Breaking Stereotypes through Culturally Relevant Storytelling: Optimizing Out-of-school Time STEM Experiences for Elementary-Age Girls to Strengthen their STEM Interest Pathways

通过与文化相关的故事讲述打破刻板印象：优化小学生的校外时间 STEM 体验，加强她们的 STEM 兴趣途径

• 批准号: 2115579
• 负责人: Tricia Zucker
• 金额: $ 200万
• 依托单位: The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2115579&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Breaking; Stereotypes; through; Culturally; Relevant

The U.S. urgently needs the perspective and knowledge of females who are Latinx and African American in STEM fields. Providing early STEM interest pathways for these populations that are historically underrepresented in STEM fields is critical to creating gender equity in the STEM workforce. There are profound inequities in STEM fields for women of color that impact their interest and persistence in these fields. This Research in Service to Practice project will build important knowledge about early pathways for reducing these inequities by developing early interest in STEM. Gender stereotypes around who can do STEM are one of the sociocultural barriers that contributes to girls’ loss of interest in STEM. These stereotypes emerge early and steer young women away from STEM studies and pursuits. Exposing girls to role models is an effective strategy for challenging stereotypes of who belongs and succeeds in STEM. This project will explore how an afterschool program that combines narrative and storytelling approaches, STEM role models, and family supports, sparks elementary-age girls’ interest in STEM and fosters their STEM identity. The project targets K-5 students and families from underrepresented groups (e.g., Latinx and African American) living in poverty. The project will evaluate an inquiry-based, afterschool program that serves both elementary school girls and boys and explores if adding storytelling components to the out-of-school time (OST) learning will better support girls’ interest in STEM. The storytelling features include: 1) shared reading of books featuring females in STEM; 2) students’ own narratives that reminisce about their STEM experiences; and 3) video interviews of female parents and community members with STEM careers. A secondary aim of this project is to build capacity of schools and afterschool providers to deliver and sustain afterschool STEM enrichment experiences. Museum-based informal STEM experts will co-teach with afterschool providers to deliver the Children’s Museum Houston (CMH) curriculum called Afterschool Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math (A’STEAM). Although A’STEAM has been implemented in over 100 sites and shows promise, to scale-up this and other promising afterschool programs, the team will evaluate how professional development resources and the co-facilitation approach can build afterschool educators' capacity to deliver the most promising approaches.Researchers at the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at UTHealth will partner with Museum-based informal STEM educators at CMH, YES Prep, a high performing charter school serving 95% of underrepresented groups, and other afterschool providers serving mostly underrepresented groups experiencing poverty. Storytelling components that highlight females in STEM will be added to an existing afterschool program (A'STEAM Basic). This derivative program is called A’STEAM Stories. Both instantiations of the afterschool programs (Basic and Stories) include an afterschool educator component (ongoing professional development and coaching), a family component (e.g., home extension activities, in-person, and virtual family learning events), and two age-based groups (K-G2 and G3-G5). Further, the A’STEAM Stories professional development for educators includes training that challenges STEM gender stereotypes and explains how to make science interesting to girls. The 4-year project has four phases. In Phase 1, researchers, CMH, and afterschool educators will adapt the curriculum for scalability and the planned storytelling variation. During Phase 2, the research team will conduct an experimental study to evaluate program impacts on increasing STEM interest and identity and reducing STEM gender stereotypes. To this end, the project’s team will recruit 36 sites and 1200 children across Kindergarten through Grade 5. This experimental phase is designed to produce causal evidence and meet the highest standards for rigorous research. The researchers will randomly assign sites to one of three groups: control, A’STEAM Basic, or A’STEAM Stories. During Phase 3, researchers will follow-up with participating sites to understand if the inclusion of afterschool educators as co-facilitators of the program allowed for sustainability after Museum informal science educator support is withdrawn. In Phase 4, the team will disseminate the afterschool curriculum and conduct two training-of-trainers for local and national afterschool educators. This study uses quantitative and qualitative approaches. Data sources include educator and family surveys, focus groups, and interviews as well as observations of afterschool program instructional quality and analysis of parent-child discourse during a STEM task. Constructs assessed with children include STEM interest, STEM identity, and STEM gender stereotype endorsement as well as standardized measures of vocabulary, science, and math. Findings will increase understanding of how to optimize OST STEM experiences for elementary-age girls and how to strengthen STEM interest for all participants. Further, this project will advance our knowledge of the extent to which scaffolded, co-teaching approaches build capacity of afterschool providers to sustain inquiry-based STEM programs.This Research in Service to Practice project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to (a) advance new approaches to and evidence-based understanding of the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments; (b) provide multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences; (c) advance innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments; and (d) engage the public of all ages in learning STEM in informal environments.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.

