The goal for this research study was to determine the role of the SciGirls gender-equitable strategies on participating youths’ STEM identity changes in 16 participating SciGirls’ programs across the nation. The definition of STEM identity was based on Eccles (2007), Carlone and Johnson (2007) and Calabrese Barton and colleagues (2013). According to these researchers, individuals must have a positive STEM identity in order to persist in STEM careers. This positive STEM identity is affected by an individual’s expectations of success in STEM and the value they see in STEM and STEM careers
This report presents findings of the Latina SciGirls mixed methods study, investigating the experiences of young Latinas participating in informal STEM programs across the U.S. that utilized the SciGirls educational model (including the SciGirls Seven strategies) and augmented with materials and practices intended to better serve Hispanic girls. The project was led by Twin Cities Public Television with funding from the National Science Foundation as an AISL Innovations in Development project. The STEM-related identity framework and research model used to guide this investigation is presented
Knight Williams, Inc. completed a summative evaluation report that addresses: (i) the reach and breadth of the Latina SciGirls broadcast program and online components compared to project expectations; (ii) the impact of the Family Fiesta events that incorporated use of SciGirls videos, in-person role models, and hands-on activities as experienced by the girls, family members, and role models that participated in the events; and (iii) the partners’ Latina SciGirls programs and how they used and reflected on the value of the SciGirls resources.
How can creators of STEM learning media reach underserved parents and children, and support the kinds of playful STEM interactions that are foundational for future STEM learning?
This research report summarizes findings from a pilot study of Cyberchase: Mobile Adventures in STEM, a program that uses mobile text messaging and short videos to encourage hands-on family learning among low-income Latino families.
In the study, 95 mostly Latino families received weekly text messages with video clips from the popular children's series Cyberchase, and fun activities to do with their
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), in collaboration with neuroscientists at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), museum professionals, and community partners, proposes to create a 1,000 to 1,500-square-foot traveling exhibition, accompanying website, and complementary programming to promote public understanding of neuroscience research and its relevance to healthy brain development in early childhood. The exhibition and programs will focus on current research on the developing brain, up to age 5, and will reach a national audience of adult caregivers of young children and their families, with a special emphasis on Latino families. The project will be developed bi-culturally and bilingually (English/Spanish) in order to better engage underrepresented Latino audiences. The exhibition and programs will be designed and tested with family audiences.
The exhibition project, Interactive Family Learning in Support of Early Brain Development, has four goals that primarily target adult caregivers of children up to age 5:
Foster engagement with and interest in neurodevelopment during early childhood
Enhance awareness of how neuroscience research leads to knowledge about healthy development in early childhood
Inform and empower adult caregivers to enrich their children’s early learning experiences
Reach diverse family audiences, especially Latino caregivers and their families
A collaborative, multidisciplinary team of neuroscience researchers, experts in early childhood education, museum educators, and OMSI personnel with expertise in informal science education and bilingual exhibit development will work together to ensure that current science is accurately interpreted and effectively presented to reach the target audiences. The project will foster better public understanding of early brain development and awareness and confidence in caregivers in using play to enrich their children’s experiences and support healthy brain development. Visitors will explore neuroscience and early childhood development through a variety of forms—multi-sensory, hands-on interactive exhibits, graphic panels, real objects, facilitated experiences, and an accompanying website.
Following the five-year development process, the exhibition will begin an eight-year national tour, during which it will reach more than one million people.
The purpose of the proposed project, Community of Bilingual English-Spanish Speakers Exploring Issues in Science and Health (CBESS), is to increase linguistic diversity in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)-healthcare fields, including biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research careers. With support of the large group of Spanish-English bilingual (SEB), STEM-healthcare professionals that was formed during this proposal preparation, CBESS will contribute to the pipeline between K–12 and higher education/career.
CBESS will recruit Spanish-English bilingual (SEB) high-school students at the end of tenth grade and implement several language-supported STEM-healthcare interventions during the eleventh and twelfth grade (17 months): family-engaged career exploration; Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)-aligned, inquiry-based, youth-led summer research residential program; community outreach/dissemination, internships, and mentoring.
