In both the STEM media and entertainment sectors women are significantly unrepresented. Women account for only 21% of the upper-level positions in film (directors, writers, executive producers, cinematographers, etc.) according to a recent study. This small conference directly addresses how to expand the volume of STEM focused media and entertainment content centered on women and girls. The Creative Workforce Summit: Women Storytellers Explore STEM will be held in New York City and online (hybrid) in September 2022. The goal of the conference is to 1) encourage an infrastructure of support for the creation and distribution of informal STEM educational film, digital, and television content that is centered on women and girls and 2) to strengthen ties between women in media, entertainment, and women in STEM fields. The agenda includes keynote addresses by thought leaders in STEM disciplines and media, panels of industry leaders, a youth journalist interviews, and film screenings with filmmaker and scientist Q&As. The conference will be a hybrid event to allow for the greatest access to a broader audience. The projected 300 in-person and 1000+ virtual attendees will be drawn from New York Women in Film and Television’s extensive membership and 100+ partner organizations in entertainment and media, including Black Public Media, Brown Girls Doc Mafia, Firelight Media, ReelAbilities, and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. The conference will be followed by a publication based on the convening featuring the keynotes, abridged panel discussions, additional interviews, and industry representation data analysis. In addition, a curriculum guide for high schools and colleges focused on STEM and film collaborations will be developed and distributed.
A post conference quantitative survey will be conducted with conference participants to gather data on the impacts of the conference. Questions to be asked include: What new professional connections were made by women attending the conference? What was learned related to the craft of STEM related media production and distribution? Were new and meaningful connections made with participants outside the participant’s current field/networks? Additional analysis will be done by the organizers of the conference in planning post-conference strategies for supporting and building the women in STEM infrastructure.
In December of 2019, TERC and the University of Notre Dame convened 21 early childhood reading, family learning, and informal STEM education experts to explore the role of children’s fiction books as a tool for supporting STEM learning with young children and their families. Through the discussions, the group developed a series of recommendations for future research and practice, with a particular focus on integrating diversity and equity perspectives into the use of storybooks.
In December of 2019, TERC and the University of Notre Dame convened a group of 21 early childhood reading, family learning, and informal STEM education experts to explore the role of children’s fiction books as a tool for supporting STEM learning with young children and their families. Participants included educators and researchers from across the country representing a broad range of learning contexts, professional roles, audience focus areas, and STEM discipline expertise. Through the discussions, the group developed a series of recommendations for future work, with a particular focus on
Upon entering the STEM learning landscape, science museums enjoyed marked growth in public utilization and impact. However, since the turn of the century, reductions in visitor numbers, aging infrastructures and pedagogical approaches have made many in the sector question how these institutions might best evolve to stay relevant in a changing world. Although there have been numerous discussions around re-thinking practices and even some movement towards actualizing much of this rhetoric, overall, most institutions have largely continued business as usual. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic introduced additional challenges and created an important inflection point for science museums, a moment when all can and should seriously address not just the immediate future, but also the longer-term future of the next decade and beyond. This convening will meet this opportunity by virtually bringing together 50-60 diverse (expertise and role, background, demographics, geography) thoughtful STEM learning professionals to collaboratively re-imagine the future of the science museum community, in particular the particularly vulnerable small to medium size science museum sector. Participants will be asked to think strategically (rather than just tactically) about how science museums in the coming decade(s) can fulfill their STEM learning missions while truly serving the needs of all segments of their communities; particularly those who have been historically under-represented. The project will involve participants in an 8-step process involving pre-meeting readings, online discussions, large and small-group meetings, written and online dissemination efforts; with opportunities for local and national input throughout. The Science Museum Futures project represents an opportunity for the science museum community to seriously and collectively address its future; not just the very short-term future, but the longer-term future of the next decade and beyond.
