But many young people face signifcant economic, cultural, historical, and/or social obstacles that distance them from STEM as a meaningful or viable option— these range from under-resourced schools, race- and gender-based discrimination, to the dominant cultural norms of STEM professions or the historical uses of STEM to oppress or disadvantage socio-economically marginalized communities (Philip and Azevedo 2017). As a result, participation in STEM-organized hobby groups, academic programs, and professions remains low among many racial, ethnic, and gender groups (Dawson 2017). One solution to
The Equity Compass helps to identify how and why particular examples of practice may be more or less equitable. By mapping your practice, the compass can help support planning for improvements in equitable practice. By attending to each of the segments, the Equity Compass helps practitioners to identify ways to support young people’s critical STEM agency. STEM agency is the capacity for young people, particularly those from underserved communities, to use STEM to take action in their lives on issues that are meaningful to them and which help challenge societal injustices.
As an emerging field of theory, research, and practice, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) has received attention for its efforts to incorporate the arts into the rubric of STEM learning. In particular, many informal educators have embraced it as an inclusive and authentic approach to engaging young people with STEM. Yet, as with many nascent fields, the conceptualization and usage of STEAM is somewhat ambivalent and weakly theorized. On the one hand, STEAM offers significant promise through its focus on multiple ways of knowing and new pathways to equitable
This poster was presented at the 2019 Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) Annual Conference. It describes the Move2Learn project, which studies embodied interactions during science learning in order to articulate design principles about how museum exhibits can most effectively encourage cognitive and physical engagement with science.