Cultivating sustainable citizenship among 8th and 9th grade girls through informal STEM workshops

这个为期两年的项目将分析青春期女孩如何在参加以大学为基础的STEM暑期项目时成为可持续发展的公民，该项目提供可持续发展科学的实践研讨会。作为STEM教育研究能力建设（BCSER）项目，主要目标是建立主要研究者在STEM教育研究方面的知识库和分析专业知识。该项目旨在定位研究者进行长期研究，以扩大可持续性科学的参与以及培养下一代STEM教育工作者的方法。该项目位于费城德雷塞尔大学（Drexel University）与尤里卡（Eureka）女生STEM项目合作的背景下，有可能扩大低收入、少数族裔社区中代表性不足的女孩的参与，并提高中学女生对可持续扫盲的理解。此外，通过研究女孩中学阶段持续和有意学习途径的结构和影响，该项目可以促进对非正式学习环境如何支持女孩对STEM的兴趣和信心的理解。通过这种方式，该项目为如何促进有效的非正式教育干预，创造更具包容性和多样性的学习环境提供了路线图。推动这个项目的研究问题是：STEM内容的重点是基于社区组织的可持续发展项目的探究式活动，能否提供一种培养可持续公民意识和环境公民行动的手段？它使用人种学方法来识别和评估非正式的STEM学习环境，并推断女孩培养兴趣和自信的背景和框架。在这两年中，中学女生将在夏季参加为期四周的尤里卡STEM项目，在学年期间每个月参加一天。女孩们将通过多学科工程和科学实践主动学习研讨会，介绍与社会相关的现实问题，这些问题可以使用基本的工程和科学方法和工具迭代解决。通过一系列互动增强练习，女孩们将参与可持续发展练习，由德雷克塞尔大学STEM系的学生和教师提供帮助。Drexel的研究生和本科生将通过课程作业和参与Eureka项目接受STEM教学法和教学策略方面的培训。目标是支持女孩制定环境公民行动计划，使她们所在的社区参与其中，并提供一种手段，使她们的可持续性利益付诸实施。该项目得到了EHR核心研究：STEM教育研究能力建设（ECR: BCSER）竞赛的支持，该竞赛旨在培养个人在STEM学习和学习环境中开展高质量基础STEM教育研究的能力，扩大STEM领域的参与，以及STEM劳动力的发展。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This two-year project will analyze how adolescent girls develop as sustainable citizens as they take part in a college-based STEM summer program that offers hands-on workshops in sustainability science. As a Building Capacity in STEM Educational Research (BCSER) project, a key goal is to build the principal investigator's knowledge base and analytical expertise in STEM education research. This project aims to position the investigator to conduct longer-term research on broadening participation in sustainability science and ways to prepare the next generation of STEM educators.Situated in the context of a Philadelphia-based partnership between Drexel University and the girls-only Eureka STEM program, the project has potential to broaden participation among underrepresented girls from low-income, minority communities and advance understanding of sustainable literacy among middle school girls. Moreover, by examining the structure and impact of continuous and intentional learning pathways through girls’ middle school years, the project can advance understanding of how informal learning environments support girls’ interest and confidence in STEM. In this way, the project offers a roadmap for how to foster effective informal education interventions to create more inclusive and diverse learning environments.The research question driving this project is: Can STEM content that is focused on inquiry-based activities that build towards a community organized sustainability project offer a means to cultivate a sense of sustainable citizenship and environmental civic action? It uses ethnographic methods to identify and evaluate the informal STEM learning environment and to infer the contexts and frameworks in which girls develop their interest and confidence. During the two years, middle school girls will enroll in the Eureka STEM program for four weeks during the summer and one day every month during the academic year. The girls will be introduced to socially relevant real-world problems through multidisciplinary engineering and science hands-on active-learning workshops that can be iteratively solved using fundamental engineering and science methods and tools. Through a series of interactive augmented exercises, the girls will engage in sustainability exercises, facilitated by students and faculty from Drexel STEM departments. Drexel graduate and undergraduate students will receive training in STEM pedagogy and teaching strategies through coursework and participation in the Eureka program. The goal is to support girls’ creation of environmental civic action plans that engage the communities in which the girls live and that offer a means to operationalize their sustainability interests. The project is supported through the EHR Core Research: Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) competition that is designed to build individuals’ capacity to carry out high quality fundamental STEM education research in STEM learning and learning environments, broadening participation in STEM fields, and STEM workforce development.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.