Underrepresented Populations in STEM
Increased attention to STEM education in schools highlights on-going trends both for young people and adults of inequities within STEM contexts. The Center is committed to creating a more equitable society, especially for those most marginalized, through high-quality research on formal and informal STEM learning environments.
Projects
AP-TIP IN
Given the exceptional impact among initial AP-TIP IN cohorts and its long-term investment in young talent in the state of Indiana, the Indiana Advanced Placement Teacher Investment Program (AP-TIP IN) received funding support from the Lilly Endowment to further develop and expand AP-TIP IN’s program in Indiana, and provide time to implement a longitudinal sustainability plan. This plan consists of four concurrent components: (1) implement the AP-TIP IN program in new schools; (2) communicate results to stakeholders and the public; (3) obtain governmental agency support; and (4) develop partnerships. This comprehensive strategy will result in a fully-supported program that fosters STEM-focused, college and career readiness program at Indiana schools through public-private partnerships.
AP-TIP IN- Cohorts 4 and 5
AP-TIP IN received funds from the Indiana Commission for Higher Education to implement its professional development and support programs at 17 Indiana high schools representing 16 school corporations.
AP-TIP IN will support schools to grow their AP MSE programs using a tool, will provide professional development events to aid teachers to hone both content and pedagogical content knowledge in AP MSE courses, and will provide Content Staff mentoring and support such that teachers are more effectively able to teach AP MSE courses at program schools. The outcomes expected are an increased number of students who participate in AP MSE courses, an increased number of students who earn AP MSE qualifying scores, and the development of AP MSE teachers who are highly qualified and successful at teaching their AP MSE courses.
Core Practices: UPTAKE
Research on teaching practice has recently gained attention as an effective lever for improving student engagement and achievement. Recent studies have shown that even more than years of teaching experience or degree held, the instructional practice that occurs in K-12 classrooms is the best predictor of student learning. Given the limited amount of time and resources available for preparing new teachers, identifying and helping novices take up a small set of effective, content-specific practices, has great potential for improving the education of students in our nation's schools.
This program of researching draws on the emerging work of core instructional practices. Fueled by work with the Core Practice Consortium (https://www.corepracticeconsortium.com/), this series of studies focuses specifically on how science teachers learn and engage core practices like facilitating sensemaking discussions and how students participate in these experiences.
GRADIENT
Exploring the gender differences in how children develop early interest and understanding in engineering can provide useful information for the ongoing efforts to address the low numbers of women who pursue engineering careers. By the time girls reach middle school, they are already much less likely to be interested in STEM careers than boys are, especially in fields that are math-intensive such as physics and engineering. This lack of interest has been shown to be commonly connected to two things: a narrow, inaccurate view of the engineering profession, and the perceived misalignment between what engineers do and what girls value in future careers.
Informal learning environments, where learners spend a great deal of time and have more freedom in choosing the topics they study and immerse themselves in, have been shown to be powerful and transformative contexts in which young people cultivate lifelong interest and understanding around STEM topics over time. Institutions for informal science learning, such as science and technology centers, are wildly popular and visited by over 50 million people in the United States every year. These settings often allow for parents and children to collaboratively engage in STEM learning, which may be particularly important in fields like engineering where parents have been shown to play a critical role in career choice.
The Gender Research on Adult-child Discussions within Informal Engineering environmenTs (GRADIENT) project seeks to explore the development of early engineering interest and understanding for girls by closely examining parent-child conversation within museum-based informal engineering learning settings. In particular, the study context focuses on a pre-school program where parents and children can play with engineering-focused toys and engage in different aspects of the engineering design process. The study investigates how the structure of the activities and the conversations between parents and children during these experiences can support or inhibit the development of engineering interest and understanding for young girls. Findings from the study will seek to highlight productive ways of fostering early engineering learning that can be informative for both STEM educators and parents.
Head Start on Engineering
Head Start on Engineering (HSE) is a collaborative, NSF-funded research and practice project designed to develop and refine a theoretical model of early childhood, engineering-related interest development. The project focuses on Head Start families with four-year-old children from low-income communities and is being carried out collaboratively by researchers, science center educators, and a regional Head Start program. The ultimate goal of the HSE initiative is to advance the understanding of and capacity to support early engineering interest development for young learners, especially for children from low-income families and traditionally underserved communities. Building on prior work that examined the conversations of parents and young children engaged in engineering design (Dorie, Carella, & Svarovsky, 2014; 2015), the beginning stages of HSE explore the perceptions, interactions, and interest development of young children and their parents while engaged in activities that incorporate elements of the engineering design process. We specifically focus on parent-child interactions because of the role that early interest (Maltese & Tai, 2010) and parents (Mannon & Schreuders, 2007) play in the occupational choices of populations traditionally underrepresented in STEM (Eccles et al., 1999).
HSE project launched in October 2016 and began offering programming and resources for families in December. For the first two years of the project, the team has worked with teachers at one Head Start location to plan, gather input from families, and test new programs and activities. In the fall of 2016, the team offered two full-day professional development workshops for staff, during which teachers learned about engineering, explored examples of engineering and design in their own lives, tested new activities for families and young children, and provided input on future programs. In January 2017, a group of Head Start families was recruited to participate in five months of program and research activities, including parent nights, home visits, take-home activity kits, and a field trip to OMSI. A second iteration of the project commenced in the fall of 2017, with another cohort of family participants engaging in programming starting in January 2018.
