Using a design-based research approach, we studied ways to advance opportunities for children and families to engage in engineering design practices in an informal educational setting. 213 families with 5–11-year-old children were observed as they visited a tinkering exhibit at a children’s museum during one of three iterations of a program posing an engineering design challenge. Children’s narrative reflections about their experience were recorded immediately after tinkering. Across iterations of the program, changes to the exhibit design and facilitation provided by museum staff corresponded
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Maria MarcusDiana AcostaPirko TouguDavid UttalCatherine Haden
Our museum-based participatory research (PR) project was a collaboration between researchers and educators in an out-of-school time STEM education program for young people that positions STEM as a tool for community social justice. This project drew on literatures on reflective practice in museums and on research-practice partnerships. Yet following existing approaches did not work for us. Aligning research and pedagogical practices, we co-created practical, reflective, and practice-based data generation methods, calling them “embedded research practices:” context-specific, emergent methods
This brief focuses on a participatory study with the high school program of the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center (KAYSC) at the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM). Young people are organized into teams of up to 20 youth with an adult practitioner who delivers programming based on a STEM content area. Their activities and project-based learning are based in both STEM and social justice, coined in the KAYSC as “STEM Justice.”
As part of our study, we wanted to understand youth and adult needs that exist in an informal STEM education program that weaves equity into its core. This brief
This brief is for practitioners and researchers in informal learning who want to collaborate in participatory research. While we have learned from similar work (much of which is in formal education or large-scale projects), what we found didn’t always apply to us or our contexts. For instance, content (curriculum) and assessment look different in schools versus on a museum floor. While informal educators don’t have the pressure of high-stakes testing and accountability, they are often part-time workers and may not have as much theoretical training or professional development as formal
The theory of “science capital” is increasingly showing up in formal and informal science education. Both face the common challenge of what is often called a “theory/practice divide”: academic theory not seeming relevant to the day-to-day needs and practices of educators.
This brief shares what happened when practitioners and researchers working with the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center (KAYSC) at the Science Museum of Minnesota took both theory and practice seriously, reclaiming terms and ideas in service of our work and communities. It explores how an informal science learning (ISL)
This brief shares youth development insights from a museum-based, informal science learning program that uses STEM as a tool for social justice. Key to the success of this program were young people and adults feeling at home in a welcoming, diverse, and inclusive space; activities that focused on connecting and relationships; a holistically supportive space that attended to family and personal needs; shared norms for conversation and expectations; and science content grounded in young people’s lives, experiences, and communities as well as work with community members.
These needs were
When Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM) closed in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the reality of a prolonged closure soon hit home. Like all of our colleague museums, we needed to find a way to remain relevant to our community and carry out important aspects of our work.
One key initiative that needed to be sustained was our National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research-to-practice project: TALES (Tinkering and Learning Engineering Stories)1. A partnership between CCM, Loyola University Chicago, and Northwestern University, this project studies how narrative and storytelling
In order for children to identify with STEM fields, it is essential that they feel there is a place within STEM for individuals “like them.” Unfortunately, this identification is difficult for Hispanic/Latine youths because of lack of representation and even stereotyping that is widespread in educational institutions in the United States. Some research has been done, though, that suggests there is promise in understanding the ways that parents help children see themselves as “STEM people” in spite of these obstacles. Building on this work, we present some of our own research on the experiences
"Making and Tinkering" links science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning (STEM) to the do-it-yourself "maker" movement, where people of all ages "create and share things in both the digital and physical world" (Resnick & Rosenbaum, 2013). This paper examines designing what Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) call "contexts for tinkerability" within the social design experiment of El Pueblo Mágico (EPM) -- a design approach organized around a cultural historical view of learning and development. We argue that this theoretical perspective reorganizes normative approaches to STEM education
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lisa SchwartzDaniela DigiacomoKris Gutierrez
Using their imagination and creativity, inventors have made significant contributions to our world throughout the course of human history. In recent times, a growing community has responded to the need for more intensive research on Invention Education and within the last several years has begun organizing itself around collaborative action that will accelerate the uptake and practice of Invention Education. The purpose of this document is to provide a comprehensive community-driven framework and set of principles for Invention Education that can support its growth within formal and informal
The Researching Invention Education white paper compiles contributions from a community of individuals and organizations working in Invention Education (IvE) in the United States. IvE is a term that refers to the practice of teaching students how to problem-solve and think like inventors in order to become positive change-makers in the world. The paper was written by researchers interested in IvE who attended the 2018 InventEd convening hosted by The Lemelson Foundation. The group worked together for a year to publish their findings that were then uncovered at the 2019 InventEd convening in
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Audra SkukauskaiteStephanie CouchLeslie Flynn
In November 2020, President-elect Joe Biden identified four priority areas for the incoming administration: COVID-19; climate change, economic recovery, and racial equity. These crucial areas of national interest will be the focus of media attention, policy debates, funding initiatives, and community discussions over the next four years. Will museums be part of these important conversations and initiatives? Are there opportunities for museums to affirm or to reposition their roles within the difficult public deliberations ahead? Addressing Societal Challenges through STEM (ASCs) is a research