The call for more science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education taking place in informal settings has the potential to shape future generations, drive new innovations and expand opportunities. Yet, its power remains to be fully realized in many communities of color. However, research has shown that using creative embodied activities to explore science phenomena is a promising approach to supporting understanding and engagement, particularly for youth who have experienced marginalization. Prior pilot work by the principal investigator found that authentic inquiries into science through embodied learning approaches can provide rich opportunities for sense-making through kinesthetic experience, embodied imagining, and the representation of physics concepts for Black and Latinx teens when learning approaches focused on dance and dance-making. This Research in Service to Practice project builds on prior work to better understand the unique opportunities for learning, engagement, and identity development for these youth when physics is explored in the context of the Embodied Physics Learning Lab Model. The model is conceptualized as a set of components that (1) allow youth to experience and utilize their intersectional identities; (2) impact engagement with physics ideas, concepts and phenomena; and (3) lead to the development of physics knowledge and other skills. The project aims to contribute to more expansive definitions of physics and physics learning in informal spaces. While the study focuses primarily on Black and Latinx youth, the methods and discoveries have the potential to impact the teaching of physics for a much broader audience including middle- and high-school children, adults who may have been turned off to physics at an earlier age, and undergraduate physical science majors who are struggling with difficult concepts. 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.
The research is grounded in sociocultural perspectives on learning and identity, embodied interaction and enactive cognition, and responsive design. The design is also informed by the notion of “ArtScience” which highlights commonalities between the thinking and making practices used by artists and by scientists and builds on the theoretical philosophy that all things can be understood through art or through science but integrating the two lenses allows for more complete understandings. Research will investigate the relationship between embodied learning approaches, design principles, and structures of the Embodied Physics Learning Lab model using the lenses of physics, dance, and integrated ArtScience to better understand the model. The project employs design-based research to address two overarching research questions: (1) What unique opportunities for learning, engagement, and identity development for Black and Latinx youth occur when physics is explored in the context of the Embodied Physics Learning Lab Model? and (2) How do variations in site demographics and site implementation influence the impact and scalability of the Learning Lab model? Further, the inquiry will consider (a) how youth experience and utilize their intersectional various identities in the context of the activities, structures, and essential elements of the embodied physics learning lab; (b) how youth's level of physics engagement changes depending on which embodied learning approaches and essential element structures are used; (c) the physics knowledge and other skills youth attain through the set of activities; and (d) how, if at all, the embodied learning approaches engage youth in thinking about their own agency as STEM doers. An interdisciplinary team of researchers, choreographers, and youth along with community organizations will co-design and implement project activities across four sites. Approximately 200 high school youth will be engaged; 24 will have the role of Teen Thought Partner. Through three iterative design cycles of implementation, the project will refine the model to investigate which elements most affect successful implementation and to identify the conditions necessary for scale-up. Data will be collected in the form of video, field notes, pre- and post- interviews, pre- and post- surveys, and artifacts created by the youth. Analyses will include a combination of interaction analysis, descriptive data analysis, and movement analysis. In addition to the research findings and explication of the affordances and constraints of the model, the project will also create a curricular resource, including narrative text and video demonstrations of physics concepts led by the teen thought partners, video case training modules, and assessment tools.
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Folashade Cromwell SolomonDionne Champion
The Clay Center for Arts and Sciences of West Virginia will create professional learning communities of teachers and after-school staff serving 7th grade students at seven partner schools using digital storytelling as a tool to explore energy-related topics impacting their communities. West Virginia's role as a leading coal producer and the impact of natural gas drilling served as strong influencing factors in the creation of this STEAM project, titled emPOWERed Stories. Students will create an exhibit that incorporates these digital stories. The results will inform the broader field on ways to better blend formal and informal education experiences to become more potent learning environments.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks will partner with the National Optical and Astronomy Observatory, the University of Alaska Museum of the North, and the University of Washington-Bothell to bring biomaterials, optics, photonics, and nanotechnology content, art infused experiences, and career awareness to art-interested girls. This full scale development project, Project STEAM, will explore the intersections between biology, physics, and art using advanced technologies at the nano to macro scale levels. Middle school girls from predominately underrepresented Alaskan Native, Native American (Tohono O'odham, Pascula Yaqui) and Hispanic groups, their families, teachers, and Girl Scout Troop Leaders in two site locations- Anchorage, Alaska and Tucson, Arizona will participate in the project. Centered on the theme "Colors of Nature," Project STEAM will engage girls in science activities designed to enhance STEM learning and visual-spatial skills. Using advanced technologies, approximately 240 girls enrolled in the Summer Academy over the project duration will work with women scientist mentors, teachers, and Girl Scout Troop Leaders to create artistic representations of natural objects observed at the nano and macro scale levels. Forty girls will participate in the Summer Academy in year one (20 girls per site- Alaska and Arizona). In consequent years, approximately180 girls will participate in the Academy (30 girls per site). Another 1,500 girls are expected to be reached through their Girl Scout Troop Leaders (n=15) who will be trained to deliver a modified version of the program using specialized curriculum kits. In addition, over 6,000 girls and their families are expected to attend Project STEAM Science Cafe events held at local informal science education institutions at each site during the academic year. In conjunction with the programmatic activities, a research investigation will be conducted to study the impact of the program on girls' science identity. Participant discourse, pre and post assessments, and observed engagement with the scientific and artistic ideas and tools presented will be examined and analyzed. A mixed methods approach will also be employed for the formative and summative evaluations, which will be conducted by The Goldstream Group. Ultimately, the project endeavors to increase STEM learning and interest through art, build capacity through professional development, advance the research base on girls' science identity and inspire and interest girls in STEM careers.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. Madison Area Technical College, in collaboration with the Institute for Chemical Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American Chemical Society (ACS) and area science centers and museums will create a national program to disseminate the Fusion Science Theater (FST) model which directly engages children in playful, participatory, and inquiry-based science learning of chemistry and physics topics.
