5854 Views (as of 05/2023)
  1. Heidi Carlone
  2. Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of North Carolina Greensboro
  1. Dearing Blankmann
  2. Graduate Student
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of North Carolina Greensboro
  1. Lakshmi Iyer
  2. Professor of IS
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. Appalachian State University
  1. Alison Mercier
  2. Research Assistant
  3. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  4. University of North Carolina Greensboro

Broadening identities for diverse youth in STEM through socioenvironmnental p...

NSF Awards: 1657194

2020 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades 6-8

How do you design learning experiences for youth with varying interests and identities? The BRIDGES Project (BRoadening Identities for Diverse Groups Engaging in STEM) (NSF ITEST#1657194) engages middle school youth and teachers in out-of-school science, engineering, and technologies related to studying, solving, and communicating with others about environmental problems. For example, the curriculum of the summer camp at a local state park focused on three questions: (1) What lives in this park? (2) How is the park designed to maximize human enjoyment and minimize human impact on biodiversity? (3) What can I make or design for a kid like me who visits the park? In designing the curriculum, we: (1) incorporated multiple interest hooks, modes of engagement, and trajectories of participation; (2) designed tasks that were production-centered, authentic to STEM fields/disciplines, relevant to youths' emerging interests, and connected to problems of place; and (3) set up participation norms that celebrated multiple kinds of disciplinary and dispositional engagement. Our curricular framework centered and cultivated the following modes of engagement: investigating, inventing, tinkering, and designing. We also designed curriculum to emphasize conservationist and altruistic worldviews. From the outset, youth recognize themselves as people with strengths and interests in these modes of engagement and/or worldviews so that they do not feel as though they have to change who they are to participate competently. Over time, these modes of engagement and worldviews become tools for their own STEM-linked identity work.

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Discussion from the 2020 STEM For All Video Showcase (46 posts)
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 4, 2020 | 09:27 a.m.

    Hi all! Thanks for visiting our page. Our project begins with a central assumption: Middle school youth don't have to change who they are to engage competently in science, engineering, and/or technology (STEM). We designed our curriculum for multiple interest hooks, modes of engagement, and trajectories of participation including: investigating, inventing, tinkering, designing, acting as altruist, and acting as conservationist. These modes of engagement became helpful tools for curriculum design and for youths' STEM-linked identity work. Our curriculum for Saturday Academies, after-school programs, and the summer residential camp focused on various local environmental problems and youths' solutions (e.g., stormwater runoff, biodiversity).

    When examining our 6 modes of engagement, what would you have included for a curriculum focused on environmental problems with middle school youth? Are there other modes you would include? Are these categories distinct enough or should we think about collapsing them? What other questions do you have about our program? We welcome discussion and questions. 

    We thank our entire BRIDGES team for helping create these meaningful experiences for youth!

     
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    Kate Goss
  • Icon for: Margo Murphy

    Margo Murphy

    Facilitator
    Science Instructor
    May 5, 2020 | 05:28 p.m.

    I love the elements you share.  I would love to hear more about the roles that students identify with and how that has supported them in being more engaged and true to themselves.  At the end of your video the students mention I am a tinkerer, an inventor, an explorer.... what in the curriculum builds this identity for them?  Also, are your materials publicly available?  Thanks!

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Lakshmi Iyer

    Lakshmi Iyer

    Co-Presenter
    Professor of IS
    May 6, 2020 | 10:38 a.m.

    Dear Margo: Thank you for your comments. We are working on getting the website updated. Soon after we finished the Spring program, things have been disrupted and we are a bit behind in getting the program details on the site. Meanwhile, here is the site that has some information from past activities of this program: https://www.uncgbridges.org/

     

     
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    Margo Murphy
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 7, 2020 | 09:19 a.m.

    Hi Margo! Email me at hbcarlon@uncg.edu, and I can send you the 3 iterations of the Saturday Academy curriculum guides we've used. We will get these posted to our website by the end of the week. 

