Mathematics plays a significant role in understanding and participating in science, technology, and engineering (STEM). Research shows that early mathematics experiences in everyday life are critical to the development of children's mathematical knowledge. This project will explore an innovative approach to fostering parent-child math interactions and conversations related to mathematical ideas. The approach will use community-based, exhibit installations called Mathscapes. These are artistic, culturally relevant, easily accessible, physical installations designed to encourage adults and children (ages 3 to 7) to use their immediate environment to playfully explore key early math concepts. The project also addresses a need for research about the cultural experiences and resources that marginalized children and families bring to mathematical conversations. Understanding parent-child interactions about mathematics community settings could result in new knowledge about early math learning among low income children and parents. 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 understandings of deeper learning by participants.
This exploratory study will design and investigate an innovative approach to encouraging math talk and math-related interactions between parents and children (ages 3-7) through the creation of MathScapes. These are temporary physical installations designed to use the immediate environment to playfully explore mathematical concepts. This study will be conducted in two Boston neighborhoods that are populated by low-income, non-dominant minority and immigrant families. Adopting a case study approach, the project will use observational methods, discourse analysis of parent/child talk, and interviews to study the interactions of 200 families at two neighborhood Mathscape installations. LENA devices will be used to capture parent/child talk at the Mathscapes while researchers use observational methods to document participant interactions, talk, and gestures. Data sources will include audio recordings of family talk, field notes of family interactions at Mathscape installations, surveys, and interviews. A qualitative approach will be used to produce research findings at multiple levels. The focus of the analysis will be to understand if this approach enhances the quality and quantity of math talk between parents and children. The project will be carried out by a research-practice-community partnership in Boston, Massachusetts that includes community mathematics educators, education researchers, and participating children and families. The design of community installations could promote engagement with math through adult/child conversations in culturally-relevant contexts situated in the local environment. By addressing the cultural experiences and resources of young people, the project could greatly enhance our understanding of how to leverage the resources that children and families bring to engaging with mathematics.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Omowale MosesDanny MartinCatherine O'ConnorNermeen Darshoush
This project develops and examines place-based learning using mobile augmented reality experiences for rural families where museums and science centers are scarce yet where natural resources are rich with outdoor trails, parks, and forestlands. The collaborative research team, with members from rural libraries, outdoor learning centers, learning scientists at Penn State University, and rural communities in Pennsylvania, will develop augmented reality and mobile learning resources for families and children aged from 4 to 12. The goal is to help people see what is not visible in real-time in order to learn about life and earth sciences based on local watersheds, trees, and seasonal cycles that are familiar and relevant to rural communities. To accomplish this goal, the project team will create scientifically meaningful experiences for rural families and children in their out-of-school time through three iterations of research and design. Although there is evidence that augmented reality can support learning, little empirical research has been conducted to determine what makes one type of augmented learning experience more effective than others in outdoor learning spaces. This project will produce research findings on the utility of augmented reality for science learning with families and youths outdoors. This Innovations in Development 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. 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 understandings of deeper learning by participants
Through a four-year design-based research study, researchers will investigate three research questions. (1) How can outdoor learning experiences be enhanced with augmented reality and digital resources in ways that make science more visible and interesting?; (2) How do different forms of augmentations on trails and in gardens support science learning? 3) What social roles do children and parents play in supporting each other's science learning and connections to rural communities? Data collection includes video-recordings of children and families in the outdoors, learning analytics of people's behavior, and interviews with rural families. The project's research design will allow for the development of theory, which supports rural families learning science within and about their communities. At the end of the project, the team will offer generalizable design principles for technologically-enhanced informal learning for outdoor displays, gardens, and trails.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
Informal STEM education needs high quality program evaluation. Research is particularly needed on the relationship between STEM outcomes and positive youth development (PYD) / socio-emotional learning (SEL). This pilot and feasibility project involves a collaboration between experts in STEM education, out-of-school time programs (OST), PYD, SEL, evaluation, and program development. STEM Scouts helps youth grow in character and develop skills using experiential activities and interaction with STEM professionals. This project expands the implementation of the Systems Evaluation Protocol (SEP), an evidence-based approach to evaluation planning.
The goals are to: 1) develop a theory of change for STEM Scouts highlighting the relationship between STEM outcomes and PYD/SEL outcomes; 2) pilot enhancements to the SEP (System Mapping, Ecosystem Modeling, and Model Validation); and, 3) determine the feasibility of conducting a national STEM Scouts study. STEM Scouts leadership and project researchers will work through the SEP to generate a stakeholder map, logic model, and pathway model (PM). Five STEM Scouts Labs across the country will participate in focus groups where they will complete SM to identify the system in which the Lab exists (e.g., stakeholders and decision-makers), review and revise their system maps, identify key outcomes and connections in the PM, and discuss how the PM reflects their STEM Scouts experiences. It is hypothesized the enhanced SEP will enable the working group to better understand factors hindering or enabling program and evaluation feasibility and success. Findings will be disseminated to the evaluation/research community, OST program providers/developers and the public.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's 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.
