Research: Examining the Influence of Youth-led, Museum-based Engineering Experiences on Participating Youth and the Visiting Public

激励来自不同背景的年轻人追求工程事业的一种方法是招募他们作为教育工作者，帮助公众了解工程师如何帮助应对日常生活中的挑战。纽约科学馆为众多不同的观众提供服务，是检验这一战略前景的理想场所。科学馆的青年教育工作者和公共项目策展人将指导两组高中和大学早期年龄的青年，他们将为博物馆游客设计和促进以工程为重点的活动和活动。他们将共同努力，为公众开发工程规划，强调工程实践的文化和人际层面。这群年轻人将从科学馆的100多名解释者中招募，这是一个非常多样化的年轻人群体，他们在科学馆兼职工作，并在参观者探索博物馆时与他们互动。研究人员将跟踪参与者的经历，并记录他们对博物馆参观者对工程的看法的影响。我们期望通过为参观者创造和提供这些体验，对青年参与者理解工程学科、参观者对工程及其与日常生活关系的看法产生积极影响。该项目将通过观察、访谈、日志和工程专业技能评估来探索青年体验，并通过参观者出口调查和访谈来探索参观者的看法。技能评估和访问者调查都是国家基金会资助的工具。数据编码将以美国国家研究理事会委员会关于理解和改善K-12工程教育的委员会（2009年）定义的工程思维习惯为基础。该项目将收集关于研究员最常从事的思维习惯的证据。这项工作还将探讨如何与同行（作为同事），与专家（作为学习者，如与居住设计师）和游客（作为教师和领导者）的互动可能与项目过程中思维习惯的不同组合相关联。参观者数据和评估数据将使该项目开始，在参与的年轻人对文化背景下的工程挑战的理解增加之间建立分析联系，以及它们对在科学馆参与工程规划的博物馆参观者的体验的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

One way to motivate young people from diverse backgrounds to pursue engineering careers is to enlist them as educators who can help the general public understand how engineers help respond to the challenges of everyday life. The New York Hall of Science, which serves a large and diverse audience, is an ideal setting for testing the promise of this strategy. Youth educators and curators of public programs at the Hall of Science will mentor two groups of high school- and early college-aged youth, who will contribute to the design and facilitation of engineering-focused events and activities for museum visitors. They will work together to develop engineering programming for the public that emphasizes the cultural and interpersonal dimensions of engineering practices. This group of young people will be recruited from the Hall of Science's more than 100 Explainers, a very diverse group of young people who work part-time at the Hall of Science and engage with visitors as they explore the museum. Researchers will track participants' experiences and document their impact on museum visitors' perceptions of engineering. The expectation is that creating and delivering these experiences for visitors will have a positive impact on the youth participants' understanding of the engineering disciplines, and on visitors' perceptions of engineering and its relationship to everyday life.The project will use observations, interviews, journaling and the Engineering Professional Skills Assessment to explore youth experience, and visitor exit surveys and interviews to probe visitor perceptions. Both the skills assessment and visitor surveys are NSF-funded instruments. Data coding will be grounded in the engineering habits of mind defined by the National Research Council's Committee on Understanding and Improving K-12 Engineering Education in the United States (2009). The project will capture evidence regarding which habits of mind the Fellows are most frequently engaged with. The effort will also explore how interactions with peers (as colleagues), with experts (as learners, such as with Designers in Residence) and with visitors (as teachers and leaders) may be associated with different combinations of the habits of mind over the course of the project. Visitor data and assessment data will allow the project to begin to make analytic connections between participating young people's increased understanding of culturally-situated engineering challenges, and their impact on the experiences of museum visitors who engage with engineering programming at the Hall of Science.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.