This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
This poster describes a newly funded collaborative project (9/2021) to engage Planet Word visitors in language science research.
Engage visitors in domain of science often overlooked in the public imagination (language arts -> language science enthusiasts!)
Diversify participants who contribute data to studies
Provide training in research & science communication to a diverse group of students across a range of institutions, including MSIs, broadening participation in STEM
Lower barrier to entry for other language
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Charlotte VaughnDeanna GagnePatrick PlummerYi Ting Huang
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
The project's goals are to:
Develop systems thinking skills in youth
Increase understanding of sustainable agricultural systems
Raise awareness of STEM careers related to agricultural systems
Leverage scientific research models and data for educational video games
Use the Corn-Water-Ethanol-Beef System as a model for interconnected Food, Energy, Water Systems (FEWS)
An individual's sense of themselves as a “STEM person” is largely formed through recognition feedback. Unfortunately, for many minoritized individuals who engage in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) in formal and informal spaces, this recognition often adheres to long-standing exclusionary expectations of what STEM participation entails and institutionalized stereotypes of what it means to be a STEM person. However, caregivers, who necessarily share cultural backgrounds, norms, and values with their children, can play an important role in recognizing their children's
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Heidi CianRemy DouSheila CastroElizabeth Palma-D'souzaAlexandra Martinez
Background: Authentic research experiences and mentoring have positive impacts on fostering STEM engagement among youth from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM. Programs applying an experiential learning approach often incorporate one or both of these elements, however, there is little research on how these factors impact youth’s STEM engagement during the high school to college transition. Purpose: Using a longitudinal design, this study explored the impact of a hands-on field research experience and mentoring as unique factors impacting STEM-related outcomes among underrepresented youth
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting. The project aims to engage students who had no or negative STEM experience in science and engineering through site visits and learning what is behind the scenes of entertainment and hospitality projects.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Emma Regentova
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Developing solutions to large-scale collective problems -- such as resilience to environmental challenges -- requires scientifically literate communities. However, the predominant conception of scientific literacy has focused on individuals, and there is not consensus as to what community level scientific literacy is or how to measure it. Thus, a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, “Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences,” stated that community level scientific literacy is undertheorized and understudied. More specifically, the committee recommended that research is needed to understand both the i) contexts (e.g., a community’s physical and social setting) and ii) features of community organization (e.g., relationships within the community) that support community level science literacy and influence successful group action. This CAREER award responds to this nationally identified need by iteratively refining a model to conceptualize and measure community level scientific literacy. The model and metrics developed in this project may be applied to a wide range of topics (e.g., vaccination, pandemic response, genetically-modified foods, pollution control, and land-use decisions) to improve a community’s capacity to make scientifically-sound collective decisions. This CAREER award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and the EHR CORE Research (ECR) programs. It supports the AISL program goals to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It supports the ECR program goal to advance relevant research knowledge pertaining to STEM learning and learning environments.
The proposed research will conceptualize, operationalize, and measure community level scientific literacy. This project will use a comparative multiple case study research design. Three coastal communities, faced with the need to make scientifically-informed land-use decisions, will be studied sequentially. A convergent mixed methods design will be employed, in which qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses are performed concurrently. To describe the i) context of each community case, this project will use qualitative research methods, including document analysis, observation, focus groups, and interviews. To measure the ii) features of community organization for each community case, social network analysis will be used. The results from this research will be disseminated throughout and at the culmination of the project through professional publications and conference presentations as well as with community stakeholders and the general public. The integrated education activities include a professional learning certificate for informal science education professionals and STEM graduate students. This certificate emphasizes high-quality community-engaged scholarship, placing students with partners such as museums, farmer’s markets, and libraries, to offer informal learning programs in their communities. This professional learning program will be tested as a model to provide training for STEM graduate students who would like to communicate their research to the public through outreach and extension activities.
Many Black youth in both urban and rural areas lack engaging opportunities to learn mathematics in a manner that leads to full participation in STEM. The Young People’s Project (YPP), the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP), and the Education for Liberation Network (EdLib) each have over two decades of experience working on this issue. In the city of Baltimore, where 90% of youth in poverty are Black, and only 5% of these students meet or exceed expectations in math, BAP, a youth led organization, develops and employs high school and college age youth to provide after-school tutoring in Algebra 1, and to advocate for a more just education for themselves and their peers. YPP works in urban or rural low income communities that span the country developing Math Literacy Worker programs that employ young people ages 14-22 to create spaces to help their younger peers learn math. Building on these deep and rich experiences, this Innovations in Development project studies how Black students see themselves as mathematicians in the context of paid peer-to-peer math teaching--a combined social, pedagogical, and economic strategy. Focusing primarily in Baltimore, the project studies how young people grow into new self-definitions through their work in informal, student-determined math learning spaces, structured collaboratively with adults who are experts in both mathematics and youth development. The project seeks to demonstrate the benefits of investing in young people as learners, teachers, and educational collaborators as part of a core strategy to improve math learning outcomes for all students.
