From Community to Career - A Longitudinal Study of an Out-of-School Science Program and Youth from Populations Underrepresented in STEM

从社区到职业——对校外科学项目和 STEM 人群中代表性不足的青少年的纵向研究

• 批准号: 1514593
• 负责人: Aaron Price
• 金额: $ 99.62万
• 依托单位: Museum of Science and Industry
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-09-01 至 2020-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1514593&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Community; Career; Longitudinal; Study; Out

Approximately 8.4 million children in the United States participate annually in out-of-school time (OST) programs with a science component. These programs have been shown to have a wide range of impacts on scientific literacy, school achievement, and career interest. Because such programs take place outside of home and school, they offer participants learning flexibility and a sense of agency that otherwise do not exist in traditional science learning contexts. However, current research on OST is largely limited to evaluation-level data that has not been synthesized, making it difficult to draw definite conclusions. As seen in other fields, a larger evidence base is needed for the OST field to grow or else non-evidence-based policies will be imposed upon the field by outside forces. The project team will conduct an experimental, longitudinal research project to address these issues. This Research-in-Service to Practice 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.The study uses a sophisticated design with a wide variety of measures to follow three cohorts of adolescent youth (~200) over a 4-year period to address the primary research 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? While each measure is rooted in established literature and methodology, putting it all together using a comprehensive, complementary approach has not yet been done in the OST field. The research studies will be looking at a number of variables in order to measure program impact including: demographic and experiential background of program participants, STEM attitudes, career interest/choices, scientific engagement, and participation. Data will be collected via survey, observation, interviews, and document review. The program practitioners will contribute diary and field note data to the study.This project will provide STEM education practitioners with the evidence-based information they need to develop better programs for underrepresented minority (URM) youth so program and policy decisions are not made in a vacuum. Operationally, findings will have an impact on OST and URM science education researchers by generating new research methodology and techniques. Tactically, it will benefit greater URM communities by investigating how OST programs can support science learning and scientific interest among their adolescent youth. Strategically, the study impacts the nation by providing evidence about the validity of OST programs as a critical partner to address the issue of URM involvement in the STEM workforce. Also, the corpus of raw data will be made public, providing a large and varied data set for others to explore. This research is being conducted by the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, and the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

美国每年约有840万儿童参加有科学内容的校外课程。 这些计划已被证明对科学素养，学业成就和职业兴趣有广泛的影响。由于这些项目发生在家庭和学校之外，它们为参与者提供了学习灵活性和代理感，否则在传统的科学学习环境中不存在。 然而，目前对外层空间技术的研究主要限于尚未综合的评价级数据，因此难以得出明确的结论。 正如在其他领域所看到的那样，OST领域的发展需要更大的证据基础，否则外部力量将对该领域施加非证据基础的政策。项目小组将开展一个实验性的纵向研究项目，以解决这些问题。 这个服务于实践的研究项目由推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）计划资助，该计划旨在推进新的方法和基于证据的理解，STEM学习在非正式环境中的设计和发展。这项研究使用了一个复杂的设计，采用了各种各样的措施，以跟踪三个青少年队列（约200人）超过4-一年的时间来解决主要的研究问题：如何从传统上代表性不足的群体，在一个完善的，校外时间科学计划的青少年参与影响他们的职业选择和对科学的态度，因为他们成熟到成年早期？ 虽然每一项措施都植根于既定的文献和方法，但在外层空间技术领域，还没有采用全面、互补的办法将其综合起来。研究将着眼于一些变量，以衡量计划的影响，包括：计划参与者的人口统计和经验背景，STEM态度，职业兴趣/选择，科学参与和参与。将通过调查、观察、访谈和文件审查收集数据。 该项目将为STEM教育从业者提供他们需要的基于证据的信息，以便为代表性不足的少数民族（URM）青年制定更好的计划，因此计划和政策决策不是在真空中做出的。在操作上，研究结果将产生新的研究方法和技术，对OST和URM科学教育研究人员产生影响。从战术上讲，它将通过调查OST计划如何支持青少年的科学学习和科学兴趣，使更多的URM社区受益。从战略上讲，这项研究通过提供OST计划作为解决URM参与STEM劳动力问题的关键合作伙伴的有效性的证据来影响国家。此外，原始数据的语料库将被公开，为其他人提供了一个庞大而多样的数据集。这项研究由芝加哥科学与工业博物馆和弗吉尼亚大学咖喱教育学院共同进行。

项目成果

Youths’ Perceptions of Features of a Museum-Based Youth Development Program That Create a Supportive Community Context: A Qualitative Case Study

青少年对基于博物馆的青少年发展计划创建支持性社区环境的特征的看法：定性案例研究

• DOI: 10.1177/0743558420985462
• 发表时间: 2021
• 期刊: Journal of Adolescent Research
• 影响因子: 2
• 作者: Mroczkowski, Alison L.;Price, C. Aaron;Harris, Natalie C.;Skeeles-Worley, Angela D.
• 通讯作者: Skeeles-Worley, Angela D.

Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions

衡量非正式科学教育经验的长期影响：挑战和潜在解决方案

• DOI: 10.1186/s43031-021-00031-0
• 发表时间: 2021-04-30
• 期刊: Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research
• 作者: Staus NL;Falk JH;Price A;Tai RH;Dierking LD
• 通讯作者: Dierking LD

Staff matter: Gender differences in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) career interest development in adolescent youth

• DOI: 10.1080/10888691.2017.1398090
• 发表时间: 2019-07-03
• 期刊: APPLIED DEVELOPMENTAL SCIENCE
• 影响因子: 3.8
• 作者: Price, C. Aaron;Kares, F.;Loyd, Aerika Brittian
• 通讯作者: Loyd, Aerika Brittian