BACKGROUND: Environmental health risks are disproportionately colocated with communities in poverty and communities of color. In some cases, participatory research projects have effectively addressed structural causes of health risk in environmental justice (EJ) communities. However, many such projects fail to catalyze change at a structural level.
OBJECTIVES: This review employs Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) to theorize specific elements of participatory research for environmental health that effectively prompt structural change in EJ communities.
METHODS: Academic database search
We were interested in learning which images -- videos, graphics or GIFs -- worked best in our Facebook posts to inform our future Facebook content creation strategies.
This collaborative research project between KQED, a public media organization serving the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas Tech University and Rockman et al conducted research to study how best to provide effective COVID-19 science news and social media content for young adult audiences.
The KQED Science Engagement team set out to test different formats of media with the same mask message used in the survey conducted by Texas
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.
Milwaukee has established itself as a leader in water management and technology, hosting a widely recognized cluster of industrial, governmental, nonprofit, and academic activity focused on freshwater. At the same time, Milwaukee faces a wide range of challenges with freshwater, some unique to the region and others common to cities throughout the country. These challenges include vulnerability to flooding and combined sewer overflows after heavy rainfall, biological and pharmaceutical contamination in surface water, lead in drinking water infrastructure, and inequity in access to beaches and other recreational water amenities. Like other cities, Milwaukee grapples with the challenges global climate change imposes on urban water systems, including changing patterns of precipitation and drought.
These problems are further complicated by Milwaukee's acute racial and economic residential segregation. With a population of approximately 595,000, embedded within a metropolitan area of over 1.5 million, Milwaukee remains one of the country's most segregated cities. There is increasing urgency to engage the public--and especially those who are most vulnerable to environmental impacts--more deeply in the stewardship of urban water and in the task of creating sustainable urban futures. The primary goal of this four-year project is to foster community-engaged learning and environmental stewardship by developing a framework that integrates art with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) experiences along with geography, water management, and social science. Synergies between STEM learning and the arts suggest that collaborations among artists, scientists, and communities can open ways to bring informal learning about the science of sustainability to communities.
WaterMarks provides an artist generated conceptual framework developed by Mary Miss / City as Living Laboratory (CALL) to help people better understand their relationship to the water systems and infrastructure that support their lives. Project activities include artist/scientist/community member-led Walks, which are designed to engage intergenerational participants both from the neighborhoods and from across the city, in considering the conditions, characteristics, histories, and ecosystems of neighborhoods. Walks are expanded upon in Workshops with residents, local scientists/experts, and other stakeholders, and include exploring current water-related environmental challenges and proposing solutions. The Workshops draw on diverse perspectives, including lived experience, scientific knowledge, and policy expertise. Art projects created by local artists amplify community engagement with the topics, including programming for teens and young adults. Free Wi-Fi will be integrated into various Marker sites around the city providing access to online, self-guided learning opportunities exploring the water systems and issues facing surrounding neighborhoods. Current programming focuses primarily on Milwaukee's predominantly African American near North Side and the predominantly Latinx/Hispanic near South Side. Many neighborhoods in these sections are vulnerable to such problems as frequent flooding, lead contamination in drinking water, inequities in safety and maintenance of green space, and less access to Lake Michigan, the city's primary natural resource and recreational amenity.
The WaterMarks project advances informal STEM learning in at least two ways. First, while the WaterMarks project is designed to fit Milwaukee, the project includes the development of an Adaptable Model Guide. The Guide is designed so that other cities can modify and employ its inclusive structure, programming, and process of collaboration among artists, scientists, partner organizations, and residents to promote citywide civic engagement in urban sustainability through the combination of informal STEM learning and public art. The Guide will be developed by a Community-University Working Group (CULab) hosted by UW-Milwaukee's Center for Community-Based Learning, Leadership, and Research and made up of diverse community and campus-wide stakeholders. In addition to overseeing the Guide’s creation, CULab will conceptualize onboarding and mentorship strategies for new participants as well as a framework for the program’s expansion and sustainability.