美国迫切需要拉丁裔和非裔美国女性在STEM领域的观点和知识。为这些历史上在STEM领域代表性不足的人群提供早期STEM兴趣途径，对于在STEM劳动力中创造性别平等至关重要。对于有色人种女性来说，STEM领域存在着深刻的不平等，影响了她们在这些领域的兴趣和坚持。这项服务于实践的研究项目将通过培养对STEM的早期兴趣，为减少这些不平等的早期途径建立重要的知识。围绕谁能做STEM的性别刻板印象是导致女孩对STEM失去兴趣的社会文化障碍之一。这些刻板印象很早就出现，并引导年轻女性远离STEM研究和追求。让女孩接触榜样是一种有效的策略，可以挑战人们对谁属于STEM、谁能成功的刻板印象。该项目将探索一个结合叙事和讲故事方法、STEM榜样和家庭支持的课后项目如何激发小学年龄女孩对STEM的兴趣，并培养她们对STEM的认同。该项目针对的是来自弱势群体（如拉丁裔和非裔美国人）的K-5学生和贫困家庭。该项目将评估一项面向小学男女学生的以探究为基础的课后课程，并探讨在校外学习（OST）中加入讲故事的内容是否能更好地支持女孩对STEM的兴趣。讲故事的特点包括：1)分享阅读STEM领域女性的书籍；2)学生讲述自己在STEM领域的经历；3)对从事STEM职业的女性家长和社区成员进行视频采访。该项目的第二个目标是建立学校和课后服务提供者提供和维持课后STEM丰富体验的能力。以博物馆为基础的非正式STEM专家将与课后提供者共同教授休斯敦儿童博物馆（CMH）课程，称为课后科学，技术，工程，艺术和数学（A 'STEAM）。尽管A ' steam已经在100多个地点实施，并显示出希望，但为了扩大这一项目和其他有前途的课外项目，该团队将评估专业发展资源和共同促进方法如何能够建立课外教育者的能力，以提供最有前途的方法。UTHealth儿童学习研究所（CLI）的研究人员将与CMH、YES Prep（一所为95%代表性不足群体提供服务的高性能特许学校）的博物馆非正式STEM教育工作者以及其他为代表性不足的贫困群体提供服务的课后提供者合作。在现有的课后课程（A'STEAM Basic）中，将增加强调STEM中女性的讲故事内容。这个衍生节目被称为“steam故事”。这两个课后项目的实例（基础和故事）都包括课后教育者组成部分（持续的专业发展和指导），家庭组成部分（例如，家庭扩展活动，面对面和虚拟家庭学习活动），以及两个基于年龄的小组（K-G2和G3-G5）。此外，针对教育工作者的A 'STEAM故事专业发展包括挑战STEM性别刻板印象的培训，并解释如何让女孩对科学感兴趣。这个为期四年的项目分为四个阶段。在第一阶段，研究人员、CMH和课后教育者将根据可扩展性和计划的讲故事变化调整课程。在第二阶段，研究团队将进行一项实验研究，以评估项目对提高STEM兴趣和认同以及减少STEM性别刻板印象的影响。为此，项目团队将在幼儿园到五年级的36个地点招募1200名儿童。这个实验阶段的目的是产生因果证据，并达到严格研究的最高标准。研究人员将随机将网站分配到三组中的一组：对照组，A 'STEAM基础或A 'STEAM故事。在第三阶段，研究人员将跟踪参与的站点，以了解在博物馆非正式科学教育工作者的支持被撤回后，将课外教育工作者作为项目的共同协调员是否允许可持续性。在第四阶段，该小组将传播课后课程，并为地方和国家的课后教育工作者进行两次培训。本研究采用定量和定性相结合的方法。数据来源包括教育者和家庭调查、焦点小组和访谈，以及对课后项目教学质量的观察和对STEM任务期间亲子话语的分析。对儿童进行评估的构念包括STEM兴趣、STEM身份、STEM性别刻板印象背书，以及词汇、科学和数学的标准化测量。研究结果将加深对如何优化小学年龄女孩的OST - STEM体验以及如何增强所有参与者对STEM的兴趣的理解。此外，该项目将提高我们对框架式合作教学方法在多大程度上建立课后提供者维持探究式STEM项目的能力的认识。这项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(a)推进非正式环境中STEM学习设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解；(b)提供多种途径，以扩大获得和参与STEM学习经验的机会；(c)推进非正式环境中STEM学习的创新研究和评估；(d)让所有年龄段的公众在非正式环境中学习STEM。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。