    Re: your question about youths' claims of being a tinkerer, inventor, etc--> We use the 6 modes of engagement (tinkerer, inventor, investigator, altruist, conservationist, designer) throughout the program. They take a stem profile "interest" survey before joining the program, and they get their results, which we position as a discussion point. How accurately does this describe your interests? What would you change? What are your goals for the next 4 weeks, based on what you have here? The modes of engagement become tools for youths' sensemaking about their identity work, affiliation, belonging, growth. 

     
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    Kate Goss
    Margo Murphy
  • Icon for: Alison Mercier

    Alison Mercier

    Co-Presenter
    Research Assistant
    May 5, 2020 | 09:41 p.m.

    Thanks for your comments. BRIDGES introduces youth to six "modes of engagement". We consider these modes of engagement as ways for youth to see that no matter who they find themselves to be and how they prefer to engage, that they are a STEM-person. Our modes of engagement include altruist (helping people), inventor (comes up with creator or logical solutions), investigator (studies and explains problems), conservationist (cares deeply about the natural world), designer (makes things visually appealing), and tinkerer (builds and fixes).  We deliberately designed our curriculum to allow for a broad range of entry points appealing to eachof these modes of engagement. For example, when youth explored the water chemistries of the wetlands there were ways for youth to engage as conservationists, investigators, tinkerers, altruists, and inventors through the various activities and investigations that were offered. 

     
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    Kate Goss
  • Icon for: Marcia Linn

    Marcia Linn

    Researcher
    May 6, 2020 | 02:03 a.m.

    I love the excitement and enthusiasm among the participants. How did you select the activities? What changes have you made while testing the materials?

    Good to see what you are doing,

    Marcia

     

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 7, 2020 | 08:37 a.m.

    Thanks Marcia! Great to hear from you. Dearing does a great job of explaining our Saturday Academy curricular iterations below. We used a conjecture map to guide decisions about design iteration to some degree of success. Our conjectures centered on the importance of the fluidity of STEM-linked identity work, accessibility and belonging, multiple ways of knowing, and place-based education. We designed the curriculum to test out conjectures-- leveraging tools, participant and task structures from our prior work, and studying the ways youth made meaning of those embodiments. For example, one effective participant structure was that different activities demand different epistemic and dispositional engagement such as "scientific problem solving" or "doing good for the environment" or "educating the public." One task structure that was critical was that tasks with technology were mostly production-centered. An ongoing question for me: What do we do with the insight that the outdoor, field science kinds of work, novel to most youth, were so impactful for their ongoing identity work?

     
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    Kate Goss
  • Icon for: Kate Goss

    Kate Goss

    K-12 Teacher
    May 11, 2020 | 09:25 a.m.

    Thank you, Heidi. This is intriguing work, and reflects what I've observed rolling out a three-year Citizen Science program in my Montessori Upper Elementary (4th-6th). Your last question especially resonates; I regularly see entire self-perceptions change through the process of mastering data collection protocols and engaging in thoughtful adaptive management of our local watershed. Your work is phenomenal; thank you and your team for sharing it.

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Dearing Blankmann

    Dearing Blankmann

    Co-Presenter
    Graduate Student
    May 6, 2020 | 09:29 a.m.

