This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
This project is a retrospective study to explore the long-term impact of STEM programming. The study follows up with participants to ask questions like "Where are they now? What mattered? What difference did it make? and What’s next?"
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
Research suggests that when both science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and social-emotional development (SED) are supported in afterschool, summer, and other informal settings, young people can better develop skills for the future such as leadership, decision-making, and relationship-building so they could have successful careers/participation in STEM. However, researchers and practitioners working in the out-of-school time (OST) sector often do so without connections across these fields. The appeal for more integration of STEM and SED in OST program delivery and data collection has remained abstract and aspirational. This Literature Review and Synthesis project is the next step needed to move the OST field toward the intentional, explicit, and evidence-based integration of STEM and SED in research and practice. The project will create shared understanding necessary to improve program content, staff training, and evaluation. This synthesis will support future research on unified STEM+SED that can lead to more effective, equitable, and developmentally appropriate programming. Improved programming will contribute to talent development, address STEM workforce needs, and promote socioeconomic mobility to benefit children, youth, educators, and society. 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.
This project will systematically examine what domains and skills at the interface of STEM+SED are most researched among K-12 youth in informal STEM learning environments, compared to formal STEM educational environments. The team will further explore how gender, race, and other intersectional forms of equity can be added to the STEM+SED equation. The project team will search and appraise empirical and gray literature (2001-2020) to identify the most commonly researched domains and skills at the interface of STEM+SED in informal environments serving K-12 youth. The review and synthesis process will include four steps: search, appraisal, synthesis, and analysis. The search will begin with STEM+SED skills in four foundational domains (agency, belonging, engagement, and reflection) identified previously with experts from the fields of STEM and SED. The search will include all existing, eligible references from formal K-12 settings to contrast commonly studied domains and skills (e.g., perseverance, self-regulation, teamwork, complex problem-solving, self-awareness) in formal versus informal learning environments. The study approach will then compare these domains and skills by the demographics variables noted above. Following the creation of a strong catalog of evidence, information will be synthesized using three “pillars” for building coherence in STEM+SED integration: phenomenon (the knowing), implementation (the doing) and assessment (the result). These pillars will be used to organize and critically analyze the literature. Building conceptual coherence through a systematic review and synthesis of literature from the fields of STEM and SED will lead to greater understanding of STEM+SED in OST practice, highlight the most important content and skills to learn in informal environments, and identify when and how youth should learn specific content and skills at the interface of STEM+SED. Applying coherence to the integration of STEM+SED ensures that the principles and practices are layered carefully, in ways that avoid superficial checklists or duplication of effort and build meaningfully upon young people’s knowledge and skills. The long-term goal is to broker connections and alignment of STEM+SED across schools and OST programs. Recommendations and a roadmap to guide equitable, effective STEM+SED research, practice, and policy will result from this research.
In this paper, we examine the relationship between participants’ childhood science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related experiences, their STEM identity (i.e., seeing oneself as a STEM person), and their college career intentions. Whereas some evidence supports the importance of childhood (i.e., K‐4) informal STEM education experiences, like participating in science camps, existing research does not adequately address their relationship to STEM career intention later in life. Grounding our work in identity research, we tested the predictive power of STEM identity on career
Computing fields are foundational to most STEM disciplines and the only STEM discipline to show a consistent decline in women's representation since 1990, making it an important field for STEM educators to study. The explanation for the underrepresentation of women and girls in computing is twofold: a sense that they do not fit within the stereotypes associated with computing and a lack of access to computer games and technologies beginning at an early age (Richard, 2016).
Informal coding education programs are uniquely situated to counter these hurdles because they can offer additional
A short literature review and personal essay on Massive Science about the history of colonialism and racism within informal science education's history in the United States.
The independent evaluation firm, Knight Williams, Inc., developed a two-part post-program survey to gather information about the Year 1 SciGirls CONNECT2 outreach programs conducted by 14 partner organizations. The evaluation aimed for one educator from each organization to complete Part 1 of the survey, which consisted of program reporting questions. In all, one educator from 13 partner organizations completed Part 1, for a response rate of 93%. Part 2 of the survey asked for program reflections, with a focus on perceived program goals, impacts, highlights, and challenges. Given the
The independent evaluation firm Knight Williams, Inc. conducted a formative evaluation during Year 2 of the SciGirls CONNECT2 program in order to gather information about the partner educators’ use of, reflections on, and recommendations relating to the draft updated SciGirls Strategies. The evaluation aimed for two educators from each of 14 partner organizations – specifically the program leader and one educator who was familiar with the original SciGirls Seven – to provide reflections on their use of the draft SciGirls Strategies in their programs through an online survey and follow-up
The independent evaluation firm Knight Williams, Inc. administered an online survey to educators from 16 SciGirls CONNECT2 partner organizations to gather information about their anticipated use of, reflections on, and recommendations relating to the draft updated SciGirls Strategies. The evaluation aimed for two educators from each partner organization – specifically the program leader and one educator who was familiar with the original SciGirls Seven strategies – to complete the survey about the draft updated strategies after they were shared by TPT in March 2018 via an online webinar and a
The independent evaluation firm, Knight Williams, Inc., administered an online survey and conducted follow-up interviews with educators from 14 SciGirls CONNECT2 partner organizations to gather information about their use of, reflections on, and recommendations relating to the SciGirls Seven strategies. The evaluation aimed for two educators from each partner organization – specifically the program leader and one educator who was familiar with the SciGirls Seven – to share reflections on the strategies after they completed their Year 1 programs. In all, 24 educators from 13 partners completed
The independent evaluators at Knight Williams Inc. developed a front-end survey to gather background and baseline information about the 16 partner organizations selected to conduct outreach programs as part of SciGirls CONNECT2. The goal was for two people from each partner organization to complete the online survey about their background and prior use of the SciGirls Seven and related strategies. A total of 30 partner representatives completed the survey by the requested deadline, resulting in a response rate of 94%. The majority identified as program leaders, with smaller groups saying they
The goal for this research study was to determine the role of the SciGirls gender-equitable strategies on participating youths’ STEM identity changes in 16 participating SciGirls’ programs across the nation. The definition of STEM identity was based on Eccles (2007), Carlone and Johnson (2007) and Calabrese Barton and colleagues (2013). According to these researchers, individuals must have a positive STEM identity in order to persist in STEM careers. This positive STEM identity is affected by an individual’s expectations of success in STEM and the value they see in STEM and STEM careers