Dabney and colleagues examine the relationship between university students’ reported interest in STEM careers and their participation in out-of-school time science activities during middle and high school. The researchers examined the specific forms of OST science activities associated with STEM career interest and the correlations among those forms.
This study focused on girls’ engagement with science and how they negotiate identities with and in opposition to science in a three-year study of community-based afterschool initiatives. Rahm conducted a multi-sited ethnography, observing girls’ whose families had recently immigrated to Montreal, Canada and were participating in a community organization creating science newsletters and science fair projects.
This article discusses the potential for learner engagement in the contexts of a basketball team and a mathematics classroom. The qualitative analysis centers on three aspects of each context: access to the domain, the integral roles available to learners, and opportunities for self-expression.
What keeps an individual interested and motivates long-term engagement in a practice? This Azevedo article presents a grounded theory of long-term, self-motivated participation based on data gathered through an ethnography of hobbyists’ participation in model rocketry. The author emphasizes that long-term engagement depends on the connection of the activity to the participant’s “larger life.”
The Computer Clubhouse aims to help inner-city youth gain that type of technological fluency. The Computer Clubhouse is designed to provide inner-city youth with access to new technologies. But access alone is not enough. The Clubhouse is based not only on new technology, but on new ideas about learning and community. It represents a new type of learning community—where young people and adult mentors work together on projects, using new technologies to explore and experiment in new ways.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchel ResnickNatalie RuskStina Cooke
A midpoint progress poster on the Sparks of Discovery Project which connects UW-Madison NSF researchers to produce interdisciplinary science investigations that will be/have been implemented in a number of settings, including participants from underrepresented groups in science. Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) along with the Morgridge Institute for Research staff support the project and implement the education programs at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Wisconsin, MadisonTravis Tangen
This poster describes Skynet Junior Scholars (NSF award numbers 1223687, 1223235, 1223345) project. Skynet Junior Scholars engages middle and high school aged youth in the study of the Universe using the same tools as professionals by: targeting youth audience enrolled in the 4-H program; building accessibility standards into the SJS design ; using research quality, multi-wavelength telescopes. These telescopes are part of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network.
This is the poster for the CCI Solar Fuels and Westside Science Club collaboration presented by Michelle Hansen and Benjamin Dickow at the 2014 AISL PI meeting in Washington DC.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
California Institute of Technology Center for Chemical InnovationMichelle Hansen
This poster provides an overview, program goals, evaluation plan, and research questions for the AISL project, Techbridge Broad Implementation: An Innovative Model to Inspire Girls in STEM Careers. The poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting.
The data collection for this project involved three audiences: (1) a post-event survey completed by participants at the 'Eight-Legged Encounters' event, (2) a club experience survey completed by middle school students in an after-school club, and (3) focus groups, observations, and end-of-course evaluations conducted with students in the BIOS 497/897 'Communicating Science through Outreach' seminar class at the University of Lincoln, Nebraska. Year two data collection was completed from September 2013 - March 2014. Appendix includes survey.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Nebraska-LincolnEileen Hebets
The data collection for this project involves three audiences: (1) a post-event survey completed by participants at the 'Eight-Legged Encounters' event, (2) a club experience survey completed by middle school students in an after school club, and (3) focus groups, observations, and end-of-course evaluations conducted with students in the BIOS 497/897 'Communicating Science through Outreach' seminar class at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Data was collected from February to April, 2013 and the evaluation was conducted by the Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR). Appendix contains surveys
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Nebraska-LincolnEileen Hebets