    Hi. Thanks for your inquiry. This has been a very exciting project to work on. We have a wonderfully talented curriculum team who bring a breadth of experience and skills with them. In planning we considered modes of engagement for each activity and how we might leverage those opportunities while offering activities in science, engineering and technology specifically. Through iterations we listened to the feedback of the youth to determine how to build on or tweak activities. For instance, over the course of three Saturday Academies we shifted the focus and modality of the culminating project. Initially the focal point focused on storm water problem spot on the university campus. For the second iteration of Saturday Academies we tried to make the task of addressing storm water management more meaningful by localizing it to youths’ school settings. Youth were asked to select a storm water problem area and using the maker space and technologies design an outreach project that suggested a solution or brought the issue to the attention of their community. This worked well, but we decided the maker space medium was not as compelling as we would have liked. Also, youth did not necessarily embrace the action component. This past February, we had the youth select their own environmental dilemma to bring to the attention of the public. Our curriculum team focused on exposing youth to a variety of digital tools as the medium for action through story boarding. Our final Saturday Academy youth shared with the wider community their digital projects. This gave them an authentic opportunity to explain to the public why the environmental problem they selected was important, share possible solutions they had devised and describe their experience with the digital tool they selected. Over time we worked to make these experiences more meaningful to youth by presenting them with more choice and different means of expressing themselves.

  • Icon for: Perrin Teal Sullivan

    Perrin Teal Sullivan

    Informal Educator
    May 11, 2020 | 02:30 p.m.

    What a wonderful project, it's so great to hear the youth claiming the modes of engagement that specifically fire them up! Thank you for expanding on the design and refinement process that went into each iteration of the Academies. I'm curious as to why the youth weren't into the action/making component... what sort of feedback led you to drop that part?  

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 12, 2020 | 09:35 a.m.

    Hi Perrin,

    Thanks for your engagement and encouragement. Re: the making component for Saturday Academies--We had scrap making during the first and second iterations, which worked adequately. Youth created prototypes for sand filters, new designs for stormwater drains, and 3-D models for the stormwater runoff problem spots at their schools. From my perspective, the youth were engaged and enjoyed these projects and did robust work to align their ideas with current science and engineering. In our third iteration, we wanted to try out a different final project model that would: (1) honor different ways of communicating problems, solutions, and educating the public; (2) minimize hierarchies between youths' final projects (e.g., did not depend on artistic ability); (3) leverage the notion of "storytelling" as a mode of communication (inspired by Tzou et al's work 2019 Cognition & Instruction); (4) use technology in more principled ways; (5) create some collectivity between and among groups since they were working on similar projects. Each iteration of the Saturday Academies allowed us to tweak an aspect of the design to understand the affordances and limitations. I think both the making and the digital storytelling afforded different things, but we're still analyzing data. Your question is a good one!

    We kept a robust making component in our Summer Institute, with the design led by Dr. Sara Heredia. We had a pop-up makerspace each day of the camp in the afternoons, and here, Dr. Heredia led youth through the design cycle to identify potential problems and solutions for "kids like me" who visit the state park. Their products were solutions to educate, comfort, protect, and connect other youth who might visit the park. Couching the making in the design cycle, focused on "kids like me", created a vibrant making community. 

  • Icon for: Joanne Stewart

    Joanne Stewart

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 6, 2020 | 10:33 a.m.

    I love the "modes of engagement" and how they capture the nature of science better than any "scientific method" definition does! I think they would work great in some of our summer science camps and even in our first-year (undergrad) research-based program. Thanks for sharing!

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Dearing Blankmann

    Dearing Blankmann

    Co-Presenter
    Graduate Student
    May 6, 2020 | 10:42 a.m.

    I think undergrads would definitely get as much out of it. The modes of engagement work well as a mechanism, for not only our team to see shifts in identity work, but also for the youth to notice changes in themselves. So many of their exit interviews reflected surprise at their new interests and comfort in elements of the natural world they were initially unsure about. 

  • Icon for: Jeffrey Ram

    Jeffrey Ram

    Researcher
    May 8, 2020 | 03:30 a.m.

    It's OK to love bugs. But first you have to meet them!

  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 8, 2020 | 09:15 p.m.

    Jeffrey, YES. 

  • Icon for: Lakshmi Iyer

    Lakshmi Iyer

    Co-Presenter
    Professor of IS
    May 6, 2020 | 10:48 a.m.

