STEM educators to complete the following objectives:
Develop bilingual educational resources for multigenerational audiences;
Provide professional development around neuroscience education to informal educators, empowering them to implement programming with Hispanic youth and families, and
Develop role model video profiles of Hispanic neuroscience professionals, and help partner organizations produce autobiographical student videos.
We will employ rigorous evaluation strategies to measure the project’s impact on Hispanic participants: a) understanding of neuroscience and brain health, particularly around disorders that disproportionately affect the Hispanic community; b) motivation to pursue neuroscience or mental health career paths; and c) mental health literacy and help-seeking behavior. The project will directly reach 72 Hispanic-serving informal STEM educators and public health professionals, and 200 children and 400 parents in underserved urban, suburban and rural communities nationwide.
SciGirls CONNECT 2 is a three-year NSF project that examines how the gender equitable and culturally responsive strategies currently employed in the SciGirls informal STEM educational program influences middle school girls’ STEM identity formation.
This article explores science communication from the perspective of those most at risk of exclusion, drawing on ethnographic fieldwork. I conducted five focus groups and 32 interviews with participants from low-income, minority ethnic backgrounds. Using theories of social reproduction and social justice, I argue that participation in science communication is marked by structural inequalities (particularly ethnicity and class) in two ways. First, participants’ involvement in science communication practices was narrow (limited to science media consumption). Second, their experiences of exclusion
The Exploratorium’s livestream of the August 2017 Total Solar Eclipse reached over 63 million people. Live programs in English and Spanish provided an informal learning experience outside the museum. Over 2.75 million people viewed on-demand videos on eclipse science. Sixty major media providers rebroadcast the livestream telescope feed.
Edu, Inc. conducted a summative evaluation of the NASA-funded project. The study reveals that the Exploratorium successfully disseminated eclipse science and STEM content through media channels and a mobile app, delivering a museum experience to online
In March of 2016, a total solar eclipse occurred in the southwestern pacific; and in August of 2017, a total solar eclipse occurred across a broad swath of the United States. The Exploratorium launched a 2.5 year public education program—Navigating the Path of Totality—that used these two total solar eclipses as platforms for sparking public engagement and learning about the Sun, heliophysics, and the STEM content related to both. These sequential eclipses provided an unprecedented opportunity to build and scaffold public engagement and education. Our strategy was to start the public engagement process with the 2016 eclipse, nurture that engagement with resources, activities and outreach during the 17 months between the eclipses, so that audiences (especially in the U.S., where totality was visible in multiple areas across the country) would be excited, actively interested, and prepared for deeper engagement during the 2017 eclipse. For the August 2017 eclipse, the Exploratorium produced live telescope and program feeds from Madras, OR and Casper, WY. The Exploratorium worked with NASA to leverage what was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for millions to bring heliophysics information and research to students, educators, and the public at large through a variety of learning experiences and platforms.
The core of this project was live broadcasts/webcasts of each eclipse. To accomplish these objectives, the Exploratorium produced and disseminate live feeds of telescope-only images (no commentary) of each eclipse originating them from remote locations; produce and disseminate from the field live hosted broadcasts/webcasts of each eclipse using these telescope images; design and launch websites, apps, videos, educator resources, and shareable online materials for each eclipse; design and deliver eclipse themed video installations for our Webcast studio and Observatory gallery in the months that lead up to each eclipse and a public program during each eclipse; and conduct a formative and summative evaluation of the project.
These broadcasts/webcasts and pre-produced videos provide the backbone upon which complementary educational resources and activities can be built and delivered. Programs and videos were produced in English and Spanish languages. As a freely available resource, the broadcasts/webcasts also provide the baseline content for hundreds if not thousands of educational efforts provided by other science-rich institutions, schools, community-based organizations, and venues. Platforms such as NASA TV and NASA website, broadcast and online media outlets such as ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and PBS, as well as hundreds of science institutions and thousands of classrooms streamed the Exploratorium eclipse broadcasts as part of their own educational programming, reaching 63M people. These live broadcasts were relied upon educational infrastructure during total solar eclipses for institutions and individuals on the path and off the path alike.
The achievement gap begins well before children enter kindergarten. Research has shown that children who start school having missed critical early learning opportunities are already at risk for academic failure. This project seeks to narrow this gap by finding new avenues for bringing early science experiences to preschool children (ages 3-5), particularly those living in communities with few resources. Bringing together media specialists, learning researchers, and two proven home visiting organizations to collaboratively develop and investigate a new model that engages families in science exploration through joint media engagement and home visiting programs. The project will leverage the popularity and success of the NSF-funded PEEP and the Big Wide World/El Mundo Divertido de PEEP to engage both parents and preschool children with science.
To address the key goal of engaging families in science exploration through joint media engagement and home visiting programs, the team will use a Design Based Implementation Research (DBIR) approach to address the research questions by iteratively studying the intervention model (the materials and implementation process) and assessing the impact of the intervention model on parents/caregivers. The intervention model will include the PEEP Family Engagement Toolkit that will support 20 weeks of family science investigations using new digital and hands-on science learning resources. It will also include new professional development resources for home educators as well as and the implementation process and strategies for developing and implementing the Toolkit with families.
