The Da Vinci Science Center will expand its Women in Science and Engineering Network by partnering with community organizations, colleges, and universities to enhance the STEM learning and support ecosystem for women and girls in the Lehigh Valley and surrounding communities in eastern Pennsylvania. The museum will assess the needs of K-12 girls, undergraduate women, and women in STEM employment, and map opportunities for cross-sector collaborations to support them. The project team will identify marketing and recruitment messages that encourage STEM-interested girls and women to participate in programs and follow developmental pathways within a STEM learning ecosystem. Based on identified needs and messages, the museum will pilot and evaluate new STEM programs for girls and women, and train educators and mentors to sustain this work.
The employment demands in STEM fields grew twice as fast as employment in non-STEM fields in the last decade, making it a matter of national importance to educate the next generation about science, engineering and the scientific process. The need to educate students about STEM is particularly pronounced in low-income, rural communities where: i) students may perceive that STEM learning has little relevance to their lives; ii) there are little, if any, STEM-related resources and infrastructure available at their schools or in their immediate areas; and iii) STEM teachers, usually one per school, often teach out of their area expertise, and lack a network from which they can learn and with which they can share experiences. Through the proposed project, middle school teachers in low-income, rural communities will partner with Dartmouth faculty and graduate students and professional science educators at the Montshire Museum of Science to develop sustainable STEM curricular units for their schools. These crosscutting units will include a series of hands-on, investigative, active learning, and standards-aligned lessons based in part on engineering design principles that may be used annually for the betterment of student learning. Once developed and tested in a classroom setting in our four pilot schools, the units will be made available to other partner schools in NH and VT and finally to any school wishing to adopt them. In addition, A STEM rural educator network, through which crosscutting units may be disseminated and teachers may share and support each other, will be created to enhance the teachers’ ability to network, seek advice, share information, etc.
This application requests support to enable a team of experienced science educators and biomedical and behavioral health network scientists to develop and implement the Worlds of Connections curriculum. Most middle school students are familiar with patient care-related health careers (e.g., nurses, dentists, surgeons), but few know about emerging careers in network science that can be leveraged to improve population health. This innovative and research-based science program is strategically designed to increase awareness of, understanding of, and interest in the important role of network science for health. This project will design learning activities that incite interest in network science applications to biomedical and public health research. The long- term goal is to enhance the diversity of the bio-behavioral and biomedical workforce by increasing interest in network science among members of underrepresented minority communities and to promote public understanding of the benefits of NIH-funded research for public health. The goal of this application is to identify and create resources that will overcome barriers to network science uptake among underserved minority middle school youth. The central hypothesis is that the technology-rich field of network science will attract segments of today’s youth who remain uninterested in conventional, bio-centric health fields. Project activities are designed to improve understanding of how informal STEM experiences with network science in health research can increase STEM identities, STEM possible selves, and STEM career aspirations among youth from groups historically underrepresented in STEM disciplines at the center of health science research (Aim 1) and create emerging media resources via augmented reality technologies to stimulate broad interest in and understanding of the role of network science in biomedical and public health research (Aim 2). A team led by University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologists will partner with the University of Nebraska at Omaha; state museums; centers for math, science, and emerging media arts; NIH-funded network scientists; educators; community learning centers at local public schools; learning researchers; undergraduates; software professionals; artists; augmented reality professionals; storytellers; and evaluation experts to accomplish these goals and ensure out of school learning will reinforce Next Generation Science Standards. The Worlds of Connections project is expected to impact 35,250 youth and 20,570 educators in Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska by: adding network science modules to ongoing 6th-8th-grade afterschool STEM clubs in community learning centers; adding network science for health resources to a summer graduate course on “activating youth STEM identities” for sixth to twelfth grade STEM teachers; connecting teachers with local network scientists; creating free, downloadable, high-quality emerging media arts-enhanced stories; and publishing peer-reviewed research on the potential of network science to attract youth to health careers. Coupled with the dissemination plan, the project design and activities will be replicable, allowing this project to serve as a model to guide other projects in STEM communication.
PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE:
The lack of public understanding about the role of network science in the basic biological and social health sciences limits career options and support for historically underrepresented groups whose diverse viewpoints and questions will be needed to solve the next generation of health problems. The Worlds of Connections project will combine network science, social science, learning research, biology, computer science, mathematics, emerging media arts, and informal science learning expertise to build a series of monitored and evaluated dissemination experiments for middle school science education in high poverty schools. Broad dissemination of the curriculum and project impacts will employ virtual reality technologies to bring new and younger publics into health-related STEM careers.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Julia McquilanGrace Stallworth
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Each year, the National Alliance for Broader Impacts (NABI) seeks to understand the current state of broader impacts (BI) in the national context. In 2017, NABI convened two forums to identify needs and solicit recommendations. The first event was a 90-minute town hall session with 120 participants facilitated by Jamie Bell at the April 2017 BI Summit. The second event was a two-day convening facilitated by Goose Creek Consulting at NSF headquarters in May 2017 of stakeholder groups including university administrators (e.g., provosts, associate provosts, vice-presidents of research)
Increasingly, the prosperity, innovation and security of individuals and communities depend on a big data literate society. Yet conspicuously absent from the big data revolution is the field of teaching and learning. The revolution in big data must match a complementary revolution in a new kind of literacy, through a significant infusion of STEM education with the kinds of skills that the revolution in 21st century data-driven science demands. This project represents a concerted effort to determine what it means to be a big data literate citizen, information worker, researcher, or policymaker; to identify the quality of learning resources and programs to improve big data literacy; and to chart a path forward that will bridge big data practice with big data learning, education and career readiness.
