As part of its overall strategy to enhance learning in informal environments, the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program funds innovative resources for use in a variety of settings. This Research in Service to Practice project will examine how a wide range of pre-college out-of-school-time activities facilitate or hinder females' participation in STEM fields in terms of interest, identity, and career choices. The study will address the ongoing problem that, despite females' persistence to degree once declaring a major in college, initially fewer females than males choose a STEM career path. To uncover what these factors might be, this study will look at the extent to which college freshmen's pre-college involvement in informal activities (e.g., science clubs, internships, shadowing of STEM professionals, museum-going, engineering competitions, citizen science pursuits, summer camps, and hobbies) is associated with their career aspirations and avocational STEM interests and pursuits. While deep-seated factors, originating in culture and gender socialization, sometimes lower females' interest in STEM throughout schooling, this study will examine the degree to which out-of-school-time involvement ameliorates the subtle messages females encounter about women and science that can interfere with their aspiration to a STEM careers.
The Social Cognitive Career Theory will serve as the theoretical framework to connect the development of interest in STEM with students' later career choices. An epidemiological approach will be used to test a wide range of hypotheses garnered from a review of relevant literature, face-to-face or telephone interviews with stakeholders, and retrospective online surveys of students. These hypotheses, as well as questions about the students' demographic background and in-school experiences, will be incorporated into the main empirical instrument, which will be a comprehensive paper-and-pencil survey to be administered in classes, such as English Composition, that are compulsory for both students with STEM interests and those without by 6500 students entering 40 large and small institutions of higher learning. Data analysis will proceed from descriptive statistics, such as contingency tables and correlation matrices, to multiple regression and hierarchical modeling that will link out-of-school-time experiences to STEM interest, identity, and career aspirations. Factor analysis will be used to combine individual out-of-school activities into indices. Propensity score weighting will be used to estimate causal effects in cases where out-of-school-time activities may be confounded with other factors. The expected products will be scholarly publications and presentations. Results will be disseminated to out-of-school-time providers and stakeholders, educators, and educational researchers through appropriate-level journals and national meetings and conferences. In addition, the Public Affairs and Information Office of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics will assist with communicating results through mainstream media. Press releases will be available through academic outlets and Op-Ed pieces for newspapers. The expected outcome will be research-based evidence about which types of out-of-school STEM experiences may be effective in increasing young females' STEM interests. This information will be crucial to educators, service providers, as well as policy makers who work toward broadening the participation of females in STEM.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Roy GouldPhilip SadlerGerhard Sonnert
Young people learn about science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) in a variety of ways and from many sources, including school, the media, personal experiences, and friends and family. Yet STEM participation and identification by youth are not equal across social, economic, and cultural communities. This project will study a long-term, out-of-school program for high school-age youth, who are from groups under-represented in STEM academics and careers: girls, youth from low-income households, and youth of color. Located in the urban context of the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center (KAYSC) engages youth in applying culturally rich STEM content to work toward social justice and community building. Specifically, this project will examine how the learning practices of the KAYSC model support youth in identifying with, engaging in, and participating in STEM. Through studying the KAYSC's STEM Justice model, which centers youth as learners, teachers, and leaders who address critical community issues through STEM, this project will develop resources that informal science educators in a variety of contexts and programs can use to promote positive social change, equity, inclusion, and applied STEM learning.
The Science Museum of Minnesota will use design-based implementation research to study this model. This research will draw on and further the emerging theoretical framework of science capital. Science capital attempts to capture multiple aspects of science learning and application, including science knowledge, social and cultural resources, and science-related behaviors and practices. Empirically developing the theory of science capital has the potential to build concrete understanding of how to address inequalities in science participation. Four teams will work independently and collaboratively to do so: an adult research team, a high school youth research team, a practitioner team, and a co-design team composed of representatives from the other three teams. Research teams will collect data in the form of observations, semi-structured interviews, practitioner activity reports, artifacts, and the experience sampling method. Initial cycles of design will occur at the Science Museum of Minnesota as researchers and practitioners document, analyze, and iteratively design learning practices within the STEM Justice model. In the second half of the grant, the team will work with an external out-of-school time youth leadership site to implement the redesigned model. Participatory research and design methods involving both youth and adults can advance understanding of what makes out-of-school time STEM learning meaningful, relevant, and successful for marginalized youth and their communities. Grounded in culturally and socially relevant, community-based resources and programming, this project will study how leveraging STEM out-of-school time learning connected to social justice can broaden access to STEM as well as develop workforce, and leadership, and STEM skills by under-represented youth. The project also builds staff capacity for promoting equity and access in informal learning settings.