    Another interesting element of the program is the involvement of Near-Peer Mentors (NPMs) and Counselors in Training (CITs). CITs (mostly high schoolers) are students who have significant STEM experiences and NPMs are students who had completed the Saturday Academy or Summer institute from prior years. They helped guide the students in the use of digital tools and in some instances were participants in the program. This gave the middle school participants a chance to see those closest to their age be excited about the activities and also the professional development opportunity for themselves so they can aspire to be a future NPM.  

  • Icon for: Jessica Gale

    Jessica Gale

    Researcher
    May 6, 2020 | 03:17 p.m.

    I love how this work includes and elevates student voices. I'd love to learn more about your best practices for interviewing students, something we also try to do in our work whenever possible. I love the idea of multiple modes of engagement. Thinking about situated approaches to learning, the way students identify with modes of engagement highlights the importance of valuing students' own evolving purposes for engaging in STEM. I wonder if there is room for students to shift the mode with which they identify, identify with multiple modes, or combine elements of various modes of engagement across or within projects. 

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Dearing Blankmann

    Dearing Blankmann

    Co-Presenter
    Graduate Student
    May 6, 2020 | 04:40 p.m.

    Thank you. Our interviews were wonderful points of reflection for everyone involved. Youth reflected  multiple modes of engagement at various times and shifts in modes of engagement absolutely occurred over time and depending on the activity. Youth initially participated in a survey that helped us anticipate a STEM profile, which reflected how they saw themselves in relation to the modes of engagement. We discussed their STEM profiles with them at the beginning of Saturday Academies and the Summer Institute to see if they were surprised, agreed with or disagreed with how the profile reflected their perceptions. During our exit interview the modes of engagement were discussed with the youth as part of a card sort in the context of the different activities they engaged in. The cards included both photo cards of various activities and cards with the modes of engagement.The card sort was a visual prompt to help them remember everything that had happened over the duration of our time together. Youth organized the cards and explained to what degree they felt the modes of engagement were present in them during their participation in activities. The exit interview and card sort also gave them an opportunity to reflect on how they changed and if they felt their STEM profile has adjusted. 

    An additional method of data collection/youth reflection were our identibeads. Youth were given an additional ribbon on their name laniard. At the end of each day youth selected colored beads that were associated with modes of engagement to add to their ribbon. In small groups they picked out beads that they felt reflected in what way they participated in the various activities. This was an opportunity for the youth to reflect collectively with their peers about their day.

    We worked hard to be intentional about making sure the data we collected and our interviews were the youth telling their own story and interpreting their experience rather than us extrapolating.

  • Icon for: Lynda McGilvary

    Lynda McGilvary

    Facilitator
    Communications Director
    May 6, 2020 | 10:04 p.m.

    Nice video - it really caused me to think about how we identify ourselves in the world. For a diverse group of students, instead of aligning with typical gender-centric and/or culture-centric identities, you've provided ways students can cross those invisible boundaries and think of them selves by their innate skills, interests and aptitudes. You identify six interest hooks, modes of engagement and trajectories in the video and in your summary-- investigating, inventing, tinkering, designing, acting as altruist, and acting as conservationist--how did you select these? Have you added to this list during the implementation of your project? 

  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 7, 2020 | 08:47 a.m.

    Lynda, I'm so glad you asked this question. The six modes of engagement came directly from our pedagogical framework. (I'm going to try to attach a visual of this message). Throughout the project, we have adjusted some of the terms and definitions, but we've maintained six categories. In the next year, we're going to develop a validated "STEM Profile" instrument, and we have two directions we could go with that. We could add more categories to make it more inclusive. Or, we could collapse some of the categories because distinctions between the categories are not as sharp as needed for a short, easy-to-take validated instrument. I can see benefits and drawbacks to both directions. I think we need to be clear about the uses of an instrument like this-- and then choose the direction that best aligns with the instrument goals and uses. 