Gathering evidence for the long-term impact of programs for youth on their involvement in STEM studies and careers continues to be a challenge, especially for program interventions happening in earlier stages of development (e.g., elementary, middle, high-school years. Work that focuses on mechanisms for mitigating these challenges is important. The conference and associated activities aim to build a research action agenda that is rooted in practice to support better understanding of the long-term impacts of informal STEM programs for girls provided by cultural institutions, along with methods and approaches for measuring them. The project team will use a collaborative co-design approach to establish a STEM for Girls Research Alliance. The Alliance will include three levels of participants, with different levels of commitment: a core planning group (CPG) of 8-10 people, approximately 20-25 participating members (PM) and 50-60 interested stakeholder group representatives (SGR). The project team will utilize face-to-face meetings, digital engagement strategies, and surveys to develop the agenda and solicit multiple rounds of feedback and input. The CPG, consisting of leaders and representatives from state-based STEM for Girls organizations that are part of the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) and members of the New York State STEAM for Girls Collaborative, will be responsible for setting priorities and guiding the action agenda. The PM will include representatives (educators and researchers) from informal STEM programs at cultural institutions that participate in the state-based collaboratives. The PM will be regularly consulted on important aspects of the action agenda that relate to their work. Finally, the SGR will include representatives from several audiences that are being served by or work with the participating members: girls and young women, parents, educators, funders, researchers and employers. The SG will be engaged via focus groups virtually or at national meetings to which these individuals attend.
To support broader involvement of professionals working in this sector, a comprehensive digital engagement plan using web and social media networks will be developed. The plan will utilize a consistent hashtag, #STEMeffect, allowing participants to follow the conversation across social media platforms. Social media platforms to be utilized will include Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Snapchat and others. More than 60,000 people will be engaged via the networks of the NY STEAM Collaborative, NGCP, WSKG Public Media and project partners. A robust research action plan will position researchers to further explore the role of informal STEM education experiences in shaping the career choices of girls and identify where there are breaks in the hoped-for pathways to STEM college and careers. It also will benefit informal STEM organizations by yielding information that will help them to fine-tune their programs for girls and young women. Ultimately, contributions to the knowledge base will result in broadened participation of girls and women in STEM programs and careers. This work is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program as part of its strategy to enhance learning in informal environments and support innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lynda KennedyAlicia SantiagoBabette Moeller
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its afterschool program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. Techbridge Girls began offering afterschool programming at elementary and middle schools in Greater Seattle in 2014, and in Washington, DC in 2015.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the project. To assess the implementation
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its afterschool program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. Techbridge Girls began offering afterschool programming at elementary and middle schools in Greater Seattle in 2014, and in Washington, DC in 2015.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the project. To assess the implementation
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its after-school program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. Techbridge Girls began offering after-school programming at elementary and middle schools in Greater Seattle in 2014, and in Washington, DC in 2015.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the project. To assess the
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its after-school program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. Techbridge Girls began offering after-school programming at elementary and middle schools in Greater Seattle in 2014, and in Washington, DC in 2015.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the project. To assess the
Techbridge Girls’ mission is to help girls discover a passion for science, engineering, and technology (SET). In August 2013, Techbridge Girls was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation grant to scale up its after-school program from the San Francisco Bay Area to multiple new locations around the United States. In the fall of 2014, Techbridge Girls began offering after-school programming at five elementary and two middle schools in the Highline Public School district, located near Seattle, WA.
Education Development Center is conducting the formative and summative evaluation of the
This Innovations in Development 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. 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 understandings of deeper learning by participants.
The Designing Our Tomorrow project will develop a framework for creating exhibit-based engineering design challenges and expand an existing model of facilitation for use in engineering exhibits. The project seeks to broaden participation in engineering and build capacity within the informal science education (ISE) field while raising public awareness of the importance of sustainable engineering design practices. The project focuses on girls aged 9-14 and their families and is co-developed with culturally responsive strategies to ensure the inclusion and influence of families from Latino communities. The project will conduct research resulting in theory-based measures of engineering proficiencies within an exhibit context and an exhibit facilitation model for the topic area of engineering. Based on the research, the project will develop an engineering design challenge framework for developing design challenges within an exhibit context. As the context for research, the project will develop a bilingual English/Spanish 2,000-square foot traveling exhibition designed to engage youth and families in engineering design challenges that advance their engineering proficiencies from beginner to more informed, supported by professional development modules and a host-site training workshop introducing strategies for facilitating family engineering experiences within a traveling exhibition. The project is a collaboration of Oregon Museum of Science and Industry with the Biomimicry Institute, Adelante Mujeres, and the Fleet Science Center.