To remain an important part of the STEM learning landscape, the future demands that science museums re-think how they fulfill their STEM education roles in four key areas:
Understanding -- facilitating STEM learning so all users can more clearly understand how an understanding of science and technology supports both a healthier and richer life;
Future Actions -- supporting evidence-based solutions to challenges that currently face every community;
Social Cohesion -- making it possible for all sectors of society to experience STEM learning as a natural an integral part of their family, group and community's heritage and life experience; and
Physical Security -- ensuring that all users have opportunities to gather (physically or virtually), interact, explore and learn STEM within a safe, healthy, anxiety-free and restorative environment. Going forward, science museums will need to re-envision how all four of areas can be addressed, not just individually, but collectively as core, interdependent goals.
To ensure broad applicability and inclusion, diverse community voices and responses will be integrated throughout the process through a series of online focus groups and conversations with both members of the science museum community and the wider public science museums seek to serve. The Science Museum Futures project will create an initial Science Museums Futures Action Plan that will provide science museum practitioners with new approaches, processes and tools designed to enhance the ways they support STEM learning. All materials will be both vetted and disseminated with the aid of project partners through on-line webinars, focus groups, blog posts on social media such as LinkedIn and Facebook, conference presentations and organizational newsletters. This project seeks to help initiate an on-going effort to support science museums, allowing them to rethink and reshape their STEM learning offerings in ways that ensure that they are increasingly relevant and central to the lives of ALL members of their communities.
This conference grant 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. One of AISL's five priority goals is to invest in projects that seek to build infrastructure and/or capacity in the field, including efforts supporting collaborations, connections, and professional networks within and across sectors of informal STEM education. This project is also supported by the Education and Human Resources directorate's Accelerating Discovery in Education efforts to enable research in fundamental topics addressing persistent issues in the learning and teaching of STEM content as well as frontier topics that envision STEM learning environments of the future, push the boundaries of the use of technology in learning, and examine how learning will change because of advances in technology and developments in Industries of the Future.
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.
A large body of research highlights the benefits of storybooks for children's learning. In the context of preschool classrooms, the use of storybooks to engage young children in STEM is a frequent topic of practitioner-oriented articles. There is also an increasing number of informal STEM education (ISE) projects exploring how to leverage storybooks to engage young children and their families in different STEM content domains. While there is universal excitement for the potential of storybooks in ISE, there is an acknowledgment of a critical need for more cross-project sharing, more research, and more efforts to synthesize and share findings. This award will catalyze new research studies and partnerships to advance efforts in ISE contexts, including the role of books in the overall learning experience or program, how books are selected or designed, and how the reading is facilitated by teachers and families. Participants will be educators and researchers working with or studying family learning for preschool-age children (three to five years) using early childhood fiction books as a tool for engaging families in STEM topics and skills.
Storybook STEM will be implemented in four phases: (1) pre-convening activities to plan, synthesize existing resources, engage a broader group of educators and researchers beyond convening attendees, and prepare convening participants to maximize the value of the in-person discussions; (2) in-person convening to catalyze cross-project discussions, outline promising practices, and identify questions and ideas for the future; (3) evaluation of the impact and value of the convening, from the perspective of participants and a project steering committee; and (4) dissemination of findings and recommendations to educators and researchers within and beyond the ISE field. Outcomes include: (1) documenting current and past work in ISE and other fields; (2) summarizing key recommendations and resources from the reading, literacy, and early childhood development fields; and (3) outlining promising directions for future work.
The findings from this project will provide a critical resource to help broadening participation efforts be more effective and inclusive for audiences across the country. Research studies motivated by the convening will address the lack of empirical work on storybooks as a tool for ISE programs and advance the ISE field's knowledge of how to integrate these books effectively. Because storybooks are a highly accessible and almost universally used family learning resource, the topic of the convening will be relevant to a wide range of audiences and will help educators broaden access to ISE for traditionally underserved and under-resourced communities.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
This conference grant will support professional development at Jackson WILD. Jackson WILD (formerly the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival) is the premier industry conference for science and natural history documentary filmmakers and distributors, bringing the world's top factual storytellers together with inspiring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) professionals at a biennial industry conference and juried film festival. This project supports a robust thematic strand of professional development within the conference focused on strategies for making the science of science communication more accessible to an industry that has significant influence over the accuracy, quality and quantity of STEM stories reaching mainstream audiences through popular media.