Second, through evaluation and research, the project will build a theoretical model for the relationships among science learning, engagement with the arts, and the distinctive contexts of different neighborhoods within an urban social-ecological system. The evaluation team, COSI’s Center for Research and Evaluation, and led by Co-PI Donnelly Hayde, aims to conduct formative, summative, and process evaluation of the Watermarks project, with the additional goal of producing evaluative research findings that can contribute to the broader field of informal learning. Evaluation foci include: How does the implementation of WaterMarks support positive outcomes for the project’s communities and the development of an adaptable model for city-scale informal science learning about urban environments? 2. To what extent do the type and degree of outcome-related change experienced by participating community residents vary across and/or between project sites? What factors, if any, appear to be linked to these changes? 3. To what extent and in what ways do the activities of the WaterMarks projects appear to have in situ effects related to the experience of place at project sites?
The project’s research team led by PI Ryan Holifield and Co-PI Woonsup Choi, will investigate how visual artistic activities introduced by the programming team as part of the Walks (and potentially other engagement activities) interact with personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts to produce distinctive experiences and outcomes of informal science learning about urban water systems. The aim of the research will be to synthesize the results from the different WaterMarks sites into an analysis generalizable beyond specific neighborhoods and applicable to other cities. The project's research questions include: 1. How does participation in Walks focused on visual artistic activities affect outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning about urban water systems? 2. How do outcomes and experiences of informal STEM learning vary across different urban water topics, participants from different demographic groups, and contrasting sociocultural and biophysical contexts?
This Innovations in Development project is led by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), in collaboration with City as Living Laboratory (CALL) and the COSI Center for Research and Evaluation.
This collaborative research project between KQED, a public media organization serving the San Francisco Bay Area, Texas Tech University and Rockman et al conducted research to study how best to provide effective COVID-19 science news and social media content for young adult audiences.
To start the work, four “Knowledge Gap” studies – Twitter Misinformation, Mask Wearing Messaging, Germ Knowledge and Conceptual Mapping – as well as social media testing were conducted to address our research question: How could COVID-19 coverage be designed to best inform, engage and educate millennials and
The primary objective of this study is to document how people learn the science of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time, how they activate this scientific knowledge towards informed decision making, and how these processes change over time. This study is intended to produce additional insights on how such learning is shaped by equity concerns and contextual factors. For example, researchers will document how the ways in which people learn the science of COVID-19 are mediated by the sources of information they have access to and leverage, as well as what supports them in doing so. The research will further document how people leverage their understandings of COVID-19, alongside other forms of knowledge and concerns in their decision-making. This study may serve a crucial role in aiding the public understanding of where structural points of informational failure might occur. It may also reveal where and how the public engages or resists community action strategies to mitigate spread and suffering through when, how and why they gather, share, and make sense of scientific data. This RAPID was submitted in response to the NSF Dear Colleague letter related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This award is made by the AISL and ECR programs in the Division of Research on Learning, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.
This research will draw upon a conceptual framework of consequential learning and a methodological framework of narrative inquiry. Sixty participants in Lansing, Michigan and Seattle, Washington will participate over the course of one year in cyclical interviews, focus group conversations and experience sampling approaches. Documents and resources named and used by the participants in their learning will be collected and analyzed. Attention will be paid to science learning in the following areas as the primary focus: a) the science of SARS-CoV-2 and the relationship between virus and disease, b) viral transmission, and c) origination, replication and spread. A key focus will also be how people use scientific data and evidence-based explanations when developing understandings and making decisions with respect to the pandemic. This research is urgent and timely because the COVID-19 pandemic is projected to occur in multiple waves over approximately 18 months. Insights may produce basic understanding about rapid science learning, policy strategies, school-based practices and resources for use within current and future waves. Socioscientific crises differentially impact people, with effects felt more significantly by vulnerable people. Thus, this study will address the urgent call for investigation into factors and experiences of low-income individuals and families who are trying to educate themselves on continually changing data during an international health crisis.