Project STEAM aims to inspire art-interested girls to enter STEM careers through a series of activities, including summer academies that explore the biology and physics of color, science café-style presentations that feature the overlap between art and science, and the development of “kits” that can be used in informal and formal venues (Girl Scouts, science centers, and K-12 classrooms). Project research explores two questions: 1) How does an art-focused approach (STEAM) to teaching science support engagement in scientific practices such as experimentation, observation, and communication of
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University of Alaska, FairbanksLaura Conner
Marshall Barnes was chosen by Larry Bock, founder of the USA Science and Engineering Festival as a late addition to the USASEF after viewing Marshall's impressive SuperScience for High School Physics activities for National Lab Day and his emphasis on advanced concept science and technologies. Marshall was given free booth space to set-up an exhibit that featured what is now being called "STEAM" or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and was fairly interactive. Marshall's booth emphasized his actual research that the visitors could take part in or analyze themselves. He had a VCR, TV, CD player, MacBookPro laptop and his own invention - the Visual Reduction Window. There were four elements to the exhibit. There was a TV monitor that showed a scene from a movie that you could view with 3D glasses for TV that Marshall invented that work even with one eye closed. At different times that same monitor would feature footage from an experiment that Marshall conducted to produce one of Nikola Tesla's ideas that Tesla never accomplished - a wall of light. This same footage could be analyzed by the visitors - frame by frame, on the Mac computer to see exactly how the principle of resonance produced the wall of light from the build-up of reflections off a physical wall created by strobe lights. Visitors could also listen to hyperdimensional music that Marshall produced that takes any kind of music to a new listening experience. Based on the concept that music is a coded language with cues and instructions that are cognitively recognizable when translated, Marshall invented techniques and technologies that allow such translations and brought examples for visitors to listen to. They included an upcoming radio show theme and the soundtrack to a documentary on the reality behind Fox TV's FRINGE. The music featured song elements that move around between the speakers and make you feel like the music is alive. The most dramatic of all was the Visual Reduction Window, again invented by Marshall, that made kids look transparent and at times, almost completely invisible. Based on his famous research into invisibility, which is documented at the Santa Maria Experiment exhibit in the Santa Maria Education Visitor's Center in Columbus, Ohio, the effect of real life transparency is stunning and Marshall, the world's leading expert on invisibility research was able to describe the physics behind what he was doing and its applications in the real world. His approach to invisibility is superior to those methods pursued by Duke University and others, trying to do the same with metamaterials, and is based on a completely different model of invisibility that he calls, Visual Density Reduction or VDR. Using VDR techniques, Marshall can make attack helicopters, small gun boats, tanks and many other things invisible, which is why he doesn't reveal the current level of his research, due to National Security reasons. Overall, the exhibit was a wild success and serves as a model for a traveling exhibit for informal science at malls, fairs, science centers, and other festivals.
Presentation on NSF grant DRL-1114568 (""Fusion Science Theater National Training and Dissemination Program"") presented at the CAISE Convening on Professional Development and Informal Science Education, February 2nd, 2012.