The project uses a mixed methods approach to describe how mathematical identity develops over time in young people employed in a Youth-Directed Mathematics Collaboratory. 60 high school aged students with varying mathematical backgrounds (first in Baltimore and later in Boston) will learn how to develop peer- and near-peer led math activities with local young people in informal settings, after-school programs, camps, and community centers, reaching approximately 600 youth/children. The high school aged youth employed in this project will develop their own math skills and their own pedagogical skills through the already existing YPP and BAP structures, made up largely of peers and near-peers just like themselves. They will also participate in on-going conversations within the Collaboratory and with the community about the cultural significance of doing mathematics, which for YPP and BAP is a part of the ongoing Civil Rights/Human Rights movement. Mathematical identity will be studied along four dimensions: (a) students’ sequencing and interpretation of past mathematical experiences (autobiographical identity); (b) other people’s talk to them and their talk about themselves as learners, doers, and teachers of mathematics (discoursal identity); (c) the development of their own voices in descriptions and uses of mathematical knowledge and ideas (authorial identity); and (d) their acceptance or rejection of available selfhoods (socio-culturally available identity). Intended outcomes from the project include a clear description of how mathematical identity develops in paid peer-teaching contexts, and growing recognition from both local communities and policy-makers that young people have a key role to play, not only as learners, but also as teachers and as co-researchers of mathematics education.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jay GillenMaisha MosesThomas NikundiweNaama LewisAlice Cook
This project addresses a longstanding problem in informal science education: how to increase the likelihood of consequential science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning from short duration experiences such as field trips. Although informal learning experiences can greatly contribute to interest in and knowledge of science, there is a shared concern among educators and researchers that students may have difficulty recalling and using scientific information and practices emphasized during these experiences, even though doing so would further their science learning. Nonetheless, science learning is rarely, if ever, a "one-shot deal." Children acquire knowledge about science cumulatively across different contexts and activities. Therefore, it is important that informal science learning institutions identify effective practices that support the consolidation of learning and memory from exhibit experiences to foster portable, usable knowledge across contexts, such as from informal science learning institutions, to classrooms, and homes. To this end, this Research in Service to Practice project seeks to harness the power and potential of visual representations (e.g., graphs, drawings, charts, maps, etc.) for enhancing learning and encouraging effective reflection during and after science learning experiences. The project promises to increase learning for the 9,000+ 5th and 6th grade students from across the rurality and growing diversity of the state of Maine who annually participate in LabVenture, a 2.5-hour exploration of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem at Gulf of Maine Research Institute. The research will provide new and actionable informal science learning practices that promote engagement with visual representations and reflection, and science understandings that can be applied broadly by informal science institutions. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and the Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) programs. It supports the AISL program goals to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It supports the DRK-12 program goal of enhancing the learning and teaching of STEM by preK-12 students and teachers.
The project is grounded in the idea that visual representations, including drawings, can both enhance science learning and encourage reflection on doing science that can support extension of that learning beyond a singular informal science experience. The project uses design-based research to address the following research questions: (1) Does reflection during an informal science learning experience promote students’ retention and subsequent use of science information and practices that are part of the experience? (2) Does interpreting and constructing visual representations, such as drawings, improve students’ understanding and retention of information, and if so, how and when? and (3) Does combining visual representations and narrative reflections confer benefits on students’ science learning and engagement in science practices both during the informal learning experience, and later in their classrooms and at home? These questions will be pursued in collaboration with practitioners (both informal educators and classroom teachers) and a diverse team of graduate and undergraduate student researchers. Approximately 600 student groups (roughly 3000 individual students) will be observed during the LabVenture experience, with further data collection involving a portion of these students at school and at home. The project will yield resources and video demonstrations of field-tested, empirically based practices that promote engagement with visual representations and reflection, and science understandings that can travel within students' learning ecosystem. In support of broadening participation, the undergraduate/graduate student researchers will gain wide understanding and experience connecting research to practice and communicating science to academic and nonacademic audiences.
Persistent racial injustices and inequities in the United States and in STEM fields underscore the need for creative, research-based approaches to address these concerns. In particular, creative approaches are needed for studying and addressing racial injustices and inequities in STEM education, where racial equity and STEM learning are both given careful and thoughtful consideration. This project focuses on supporting emerging scholars who have new ideas and approaches for approaching racial equity in their scholarship and work. This workshop, implemented as a series of sessions over the course of a year, will support early career scholars in STEM education and the learning sciences in preparing proposals to submit to the National Science Foundation. The workshop is designed to serve scholars who are within five years of obtaining their PhD and who have never before been principal investigator or co-principal investigator of a federally-funded grant. Participants will include early career scholars who focus their work on racial equity. Too often, such scholars have indicated that they have received little to no training on writing grant proposals.
Ten participants will be supported by the project through a year-long series of workshops that include different aspects of the grant writing process including reading through a solicitation, writing a narrative, and creating a budget. In addition to these workshop sessions, the project approach also considers the importance of a professional network and of mentoring, informed by a Communities of Practice theoretical framework and existing research on mentoring practices. As such, each early career scholar will be paired with a senior mentor in the field whose work is aligned with the mentee's. The outcomes of the workshop for early career scholars will include a complete or nearly complete proposal that is aligned with one of the programs within the NSF's Division of Research on Learning. The workshop will highlight strategies for developing CAREER proposals along with considerations for preparing proposals for other programs. More generally, the workshop will create a model for supporting and mentoring early career scholars in proposing STEM education projects centered in racial equity work and will be able to identify areas of need for successful grant proposal writing. All workshop materials will be made freely available to the general public.