     
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    Todd Campbell
  • Icon for: Lynda McGilvary

    Lynda McGilvary

    Facilitator
    Communications Director
    May 8, 2020 | 01:15 p.m.

    Heidi, I'll be interested in seeing which way you go in the next iteration. I do agree with your insight regarding the validated instrument. As I watch the video again, it occurs to me this program also is very successful at supporting the students' development of 21st Century Skills. Did you have that in mind when you designed the program, or is this a by-product?

  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 8, 2020 | 09:14 p.m.

    Lynda, we didn't set out to support 21st century skills per se-- i.e., we didn't use that as a framework to justify our pedagogical approach. However, I agree with you that the approach does, indeed, seem to cultivate/align with those sets of skills. Good point!

  • Anna Berenson

    Graduate Student
    May 7, 2020 | 09:24 a.m.

    Love this! I apologize for my limited knowledge of the program curriculum, but I'm wondering if students are exposed to any basic topics of cell biology/molecular biology/microbiology/medicine. Back in my day, and even now, I think many young kids see science as "playing outside with plants and animals," which leads them to think that if they aren't excited about the outdoors then they aren't fit for science. I wish someone had shown me earlier than science can have so many different faces!

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 7, 2020 | 09:31 a.m.

    Hi Anna! Thanks for your question. Our curriculum centers big ideas from environmental science, field science, environmental engineering, computational thinking, and scientific communication. It's a big lift to integrate these fields substantively. So, in this particular program, we're not drilling down to cell/molecular/micro/biology in any great depth.

     

    I do love the multi-faceted nature of this program, but there is so much more to science, engineering, and computing than what we represent here!

     
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    Todd Campbell
  • Icon for: Tina Phillips

    Tina Phillips

    Researcher
    May 7, 2020 | 12:33 p.m.

    Hi Heidi et al! It's wonderful to see this work come to life in such a rich and engaging way. I love the fact that you use the initial identity survey as a starting point for discussions with the students. Did most students agree with the main identities they fell into? If you took notes/observations or recorded these conversations, they could also serve as a point of validation of the initial scale. In other words, if for example, 80% of students felt their profiles were accurate, this speaks volumes for the kinds of questions you created to generate the profiles. If on the other hand, the majority of students disagree with their profiles, then the questions and/or analysis of responses may need some additional tweaking. Of course, it could also be that students haven't internalized their STEM identities, and so may not think of themselves as an inventor, designer, altruist, etc. I really look forward to seeing materials once they are publicly available!

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Lakshmi Iyer

    Lakshmi Iyer

    Co-Presenter
    Professor of IS
    May 7, 2020 | 01:36 p.m.

    Hi Tina, I will let Heidi or other team members add more later but there was a good confirmation of their initial profile before the program. Of course, the one we did after the program is based on what the participants confirmed, we do have the interview recordings and images to capture their profile at the end of the program. In some cases, the profiles stayed the same before and after while in other cases; the students explained how their identity changed and what triggered it. 

     
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    Tina PHILLIPS
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 8, 2020 | 09:10 p.m.

    Tina-- thanks so much for visiting our page! Ok, so there was decent alignment with the students' independent views of their profiles and the profiles they received from the STEM profile instrument. When they agree, they're not necessarily agreeing with the labels, but with the descriptions that operationalize the labels. However, we're not at 80% yet, which is why we're going to fairly significantly revamp the instrument over the next year. We have a year-long plan, with great statisticians to help us. Even so, the 6 categories have surfaced really nice identity-related conversations, so the STEM profile heuristic has been a nice research and curriculum development tool.

    Your point about "internalizing" the identities is spot on. Even at the end of a set of programming (e.g., Saturday Academies) or multiple sets of programming (e.g., after-school, Saturday Academies), we are still careful about claiming stabilized identity work. We've found the labels historical, triggered, emerging, and sustaining very helpful (riffing off of Hidi & Renninger's (2010) 4-phase interest model). We see LOTS of evidence of triggered identity work, some evidence of emerging identity work for alums, but we'll need more time to determine the sustaining identity work. 