The proposed research focuses first on refining and improving program design and implementation, and second, on investigating whether the intervention improves the capacity of parent/caregivers to support young children's learning in science. Ultimately this research will accomplish two important aims: it will inform the design of the PEEP family engagement intervention model, and, more broadly, it will build practical and theoretical understanding of: 1) effective family engagement models in science learning; 2) the types of supports that families and home educators need to implement these models; and 3) how to implement these models across different home visiting programs. Given the reach of the home visiting programs and the increasing interest in supporting early science learning the potential for broad impact is significant. 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.
Currently, many young people - especially girls and youth of color - lose confidence and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) pathways due to a perceived disconnect between their own identity and STEM fields. To address this challenge, Twin Cities PBS (TPT) is implementing SciGirls CONNECT2. This three-year Research in Service to Practice award examines how gender equitable and culturally responsive teaching strategies influence middle school girls' confidence, interest and motivation around STEM studies, and their choices around STEM careers. A set of research-based strategies, called the SciGirls Seven, are currently employed in SciGirls, an NSF-funded informal STEM educational outreach program serving 125+ educational partner organizations nationwide. The goal is to update and enrich the SciGirls Seven, providing educators with a critical, current, and more effective resource to motivate girls in STEM studies and careers. It 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.
Florida State University will conduct a formal research study investigating the hypothesis that STEM programs that use gender equitable and culturally responsive strategies contribute to girls' positive STEM identity development, including their sense of self-efficacy, persistence and aspirations around future STEM careers. This research will include a literature review and a study of girls' STEM identity creation. The mixed methods study will include quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis measuring changes in students' STEM identity and teachers' confidence in STEM teaching. The quantitative data will come from the student, parent and teacher pre/post surveys. The qualitative research will be conducted via case studies at four sites and the qualitative data will include observations, focus groups and interviews. Girls at all partner sites will create videos that will allow the research team to gather additional insight. The independent firm Knight Williams, Inc. will conduct the project's external evaluation.
The project will work with a subset of 16 current SciGirls partners. These geographically diverse partners will reach youth in all-girls and co-ed informal STEM education programs in a variety of settings. More than half serve Hispanic or other minority populations. The updated strategies will be disseminated to the 2,500 educators within the SciGirls partner network and the 18,800 STEM education organizations of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) network. Dissemination of the strategies and literature review will focus on the informal STEM education field through publications and presentations, posts at PBS LearningMedia, a free online space reaching 1.5 million teachers and educators.
In Defense of Food (IDOF) is a media and outreach project based on Michael Pollan's best-selling book of the same title. Through the lens of food science, IDOF is designed to engage diverse audiences in learning about: (1) how science research is conducted, (2) how research findings are used in media, marketing, and public policy, and (3) how to apply food science research in everyday life. IDOF will be created by Kikim Media, an independent production company, broadcast and distributed by PBS and supported by an extensive outreach campaign and interactive website. The project's educational materials will be developed, in part, by the Teacher's College at Columbia University's Center for Food and Nutrition, with dissemination supported by the Coalition for Science After School and by Tufts University's Healthy Kids Out of School initiative, which involves nine of the leading out of school time (OST) organizations, such as Girl Scouts USA, and the National Urban League. The project advisory committee includes highly respected researchers in food, nutrition, and health. IDOF will use an integrated strategy of learning resources, combining a television documentary with online/social media, community outreach, and youth activities. Knight Williams Research Communications will conduct formative and summative evaluation of all major components of the project. The results will advance the informal science community's understanding of how the combination of a documentary with outreach, website/social media, and afterschool activities impacts motivation and learning. The evaluation study will pay special attention to the degree to which participation in the community events, social media/website, and afterschool activities motivates deeper or extended engagement with the subject. Project evaluation results and educational resources will be widely disseminated to the informal science community. IDOF includes a two-hour documentary film that will be produced in both English and Spanish; a community-level outreach campaign focused on reaching underserved audiences who may not watch public television; a set of activities for use in afterschool programs, youth programs and schools; and an interactive and content-rich website with tightly integrated social media tools. IDOF will be nationally broadcast by PBS; the Spanish-language version of IDOF will be broadcast by Vme Television. The ambitious IDOF educational materials and outreach campaign, combined with interactive web and social media, will reach large and diverse audiences. The intended impacts on audiences include increased knowledge and understanding of the scientific process by learning what food scientists do, what techniques they use, and how scientists arrive at their conclusions; the development of critical thinking skills audiences can use when evaluating messages about food and nutrition in media and advertising and when making decisions about what food to buy and eat; and becoming active learners and consumers regarding food. Evaluation results will be widely disseminated to science media producers and the informal science community via professional publications and presentations at conferences. The ultimate value of the In Defense of Food documentary and learning initiative will be to enhance public understanding of the crucial importance of science in people's everyday lives and in shaping dozens of daily decisions.
Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF),The STEM Pathways project focused on exploring strategies through which at-risk and incarcerated Hispanic youth could be engaged around STEM careers, understand the education, training, and skills they would need to attain them, and think that such a path was a future possibility. To this end, the project and evaluation teams collaborated on a literature review, the development of a logic model, and the design, implementation, and evaluation of a diverse set of program activities that included media, art, and flash mentoring with STEM role models
In 2012, Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) conducted an evaluation of the impact of Peep and the Big Wide World (Peep) resources on Spanish-speaking families with preschool-aged children. The three-pronged evaluation included a National Family Study in which 112 Spanish-speaking families who used the Peep resources were compared to Spanish-speaking families who did not use the Peep resources. It also included an In-Depth Family Study -- an experiment conducted in the metro Boston area in which 36 Spanish-speaking families who used the Peep resources were compared to Spanish-speaking families who