Applying methods that are known to be effective with the target population, CBESS will also train undergraduate, near-peer instructor-mentors—STEM-healthcare Leadership Trainees (LT)—in inquiry-based instruction and strategies for positioning K–12 bilingual students as “insiders” in STEM-healthcare, as well as in the responsible conduct of research and mentoring skills, followed by practical application with SR.
CBESS will develop and expand the nascent SEB STEM-healthcare community of practice (CoP) that was created during CBESS proposal preparation. Committed academic, clinical, research, and community partners will contribute to research and evaluation efforts, and support the pipeline between K–12 and higher education/career through Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), framing priority community health issues to be addressed by each cohort of SR from among issues identified by the SR during the application process. Finally, the CoP will target long-term institutional sustainability for linguistically diverse students in STEM-healthcare education and careers.
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.
Children Investigating Science with Parents and Afterschool (CHISPA) was a collaboration between the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza), and the ASPIRA Association that took place from 2014-18. CHISPA sought to address the disparity in science achievement among Latino and non-Latino children through local-level partnerships between science museums in metropolitan areas with growing Latino populations and UnidosUS and ASPIRA affiliate organizations serving the same communities through afterschool programs.
Partners included the
The New Jersey Historical Commission (NJHC) initiated the Understanding Communities Study with the goal to better understand how New Jersey history and history organizations can be more inclusive for all. NJHC contracted RK&A for the first phase of the study to conduct focus groups with members of Hispanic and Latino communities in New Jersey. NJHC plans to expand the study to other communities in the future. The New Jersey Center for Hispanic Policy, Research and Development served as advisors in the project.
With support from NJHC partners, RK&A conducted three focus groups with
This project will examine the characteristics and outcomes of a large sample of environmental education field trip programs for youth to elucidate program characteristics that most powerfully influence 21st century learning outcomes. Environmental education programs for youth, particularly day-long school trip programs, are popular and reside at the intersection of formal and informal STEM education. Such field trips provide opportunities for diverse audiences to participate in shared learning experiences, but current understanding of what leads to success in these programs is limited. This large-scale study will address this gap in knowledge by investigating the linkages between program characteristics and participant outcomes for at least 800 single-day environmental education field trip programs for youth in grades 5-8, particularly programs for diverse and underserved audiences. This study will result in the identification of evidence-based practices that will inform future program design for a wide variety of settings, including nature centers, national parks, zoos, museums, aquaria, and other locations providing informal environmental education programs.
This Research in Service to Practice study is guided by two research questions: 1) What program characteristics (context, design, and delivery) most powerfully influence learner self-determination and learner outcomes? And 2) Do the most influential program characteristics differ across diverse and underserved audiences (e.g. African American, Hispanic/Latino, economically disadvantaged) and contexts (e.g. rural versus urban)? This project will examine a wide range of program-related factors, including pedagogical approaches and contextual characteristics. A valid and reliable protocol for observing 78 program characteristics hypothesized to influence learner outcomes developed by a previous project will be used to systematically sample and observe 500 single-day environmental education field trip programs for youth in grades 5-8 distributed across at least 40 U.S. states and territories. Programs for diverse and underserved youth will be emphasized, and a diverse set of programs in terms of program type and context will be sought. Data from this sample will be combined with those of an existing sample of 334 programs provided by over 90 providers. The final combined sample of over 800 programs will provide sufficient statistical power to confidently identify which program components are most consistently linked with learning outcomes. This sample size will also enable stratification of the sample for examination of these relationships within relevant subpopulations. Principal component analyses will be used to reduce data in theoretically meaningful and statistically valid ways, and multilevel structural equation modeling will be employed to examine the influences of both participants' individual characteristics and program and context characteristics on participant outcomes. Since one research question focuses on whether program outcomes are the same across different audiences, the project will include at least 200 programs for each of three specific audiences to ensure sufficient statistical power for confidence in the results: primarily African American, primarily Hispanic/Latino, and primarily White.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert PowellMarc SternBrandon Frensley
This three-year research and implementation project empowers middle school LatinX youth to employ their own assets and funds of knowledge to solve community problems through engineering. Only 7% of adults in the STEM job cluster are of Hispanic/Latino origin. There is a continuing need for filling engineering jobs in our current and future economy. This project will significantly broaden participation of LatinX youth in engineering activities at a critical point as they make career decisions. Design Squad Global LatinX expands on a tested model previously funded by NSF and shown to be successful. It will enable LatinX youth to view themselves as designers and engineers and to build from their strengths to expand their skills and participation in science and engineering. The project goals are to: 1) develop an innovative inclusive approach to informal engineering education for LatinX students that can broaden their engineering participation and that of other underrepresented groups, (2) to galvanize collaborations across diverse local, national, and international stakeholders to create a STEM learning ecosystem and (3) to advance knowledge about a STEM pedagogy that bridges personal-cultural identity and experience with engineering knowledge and skills. Project deliverables include a conceptual framework for a strength-based approach to engineering education for LatinX youth, a program model that is asset based, a collection of educational resources including a club guide for how to scaffold culturally responsive engineering challenge activities, an online training course for club leaders, and a mentoring strategy for university engineering students working with middle school youth. Project partners include the global education organization, iEARN, the Society of Women Engineers, and various University engineering programs.