Through a process of inquiry research and capacity-building, New York Hall of Science will bring together experts from member institutions of the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub to galvanize big data communities of practice around education, identify and articulate the nature and quality of extant big data education resources and draft a set of big data literacy principles. The results of this planning process will be a planning document for a Big Data Literacy Spoke that will form an initiative to develop frameworks, strategies and scope and sequence to advance lifelong big data literacy for grades P-20 and across learning settings; and devise, implement, and evaluate programs, curricula and interventions to improve big data literacy for all. The planning document will articulate the findings of the inquiry research and evaluation to provide a practical tool to inform and cultivate other initiatives in data literacy both within the Northeast Big Data Innovation Hub and beyond.
The CADRE Early Career Guide offers advice from experienced DR K-12 awardees on becoming a successful researcher in the field of STEM education. The guide also profiles a support program, the CADRE Fellows, for doctoral students in STEM education research.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jennifer StilesCatherine McCullochCommunity for Advancing Discovery Research in Education (CADRE)
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This collaboration between two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) will form a networked improvement community located within the Piedmont Region of North Carolina. In close partnership with community colleges and civic organizations, the project will reach families and students that lead to broader participation of underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The overall goal is to build and sustain a scalable, inquiry-based network with the purpose of increasing the academic success of underrepresented ethnic minorities and women in the STEM continuum. By engaging in culturally relevant socio-environmental frameworks, project outcomes will positively impact student retention, knowledge, and quantitative skills in STEM across socio-economic divides and STEM disciplines.
The Launch Pilot phase will focus on evidence-based teaching and learning approaches for middle school students. The core structure of the network will serve as a platform to launch and guide other age- and level-specific educational instruction, research, and assessment initiatives. Student understanding of the nature of science will be enhanced by adapting structure, behavior, and function (SBF) theory and system thinking hierarchical (STH) models. Ultimately, the network will represent a driver for social innovation that positively impacts broadening participation in STEM.
The Morgan State University INCLUDES project will build on an existing regional partnership of four Historically Black Colleges and Universities that are working together to improve STEM outcomes for middle school minority male students that are local to Morgan State in Baltimore, North Carolina A&T in Greensboro, Jackson State in Mississippi, and Kentucky State in Frankfort. Additional partners include SRI International, the National CARES Mentoring Network, and the Verizon Foundation. Using the collective impact-style approaches such as planning and implementing a Network Improvement Community (NIC), developing a shared agenda and implementing mutually reinforcing activities, these partners will address two common goals: (1) Broaden the participation of underrepresented minority males in science and engineering through educational experiences that prepare them for careers in STEM fields; and (2) Create a Network Improvement Community focused on STEM achievement in minority males. Program elements include high-quality instruction in STEM content, mentoring, and professional development. The project will expand to include eight additional partners (six HBCUs and two Hispanic-Serving Institutions) and schools and districts in communities local to their campuses. The INCLUDES pilot will help scale innovations that target impacting minorities in STEM.
The project will develop STEM learning pathways for middle school minority males by harnessing the collective impact of 12 university partners, local K-12 schools and districts with which they partner, and surrounding community organizations and businesses with a vested interest in achieving common goals. Products will include a roadmap for addressing the problem through a Network Improvement Community, a website that will contribute to the knowledge base regarding effective strategies for enhancing STEM educational opportunities for minority males, and common metrics, assessments, and shared measurement systems that will be used to measure the collective impact of the Network Improvement Community.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jumoke Ladeji-OsiasCindy ZikerGeneva HaertelKamal AliAyanna GillDerrick GilmoreClay Gloster
In this article, we invite you to expand your vision of what it means to work at the intersections of formal and informal science and literacy education by describing how educators have collaborated to create programs that blend science and literacy in schools, in museums, and across these two spaces. In 2012, K–12 teachers from the National Writing Project (NWP) began working with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and science museum educators in the National Science Foundation–funded Intersections project, which is being evaluated by Inverness Research. NWP is a network
In this paper, the authors synthesize three types of research-practice partnerships (RPPs) for informal learning. The article includes descriptions of example partnerships between local researchers and informal educators from the Hive NYC Learning Network, Community Practice Research Collaboration, and California Tinkering Afterschool Network. The synthesis paper concludes with a review of characteristics commonly found in partnerships in informal science education.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Earth Partnership: Indigenous Arts and Sciences (IAS) refines a model for integrating Indigenous and Western STEM education utilizing a 10-step framework for ecological restoration, project-based learning, and professional development. Through community dialogues and a collaborative design process with Native Nations of Wisconsin, Earth Partnership is developing an Indigenous Arts and Sciences approach that has allowed Native participants to voice their insights
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The goals of SENCER-ISE are to support formal and informal science education partnerships focused on compelling civic issues; examine whether these partnerships can bring about a transformation in STEM educational practices; provide models for others in the wider educational community; and promote confiddence in the notion that informal science education institutional assets are accessible sources of high quality "life-long learning" on matters of science