Hi Cynthia,

Thank you for your questions! We are iteratively designing both curricular materials (with the goal of sharing these with informal educators) and a professional learning model. We are also refining our initial set of lessons and adapting the program for a summer camp-type setting, with implementation this summer.

We are using a Likert-type scaled pre- and post-survey, along with qualitative data from youth artifacts and interviews, to measure both math and mindset outcomes.

Thank you Christina!  I look forward to hearing more about your efforts and impact!

Thank you so much for your comment David!  We are looking forward to analyzing outcomes from our first round of participants this summer - we will have data related to growth mindset, disposition towards math  and math learning from a group of youth in boys and girls club settings, and then a group in a summer camp at a baseball facility. We will make sure to post updates on our project website. Thanks for your feedback! 

Hi Andrew,

We are not measuring appreciation or attitudes toward any specific field of mathematics, but more of a general sense of math. Our youth participants are in grades 3-8, so we keep it pretty general. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a large enough sample size to rely on our survey data to make claims around outcomes, but we hope to increase those numbers! Anecdotally, from chatting with and interviewing youth (we have only done limited qualitative analysis so far), our kids are making connections between school math, out-of-school math, and using math in their everyday lives, and they do seem to be gaining math understanding, especially around fractions, decimals, and percentages, as well as measurement (distances and angles). But again, we are just beginning data analysis, so I cannot speak to your question directly.

Hello Christina,

I had in mind the distances between the bases, the distance from the picture's mound to home plate and the fact the infield is called a diamond or rhombus.

Andrew, our activities include a lot of geometry ideas, including the distance between bases and from the pitcher's mound to home, the right angles seen in the infield "diamond", and how little league and MLB distances differ. We certainly discuss these things! But I cannot speak to our participants' appreciation for geometry as a result of these activities.

Thank you for your questions, Wendy. So far in our project, we have been working with facilitators who have some familiarity with baseball but are not experts. In the fall, we did 12 hours of in-person (socially distanced and masked) professional development, including baseball knowledge (along with pedagogy, math, and growth mindset training), and we provide on-demand resources for our facilitators to access at any time to find information about baseball. We also include relevant baseball background information in the facilitator guides for each lesson. With our project expanding, we will alter our professional development based on the knowledge and expertise of new facilitators. For example, a facilitator who is or has been a baseball or softball coach would of course need much less support with the baseball knowledge but might need more support with math or pedagogy.

Our curriculum was adapted from the Science of Baseball curriculum, a part of Science of Sport (https://sciencesport.org/), which has curricula centered within the context of several different sports. Similar curricula could be adapted to integrate growth mindset principles in the context of any of these sports in the same way. We have found that our youth are often more familiar with soccer in particular, though it has been up to facilitators at this point to make connections to other sports.

Thanks for the fantastic question. We are still in the early stages, but part of our research and design work includes the development and iterative testing/refinement of professional learning materials for facilitators in informal learning spaces. These materials will include resources for in person facilitator training sessions, as well as a diverse set of on demand resources to support facilitators in a range of different informal learning settings in implementing the program. So fat, we have only tested the program (and associated facilitator learning materials) at an after school boys and girls club. But this summer, we will implement in a summer camp setting. Our hope is to learn from each implementation and to refine the materials accordingly so that they are as flexible as possible and can be used effectively in a range of informal learning spaces.