The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects. This project is also funded through the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL), CS for All: Research and RPPs, and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) programs.
This innovations in development project will develop and study the Wéetespeme Stewardship Program (Wéetespeme: “I am of this land”). Tribal led, the project supports and studies climate science learning experiences grounded in traditional ecological knowledge, culturally relevant pedagogy, and land education pedagogy. Nez Perce high-school youth and college-age adults will choose specific species and places; work with tribal resource management offices to learn to monitor, assess, and mitigate climate impacts; and receive mentorship from tribal elders, as they co-develop climate-science adaptive management plans for local concerns. Adaptive management plans may include topics such as: drought and extreme weather impacts, shifts in animal populations and migration patterns, cultivating traditional foods, and managing important cultural sites. The Tribal research team will collaborate with curriculum developers and Indigenous graduate student(s) from the University of Idaho and Northwest Youth Corps to explore how a STEM curriculum centered on cultural identity and traditional knowledge can align with Indigenous youths’ identities, resource responsibilities, and understanding and interest in STEM career pathways within the Tribe and in the region. As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understanding of deeper learning by participants. This project’s approach to curriculum development, and youths’ identity and career interest development, will contribute to the informal STEM learning field’s nascent understanding of Tribal-driven education efforts, and approaches to blending or bridging traditional ecological knowledge and Western ways of knowing. With co-funding from the Directorate of Geosciences’ (GEO), this project will further advance efforts related to the application of traditional ecological knowledge to the geosciences, including Indigenous workforce development opportunities and research experiences for Indigenous graduate students.
Over a two-year duration, the study will address two research questions. 1) How and in what ways does a culturally relevant out-of-school curriculum support Indigenous youths’ understanding of their own identity, resource responsibility, and possible career pathways, including those on Tribal land? 2) How and in what ways does a culturally relevant out-of-school curriculum develop Indigenous youths’ ability to monitor and address climate change impacts, to protect, preserve and recover land relationships that are central to their cultural identities and values? Thirty-two college-age young adults and high-school youth (sixteen of each age group) will participate in the Wéetespeme Stewardship Program and research study. Indigenous research methodologies will guide the approach to investigating and sharing Indigenous youths’ understanding of their own identity, resource responsibility, possible career pathways, and learning experiences within the Wéetespeme Stewardship Program activities. Two Indigenous graduate students will play a central role in conducting the research, supporting systemic impacts within, and beyond, the Tribe. Methods will be embedded in learners’ experiences and will include field journals, adaptive management plans, story maps, and talk circles. Youth will also participate as research partners: understanding the research questions, assisting with the analysis, contributing to interpretation of the findings, and co-authoring manuscripts that share their stories and this work. The informal STEM curriculum will be shared regionally, allowing for Tribes in the plateau region to benefit from culturally relevant approaches youth engagement to support climate resilience. The results of the research will also be shared more broadly, contributing to the emerging knowledge-base about the ways that cultural practices and values, guided by land education pedagogy and the mentorship of traditional ecological knowledge keepers, and embedded in informal STEM learning experiences, can contribute to Indigenous youths’ identities and understanding of, and investment in, local and meaningful environmental resources and STEM career pathways.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Nakia WilliamsonKarla Bradley EitelJeff ParkerJosiah Pinkham
This award is funded with support from NSF's program for Advancing Informal STEM Education.
This project develops a partnership between language researchers and Planet Word, a new museum devoted to language in Washington D.C., to engage museum visitors in scientific research and outreach. Interested museum visitors from all ages and backgrounds are invited to participate in behavioral research studies on a range of language-related topics. This "living language laboratory" of interactive studies includes accompanying educational demonstrations. These activities will lead to the development of infrastructure and best practices that will allow future language researchers to engage with the public at Planet Word and other similar sites.
The project enhances scientific understanding by engaging visitors in activities that expose them to active science about language as a part of their visit to the museum. For example, the research examines topics from understanding what makes certain American Sign Language signs more learnable, to why it is easier to understand people we know rather than strangers, to whether we think differently when we are reading a text message compared to reading more formal writing. In doing so, the project raises the profile of linguistics among the general public and promotes scientifically informed attitudes about language. The project also provides key opportunities to disseminate research findings of interest to the public and to promote greater interest in STEM topics among museum visitors, as well as student trainees and museum staff. The project creates educational and research opportunities for students, who will be trained in a hands-on course, and will gain first-hand experience with research and outreach in a museum setting. Through the collaborative partnership of researchers from University of Maryland, Howard University, and Gallaudet University, the project broadens participation of underrepresented minority students in the language sciences, seeking to diversify the pipeline of scholars continuing in careers in the language sciences and related STEM fields.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Charlotte VaughnYi Ting HuangDeanna GagnePatrick Plummer