This project is being 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 poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. CHISPA is a national network of science museums and afterschool programs affiliated with ASPIRA and National Council of La Raza (NCLR), working together to build stronger communities and increase the engagement of Hispanic children and their families with science and local science resources. The project period is October 2013 through September 2017.
Through this review of research on public engagement with science, Feinstein, Allen, and Jenkins advocate supporting students as “competent outsiders”—untrained in formal sciences, yet using science in ways relevant to their lives. Both formal and informal settings can be well suited for work in which students translate scientific content and practices into meaningful actions.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The study aims to answer the question "How does participation of adolescent youth from traditionally underrepresented groups in a well-established, out-of-school time science program affect their career choices and attitudes towards science as they mature into early adulthood?"
To date, no national studies of science-focused out-of-school time (OST) programs have been implemented, making it difficult to get a sense of program diversity and characteristics. In this paper, Laursen, Thiry, Archie, and Crane map the national landscape of U.S. OST science, technology, and engineering programs. The findings allow the authors to describe a generalized profile for each of eight types of OST program providers.
Our Sky is a series of Out-of-School Time and museum educational programs that inspire an appreciation and understanding of Earth and Space Science (ESS) in a diverse population of children ages 3-10 and their parents, caregivers and educators. All resources are developed through a partnership between Boston Children’s Museum and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The vision for Our Sky is that children ages 3-10 and their adult caregivers will gain an appreciation for celestial objects and phenomena as a foundation for understanding of Earth and Space Science. All resources and activities will be designed to realize this vision, and to:
Serve a diverse range of audiences, with an emphasis on urban and low-income children and families;
Increase appreciation among diverse adults and children of the sky as an accessible science learning resource;
Share NASA resources with, and help develop foundational STEM skills in children;
Encourage adults to engage in and guide ESS learning experiences with children;
Inspire practical application of STEM skills by children and adults as they explore celestial objects together; and
Expand the capacity of museum staff and afterschool educators to engage families in learning STEM skills through ESS exploration.
Our Sky activities will result in:
A series of museum-based programs that incorporate NASA resources and ESS activities across a range of content areas; and
A series of new ESS-focused activities for the award-winning “Beyond the Chalkboard” afterschool curriculum that include NASA resources and will reach hundreds of thousands of children around the world.
This document presents an overview of the quantitative survey data findings from the SL+ Equity Pathways in Informal Science Learning project. Further qualitative analysis on some of the open response data is yet to be completed. Findings are grouped into four areas: about the individuals taking part in the survey; their definitions and understanding of equity and related terms; their current equity practice; and their practices around equity work including reading, talking with colleagues and evaluation.
This Research & Practice Agenda is a synthesis of findings from the Youth Access & Equity in Informal Science Learning (ISL) partnership, a UK-US researcher-practitioner project, funded by the Science Learning+ Initiative. Activities included a survey administered in the UK and US with 134 ISL researchers and/or practitioners; workshops with 111 participants in both the UK and US; a literature review; and a joint UK/US workshop conducted in the UK. This set of activities generated a range of data, resources and raised questions, both research questions and questions of practice, which we have
This infographic reports findings from the Youth Access & Equity in Informal Science Learning (ISL) project, a UK-US researcher-practitioner partnership funded by the Science Learning+ Phase 1 scheme. Our project focuses on young people aged 11-14 primarily from under-served and non-dominant communities and includes researchers and practitioners from a range of ISL settings: designed spaces (e.g. museums, zoos), community-based (e.g. afterschool clubs) and everyday science spaces (e.g. science media).
This briefing paper reports findings from the Youth Access & Equity in Informal Science Learning (ISL) project, a UK-US researcher-practitioner partnership funded by the Science Learning+ Phase 1 scheme. Our project focuses on young people aged 11-14 primarily from under-served and non-dominant communities and includes researchers and practitioners from a range of ISL settings, including designed spaces (eg museums, zoos), community-based (e.g. afterschool clubs) and everyday science spaces (e.g. science media).
This briefing paper reports findings from the Youth Access & Equity in Informal Science Learning (ISL) project,
a UK-US researcher-practitioner partnership funded by the Science Learning+ scheme. Our project focuses on young people aged 11-14 primarily from under-served and non-dominant communities and includes researchers and practitioners from a range of ISL settings: designed spaces (e.g. museums, zoos), community-based (e.g. after school clubs) and everyday science spaces (e.g. science media).