     
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    Tina PHILLIPS
  • Icon for: Tina Phillips

    Tina Phillips

    Researcher
    May 9, 2020 | 06:45 p.m.

    Thanks Heid and Lakshmii! Good to know the descriptions aligned pretty well with students conceptions of themselves - labels can always be tweaked! Keep up the great work!

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Hiller Spires

    Hiller Spires

    Higher Ed Administrator
    May 7, 2020 | 01:06 p.m.

    I really enjoy the use of the modes of engagement as a way for students to feel personally connected to what they are doing through the program. For the projects, are students grouped based on these modes and having different modes come together? Or is it primarily based on the environmental dilemma they decide to focus on?

    The only change I am curious about with the modes is potentially incorporating a policy aspect such that the students could consider recommendations to help prevent these dilemmas from occurring. I feel that this could either be incorporated into the project overall or as its own mode, as students who may be very interested in political/social science could fit themselves in as a problem solver in that way. Do you think this might be a viable option?

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Dearing Blankmann

    Dearing Blankmann

    Co-Presenter
    Graduate Student
    May 7, 2020 | 03:33 p.m.

    Thank you for your thoughtful questions. We had three to four schools represented over the course of Bridges. There were different groupings for different activities. At the beginning of Saturday Academies we had an activity for youth to explore the modes of engagement while also serving as an icebreaker for meeting new friends from other schools. It was a way for them to meet someone they might have something in common with. The culminating project for the 2nd session of Saturday Academies centered around a school-based problem spot. Within the school groups smaller groups formed organically based on modes of engagement and common interests in a specific problem they identified. The most recent Saturday Academies youth organized themselves based on interest in a common problem and around the digital tool they selected to tell their environmental story.

     The thought about policy is a good one. We did touch on policy when working on school-based problem spots pertaining to storm water. District/School policy either facilitated or inhibited projects coming to fruition. Policy was also introduced in our most recent Saturday Academies when we incorporated a trip to our local landfill. City policies were part of our understanding of how the landfill functions and the role it plays in our community. We tried with the culminating projects this last round to emphasize the action part of the project. I think expanding on the poli-sci piece would definitely be compelling for some of our youth. 

  • Icon for: K. Renae Pullen

    K. Renae Pullen

    Facilitator
    Specialist
    May 7, 2020 | 10:44 p.m.

    The "I'm a..." at the end gave me chills. I would love for my students to position themselves in similar ways.

    This seems like a rich and fun summer learning experience. How you measure the success or impact of the project? 

     
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    Heidi Carlone
    Laura Cisneros
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 8, 2020 | 08:50 p.m.

    Hi Renae! Thanks for visiting our page. The program is multi-tiered-- we have a summer program, multi-week Saturday Academies, and after-school programs. Further, we have a professional development arm of the project working with teachers who have designed the after-school programs. For the youth programs, we are primarily interested in studying their historical, triggered, emerging, and sustaining disciplinary identity work. To do so, we closely examine the ways youth engage, the meaning they make of their engagement, and the ways they author themselves, and get positioned by others (all part of disciplinary identity work, defined from a sociocultural perspective). Many youth participate in more than one arm of the program, so we have ample opportunities to track the nature of their engagement/identity work over time. Video of youths' activities, one-on-one in-depth interviews, and fieldnotes are key data collection strategies. Further, we have an external evaluator who provides formative and summative evaluations via interviews and surveys to provide information about the alignment of our goals and outcomes. Our STEM profile instrument is poised to become a really interesting tool for research, but we have to do more work on it to validate it before that's the case. We're especially excited about that!

     
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    K. Renae Pullen
  • Icon for: Laura Cisneros

    Laura Cisneros

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 8, 2020 | 09:35 a.m.