The Fusion Science Theater National Training and Dissemination Program builds on the success of the Fusion Science Theater (FST) planning grant (DRL 07-32142). Madison Area Technical College, in collaboration with the Institute for Chemical Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American Chemical Society (ACS) and area science centers and museums will create a national program to disseminate the FST model which directly engages children in playful, participatory, and inquiry-based science learning of chemistry and physics topics. The primary target audience is children aged 4-11, while undergraduate chemistry students, faculty, and formal and informal educators comprise the secondary professional audience. The project will result in the development of a robust, creative, and highly visible national dissemination program. The National Training and Dissemination Program includes three deliverables. First, a Distance Performance Training Program will be developed to teach groups of undergraduate students, faculty, and educators how to perform FST Science Investigation (SI) Shows. The Training Program includes a Performance Training Package and a 3-day Performance Training Workshop. The Performance Training Package will be comprised of training videos, performances videos, scripts, rehearsal schedules, and training exercises. These materials will be pilot tested while training representatives of five groups from around the country to perform SI Shows during the Performance Training Workshop at Madison Area Technical College in summer 2012. Participants will be selected from ACS undergraduate groups, outreach specialists, and museum professionals. Workshop participants then return to their home institutions and lead their groups through the improved Performance Training Package delivered via Moodle, with support from FST team members and social networking tools. The second deliverable is the FST Methods Workshop. The Methods Workshop is designed to teach formal and informal educators to use selected methods (Investigation Question, Embedded Assessment, and Act-It-Out) in their outreach efforts and classroom teaching. Four workshops will be presented at national meetings and at the invitation of colleges, universities, and science centers. Follow-up with workshop participants will be mediated through an online forum to encourage experimentation, modification, and dissemination of a second generation of FST activities. The final project deliverable is the development and implementation of a Promotion and Recruitment Plan to connect professional audiences with FST. The Distance Performance Training Program and workshops will be evaluated using mixed methods, while embedded assessment will be utilized to measure the impact on youth participants attending SI shows to determine the overall effectiveness the Distance Performance Training. This project is designed to have important impacts on STEM education and society. The proposed dissemination program brings innovative models and methods into the hands of informal science education practitioners who can use them to engage local audiences and enhance their own teaching and communication practices. Finally the project offers likely benefits for society through the creation and dissemination of innovative practices to combat science illiteracy, diminishing pools of scientists and engineers, lack of understanding about the nature of science, and the achievement gap that exacerbates these problems. This project could be transformative in informal science education as SI Shows use theater to engage audiences in multiple aspects of science learning. It is anticipated that this project will reach up to 2,500 individuals in public and professional audiences.
Independent Production Fund is producing a three-part public television series focusing on the latest research in the science of music. The programs will explore how cutting-edge science is revealing new connections between music and the human mind and body, the natural world and the cosmos. The series will follow researchers from a variety of fields including physiology, neuroscience, psychology, biology, physics and education, as they use groundbreaking techniques and technologies to unravel age-old mysteries about music\'s persistence, universality and emotional power. It will show how these researchers are shedding valuable new light on the way brains work. The impact of the programs will be extended through a content-rich companion web site and innovative formal and informal educational-outreach materials to both middle and high school age students, as well as a complementary radio component. Mannes Productions will produce the series; Goodman Research Group will conduct formative evaluation and Rockman et al will conduct summative evaluation.
Madison Area Technical College will refine and evaluate the effectiveness of Fusion Science Theater (FST), a combination of theater, science demonstrations, and participatory components, as an ISE teaching model, to test its transferability through development and trials of an exportable version (Science-in-a-Box), and to recruit appropriate partners nationally in preparation for a larger scale implementation and evaluation. A Fusion Science Theater event utilizes the collaborative effort of applied expertise in science, theater and education. These events support playful interactions as characters engage the emotions of the audience. The Act-It Out sequences invite children and parents to become involved in modeling scientific concepts, thus creating an environment where learning is the product of social interaction and kinesthetic, affective and interpersonal learning. To provide proof-of-concept that this a transferable model, an independent, interdisciplinary team from the University of Wisconsin, Madison Biotechnology Center will produce their own FST event that will be evaluated and compared to an existing FST program. The Madison Children's Museum will partner as a venue for the event and provide expertise in the planning process. The ultimate project resulting from this planning would include workshops to train collaborative teams from around the country in the principles and practices of FST, promotion of cross-disciplinary collaboration among professionals, and honing of an evaluation design for FST events. The trained teams would then produce FST events that reach children, their parents and the general public. The planning grant project design includes activities necessary to further test, verify and document Fusion Science Theater events. It provides a proof of concept of model effectiveness and transferability. It also initiates, develops and assesses ways to train other groups to implement the model and publicizes the model to national professional networks to spread the work and recruit site teams.
Independent Production Fund is producing a three-part public television series focusing on the latest research in the science of music. The programs will explore how cutting-edge science is revealing new connections between music and the human mind and body, the natural world and the cosmos. The series will follow researchers from a variety of fields including physiology, neuroscience, psychology, biology, physics and education, as they use groundbreaking techniques and technologies to unravel age-old mysteries about music's persistence, universality and emotional power. It will show how these researchers are shedding valuable new light on the way brains work. The impact of the programs will be extended through a content-rich companion web site and innovative formal and informal educational-outreach materials to both middle and high school age students, as well as a complementary radio component. Mannes Productions will produce the series; Goodman Research Group will conduct formative evaluation and Rockman et al will conduct summative evaluation.
The Children's Museum of Manhatten is requesting $267,220 over two years to create a 2,500 sq.ft. interactive exhibition about the physical and acoustic properties of sound. The exhibition will use music as a high-interest point of entry into learning about science, and also as a demonstration of science as part of our everyday lives. The entire exhibit will be displayed for two years. Certain elements will then be retired, others displayed indefinitely. Target audience is children in kindergarten through sixth grades.