The research study will employ an experimental study design to evaluate the impact on youth participating in the Design Squad LatinX programs. The key research questions are (1) Does participation increase students' positive perceptions of themselves and understanding of engineering and global perspectives? (2) To what extent do changes in understanding engineering vary by community (site) and by student characteristics (age, gender, ethnicity)? (3) Do educators and club leaders increase their positive perceptions of youths' funds of knowledge and their own understanding of engineering? and (4) Do university mentors increase their ability to lead informal engineering/STEM education with middle school youth? A sample from 72 local Design Squad LatinX clubs with an enrollment of 10-15 students will be drawn with half randomly assigned to the participant condition and half to the control condition. Methods used include pre and post surveys, implementation logs for checks on program implementation, site visits to carry out observations, focus groups with students and interviews with adult leaders. Data will be analyzed by estimating hierarchical linear models with observations. In addition, in-situ ethnographically-oriented observations as well as interviews at two sites will be used to develop qualitative case studies.
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.
Many of the Hispanic children and families who live in the Rio Grande Valley lack opportunities to engage in inspirational and educational experiences introducing Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) concepts and related careers. The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) will adapt and research the "Energy and U Show," which will introduce thousands of children and families to an exciting and dramatic that shows interconverting different forms of energy. The show will meld the excitement of chemical demonstrations and the natural connection between energy and STEM education in a fully produced, on-stage science extravaganza. A foundational philosophy of the show is that there is additional real value in getting children and youth onto a college campus. For many of its participants, this is their first time sitting in a seat at a university, the first opportunity for them to envision themselves in this environment. In partnership with the University of Minnesota, which originally developed the show, UTRGV will adapt the show, now presented in English, to a bilingual, culturally accessible format that is designed to Hispanic family audiences and student groups in learning about energy and related careers. Evaluation results demonstrate that the show has effectively engaged thousands of Minnesota students. The target audience will be upper elementary (4th-5th grade), middle school students, and their parents. This project will be led by UTRGV, nation's second-largest Hispanic Serving Institution, with a student enrollment of 28,000, of which over 90% are Hispanic and more than 60% are first-generation college students). In addition to the show, the project will include: (1) a manual to guide implementation of the program and related resources at different national or international venues; (2) educational resources for parents, teachers and school counselors introducing STEM careers and specific STEM college majors; (3) mentoring of UTRGV faculty in outreach activities; and (4) dissemination of the show to other campuses and venues.
The project will conduct ongoing research and evaluation guiding the adaptation of the show and investigation of factors contributing to positive educational impacts of the project, which will be carried out by a bilingual/bicultural researcher. Project research instruments will measure student level of engagement, interest and learning, as well as college interest, in surveys and analysis of data pre and post demonstration. The project will specifically investigate the impact of language on student impacts. Each component of this project will be studied to determine program intervention effectiveness (the scientific demonstration and language of the demonstration). To determine program effectiveness, a baseline of data before program implementation will be established concerning Hispanic students, their persistence, and perceptions of the environment. The project will measure parent perceptions of STEM careers for their children through pre and post demonstration surveys and focus groups. Student and parent research participants will be able to use surveys or respond to other research activities in the language of their choice. Project findings will contribute to the knowledge base concerning how linguistically and culturally adapted science shows and related resources adapted into can have positive impacts regarding the STEM knowledge and careers of students and parents from low-income and Hispanic communities.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen LozanoArturo FuentesAaron MassariBrian Warren