    Hi Heidi! It's great to see your work here after hearing so much about it! I love the simple (but explicit) change in language to indicate that everyone is welcome (and needed) at the STEM table (i.e., all have a place through there exploration, tinkering, etc.). After discussions with you, we began incorporating this language into our recruitment materials.

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 8, 2020 | 08:54 p.m.

    Hi Laura! I'm glad that you all have found that language helpful with recruitment. I think the recruitment issue is an under-explored area for research. It is fun to see each other's projects in video form. 

  • Icon for: Kirsten Wood

    Kirsten Wood

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 9, 2020 | 01:50 p.m.

    It looks like the different ways of conceptualizing roles -- tinkerer, investigator, etc -- truly help middle-school students feel a sense of engagement and ownership in this work.  Fascinating project.

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 12, 2020 | 09:01 a.m.

    Thanks so much for stopping by, Kirsten! I found your work fascinating as well!

  • Icon for: Shakhnoza Kayumova

    Shakhnoza Kayumova

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 10, 2020 | 06:16 a.m.

    Wow! I love this work! This video is so informative. As always I am fascinated by your work! Lead us, Heidi!!!

  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 12, 2020 | 09:01 a.m.

    Thanks, Shakhnoza! The feeling is mutual. 

  • Sarah Berenson

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 11, 2020 | 01:57 p.m.

     

    Experiences with nature have a lasting impact on our appreciation, beliefs, and understanding of our world.

     
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    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Lakshmi Iyer

    Lakshmi Iyer

    Co-Presenter
    Professor of IS
    May 11, 2020 | 02:00 p.m.

    So true Sarah and current times are making us realize it even more :) Take care and be safe.

  • Icon for: Mitchell Nathan

    Mitchell Nathan

    Higher Ed Faculty
    May 12, 2020 | 09:40 a.m.

    Heidi, I love this project and see how it combines your interests in science and identity to create really engaging science experiences for children. Doing science is the best way to develop science literacy and learning. Thank you for sharing this wonderful project!

     
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    Discussion is closed. Upvoting is no longer available

    Heidi Carlone
  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 12, 2020 | 10:18 a.m.

    Thanks, Mitch! You should know that I shared your video with a doc student who's interested in ensemble/ embodied cognition in mathematics. Fascinating!

  • Icon for: Jomo Mutegi

    Jomo Mutegi

    Associate Professor of Science Education
    May 12, 2020 | 10:36 a.m.

    Excellent project! One question is have is, “Does the project help students to see the importance of science to non-scientists? If so, how do they develop this perspective?” 

    Also in response to Heidi’s question about other modes of engagement, one possibility is entrepreneurship. The ability to craft marketable solutions to environmental problems might be another mode of engagement. Great work

  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 12, 2020 | 10:50 a.m.

    Hi Jomo! Thanks for engaging with the project and for the excellent suggestion of entrepreneurship. Good idea! Timely and relevant. 

    Re: Your question about the importance of science. We didn't study this directly, but we're trying to cultivate an understanding of the importance of multiple ways of knowing to environmental problem-solving and conservation. The focus on cultivating youths' STEM-linked identity work means that, in part, youth begin to see science (and other ways of knowing) as thinkable for themselves and valuable to solving problems that matter to them. So, we're getting at that question in an oblique way, but not directly. That question is super important, however, especially right now. Again-- a great addition to our next round of programming. Thanks, Jomo.

  • Icon for: Clayton Lewis

    Clayton Lewis

    Researcher
    May 12, 2020 | 04:39 p.m.

    Heidi, so exciting to see this work! Love the multiple roles!

  • Icon for: Heidi Carlone

    Heidi Carlone

    Lead Presenter
    Hooks Distinguished Professor of STEM Education
    May 12, 2020 | 05:34 p.m.

    Clayton, Good to hear from you! From my very first NSF project with you as a graduate student to now! You set a great foundation for me. I so appreciate my CU Boulder education.

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.