The conference grant strategies are scaffolded upon the results of Jackson WILD's previous two conference awards which have employed multiple interventions aimed at 1) understanding how science communication expertise is perceived and gained by media content creators, 2) identifying the demographics and professional development needs of both emerging and seasoned STEM storytellers, and 3) finding pathways to enhance science communication expertise for STEM professionals seeing to increase their reach to public audiences. The current conference grant will build upon lessons learned and offer thematic professional development programming advancing science communication literacy and best practices among media professionals and STEM communicators. The 2019 Jackson WILD industry conference will also further expand the cross-industry STEM media fellows program, which offers professional development and cohort-building opportunities to emerging professionals in both STEM and media fields. The driving theory of change is that access to research-informed professional development and increased science communication fluency among content creators and STEM communicators results in products (i.e. documentary programs, podcasts, social media content, etc.) that are in better alignment with evidence-based best practices for communicating STEM topics to lay audiences. Therefore, the resulting media products will be more effective in engaging and educating those audiences, resulting in increased STEM literacy and informal STEM learning. To extend the reach and impact of the conference, the program content will be available on line via streaming videos and podcasts on various channels. Investing in professional development for science media professionals will strength the ecosystem of quality STEM media and help support public engagement in STEM more broadly. 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 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 is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
The STEM Effect project is a collaborative effort to engage cultural organizations around the U.S. in developing a Collaborative Action Agenda for better understanding the mid- and long-term impacts of informal STEM programs for girls.
With stories of struggle and dramatic breakthroughs, science has incredible potential to interest the public. However, as the rhetoric of outrage surrounds controversies over science policy there is an urgent need for credible, trusted voices that frame science issues in a way that resonates with a diverse public. A network of informal educators, park rangers, museum docents and designers, and zoo and aquarium interpreters are prepared to do so during millions of visits a year; just where science stories are most meaningfully told—in the places where members of the public are open to learning
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
Research tells us that media -- be it on television or film or in the form of radio podcasts -- are the most widely utilized and trusted sources for public science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning. Media narratives can shape opinions and knowledge about STEM as well as either reduce or enhance cultural biases and perceptions of STEM. However, little is known about the process by which STEM media professionals develop and assess mastery of "STEM Media," or to what extent evidence-based communication strategies and data-supported effective practices are considered and used by creators of STEM media. This conference proposal will bring together STEM professionals and media creators to determine how STEM media makers develop and assess expertise in STEM media making and articulate best practices. The goal is to promote cross-industry collaboration between media producers, STEM professionals and communication researchers in crafting evidence-based media for the public. The project will also create a 2-year STEM Media Fellows program as well as expand the Science of Communication Strand at two Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festivals (JHWFF) and at the Science Media Awards and Summit in the Hub (SMASH) conference in 2018. The work will be led by Jackson Hole WILD, a nonprofit professional organization, in partnership with Colorado Mesa University.
The project will employ three strategies to advance effective STEM media production and product effectiveness. First, an initiative to provide professional development in Communication Science will be part of the 2017 and 2018 Jackson Hole WILD conferences to increase the attending STEM media professionals' understanding of evidence-based practices. The content will be presented through structured sessions at the conferences with recordings of the sessions made available online as well as through partner organizations. Second, the STEM Media Fellows program will recruit emerging STEM professionals who are interested in media making. The goals of the STEM Media Fellows program are to prepare these diverse STEM professionals with knowledge and skills for media development, and form collaborations among the STEM professionals and media creators. Third, in collaboration with Colorado Mesa University, the project will conduct a Delphi study to determine how mastery of STEM media making is acquired and assessed. The Delphi study will involve gathering perceptions and experiences from the world's leading STEM communicators and media makers regarding how they learned to be professionals and how they would determine the level of expertise of other STEM media makers. The results of the Delphi study will synthesize models and identify best practices that could be used to inform the STEM media industry efforts to align media production with evidence-based practices. These results will be disseminated through appropriate peer-reviewed journals, industry associations, and other outlets of research on informal science education. 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 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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ru MahoneyLouis NadelsonLisa Samford