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 RAPID was submitted in response to the NSF Dear Colleague letter related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This award is made by the AISL program in the Division of Research on Learning, using funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The public must be made aware in a clear, responsible way about the role of science to help bring this pandemic under control and prevent future outbreaks. This project will allow the NewsHour to go beyond their daily reporting of the medical information about the pandemic, to inform the public about the difference scientific research/ research conducted by scientists and medical professionals can make in attacking such a dire threat. The PBS NewsHour has the capability to quickly mobilize its science journalists and national distribution infrastructure to produce at least six broadcast segments and additional digital materials reporting on this on-going scientific work. They will interview scientists, researchers and experts in genomic analysis, computer tracking, vaccine production, and social epidemiology showing what they are doing to test, treat, track and stop the spread of COVID-19, to create vaccines that may prevent further transmission, and to measure the social impact of the disease. These segments will be broadcast nationwide on local PBS stations and distributed on their website, YouTube, and social media channels. Viewership of the NewsHour is extensive reaching 2.5 million people nightly via broadcast and almost 33 million YouTube views per quarter. During a recent quarter, they reached 72.6 million on Facebook and garnered 86.8 million Twitter impressions.
The research team, Knology, will conduct a study to assess 1) where US adults are primarily getting information about COVID-19; 2) their perception of personal and public responsibility; 3) behaviors they have taken and/or plan to take, and when; 4) their social values. Knology will develop a survey instrument with adopted items and modules used in prior collaborations to develop a baseline understanding of the relationship between news consumption and attitudes about COVID-19 risk. The survey will be hosted using Qualtrics. Survey data will be gathered from a representative sample of US adults (N = 1000) recruited using the online software system, Prolific. A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll will be used as a baseline. Once potentially identifying information like demographics are aggregated, these formative data and topline results will be shared openly through the Knology website to support other researchers and journalists.
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.
Cities and communities in the U.S. and around the world are entering a new era of transformational change, in which their inhabitants and the surrounding built and natural environments are increasingly connected by smart technologies, leading to new opportunities for innovation, improved services, and enhanced quality of life. The Smart and Connected Communities (SCC) program supports strongly interdisciplinary, integrative research and research capacity-building activities that will improve understanding of smart and connected communities and lead to discoveries that enable sustainable change to enhance community functioning. This project is a Research Coordination Network (RCN) that focuses on achieving SCC for medium/small size, remote, and rural communities through a polycentric (multiple centers) integrated policy, design, and technology approach. The communities served by the RCN have higher barriers to information, resources, and services than larger urban communities. To reduce this gap, the PIs propose to develop need-based R&D pipelines to select solutions with the highest potential impacts to the communities. Instead of trying to connect under-connected communities to nearby large cities, this proposal aims to develop economic opportunities within the communities themselves. This topic aligns well with the vision of the SCC program, and the proposed RCN consists of a diverse group of researchers, communities, industry, government, and non-profit partners.
This award will support the development of an RCN within the Commonwealth of Virginia which will coordinate multiple partners in developing innovations utilizing smart and connected technologies. The goal of the research coordination network is to enable researchers and citizens to collaborate on research supporting enhanced quality of life for medium, small, and rural communities which frequently lack the communication and other infrastructure available in cities. The research coordination network will be led by the University of Virginia. There are 14 partner organizations including six research center partners in transportation, environment, architecture and urban planning, and engineering and technology; two State and Industry partners (Virginia Municipal League and Virginia Center for Innovative Technology); four community partners representing health services (UVA Center for Telemedicine), small and remote communities (Weldon Cooper Center), neighborhood communities (Charlottesville Neighborhood Development), and urban communities (Thriving Cities); and two national partners which support high speed networking (US-Ignite) and city-university hubs (MetroLab). Examples of research coordination include telemedicine services, transportation services, and user-centric and community-centric utilization and deployment of sensor technologies.
DATE:
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ila BermanT. Donna ChenKaren RheubanQian Cai