Designing Our Tomorrow builds on a theory-based engineering teaching framework and several previous NSF-funded informal education projects to engage families in compelling design challenges presented through the lens of sustainable design exemplified by biomimicry. Through culturally-responsive co-development and research strategies to include members of Latino communities and provide challenges that highlight the altruistic, creative, personally relevant, and collaborative aspects of engineering, the Designing Our Tomorrow exhibition showcases engineering as an appealing career option for women and helps families support each other's engineering proficiencies. To better understand and promote engineering learning in an ISE setting, the project will conduct two research studies to inform and iteratively develop effective strategies. In the first study, measurement development will build on prior research and practice to design credible and reliable measures of engineering proficiency, awareness, and collaboration, as well as protocols for use in exhibit development and the study of facilitation at engineering exhibits, and future research. The second study will explore the effects of facilitation on the experience outcomes.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This Innovations in Development 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. 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 understandings of deeper learning by participants. The Design Squad Maker project, a collaboration of WGBH Public Television (WGBH) and the New York Hall of Science (NySci), will research and develop engineering design projects that provide evidence for how to integrate informal learning spaces with digital public media assets. The project will be designed to provide accessible, motivating pathways for children aged 8-11 in pursuing and completing ambitious, fully realized engineering design projects. The project will build on WGBH's existing Design Squad model for using media to engage kids in informal engineering activities and NySCI's expertise in facilitating children's unique design processes in museum settings. By developing and studying new strategies for supporting children's use of the design process, Design Squad Maker will address critical issues in engineering education and informal learning that remain relatively unexplored. Project research will contribute to the emerging literature on "connected learning" by building new knowledge about how children's design activities can be sustained and supported over time and across multiple contexts, such as science museums and homes. Drawing on existing research in the learning sciences and engineering education, the project seeks to advance knowledge about the role of museums, maker spaces, and digital technology in sustaining children's learning in engineering. The project will use a design-based research approach, a research and development process whereby educational designers collaborate with learning scientists. Museum practitioners will collaborate with research staff and media developers to design, test, and improve digital resources, facilitation strategies, and parent engagement strategies to support children through an entire design process. The research and development process will result in digital resources and approaches in a flexible toolkit, which will be used when assessing the project's scale-up potential at 10 museum/maker spaces. The project will conduct a summative evaluation, assessing the project's intended impacts with children, parents, and staff at museums/maker spaces across the country. The toolkit will be nationally disseminated through national partners that include the Association of Science-Technology Centers, Maker Education, the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement, and engineering education organizations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of settings. In this Innovations and Development project, Child Trends, in collaboration with Ivanhoe Broadcast News, will expand the reach of the Child Trends News Service, and rigorously evaluate its impact on viewers. The News Service aims to build the public's knowledge of, and appreciation for, social science research and to encourage adoption of research-informed parenting practices associated with positive child development--particularly among Latino parents. First produced in 2017 through a NSF proof of concept grant, the Child Trends News Service covers actionable, child-focused, social science research. By featuring this research on local TV news, the project expands access to evidence-based parenting recommendations. As of February 2018, 89 stations had subscribed to the News Service, including eight stations in the top 25 Latino-serving TV markets that reach 38% of all Hispanic TV Households in those 25 markets. This project is a response to the challenges faced by U.S. children, of whom more than one in five live in poverty. The focus on Latino parents is in response Latinos' increasing share of all children, and that Latino children are disproportionately poor, in comparison to their peers. The project will examine the impact of the News Service on parents who view the news reports in their homes, as well as Latino parents viewing the News Service as part of their participation in the Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors) community-based parenting program. This research will contribute to the knowledge base of what we know about how people access and use science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) information across settings.
The overarching aim of this project is to leverage commercial television news to reach populations who have historically been underrepresented in STEM education and careers. The goals of the project are to:
1. Build and manage an interdisciplinary collaborative, including news media professionals, researchers, practitioners in organizations serving at-risk families, and experts in STEM communications and Latino studies.
2. Leverage mass media news outlets to deliver social science research on children to at-risk populations, with a focus on reaching Latino parents.
3. Advance the field of informal STEM learning by exploring how the public interacts with actionable research on child development to inform their knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.
4. Expand the reach and application of the news products through strategic outreach to other stakeholders in the child development field including programs serving under-served families.
To accomplish these goals, the project will further strengthen an Advisory Panel to inform content development, study design, interpretation of findings, dissemination of study results, and the transition of the project after the NSF grant period. The project will continue to provide eight (both in English and Spanish) stories each month to TV stations and strategically grow the reach in top Latino markets. The editorial process will be informed by surveys of Latino parents to identify topics of interest. Through a random-assignment impact study with local TV news audiences from diverse racial/ethnic groups, the project will evaluate the impact of the News Service. The project will use formative research methods to refine messaging and examine the potential for repurposing the videos through a parenting program for Latino parents.
The Child Trends News Service seeks broader impacts in three areas: increasing the public's scientific literacy and engagement with science and technology; increasing partnerships between academia, industry, and others; and improving the well-being of individuals in society.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.