Investigating the impact of youth's inductive exploration of local technologies featured in Indigenous stories on their engagement, self-efficacy, and persistence in STEM

该项目为土著青年提供了转型的机会，并因蒸汽创新和知识建设的机会而转型。该项目将在课堂之外创造机会，通过支持在重视多种语言和了解方式的社区环境中的探索，投资于青少年的参与度、兴趣和自我效能。通过这一项目，青年可以与社区专家、长辈和知识持有者一起参与社区的紧迫需求，如气候变化影响、粮食和水安全、慢性健康危机和向外迁移。该项目将扩大太平洋岛屿背景下非正式蒸汽学习和有意义的蒸汽参与的图景。它将采用一个合作研究框架，调查促进代际学习的非正式蒸汽学习活动--特别是探索传统故事和创建说明土著蒸汽做法的原型、讲故事包和动手模型--如何随着时间的推移影响青年对蒸汽和自我效能的参与和兴趣。通过培养参与者--特别是太平洋岛民青年--成为共同研究人员、评估者和设计师的能力，该项目将培养参与者倡导其兴趣、观点和需求的空间。太平洋区域内的这项研究对于培养科学素养和扩大对蒸汽领域的参与很重要，因为早期对科学的兴趣是未来蒸汽兴趣和职业选择的潜在指标。该项目的目标是调查青年对土著故事中介绍的当地技术的归纳探索如何影响他们对STEAM的参与和兴趣、非正式的STEAM学习以及影响青年参与STEAM途径的未来决策。该项目将在关岛、马绍尔群岛共和国和密克罗尼西亚联邦(包括Chuuk、Kosrae、Pohnpee和Yap四个州)实施，并将解决核心研究问题：随着时间的推移，青年参与基于STEAM的故事讲述和故事探索在多大程度上导致青年对STEAM和自我效能的参与和兴趣增加？该项目将故事探索作为一种文化和元语言过程，不仅将故事作为人工制品或过程进行调查，而且将其作为调查历史、土著蒸汽和地方创新的门户。两批青年参与者将参加由长老、伙伴组织和项目工作人员领导的暑期和春季校外项目，通过这些项目，青年调查讲故事、设计、研究实践和服务学习。每个队列还将创建数字讲故事包和/或模型包，通过参与者设计的社区级和跨地区分享活动与观众分享。该项目预计将惠及140名青年和30名老年人。为了衡量学习结果，该项目建立在现有工具的基础上，以衡量非正式的蒸汽学习参与度。关于应用这些工具的课程将有助于非正式的STEAM学习知识库--特别是关于STEAM中代表性不足的社区。基于社区的参与性研究(CBPR)是该项目的总体理论和方法框架，将通过多种观察、数据收集和分析方法让参与者成为共同研究人员。该项目还将创造社区驱动的研究机会，促进关于经常未被探索的主题的知识的产生，因为：(1)密克罗尼西亚人作为代表不足的少数群体，在研究设计期间通常不在谈判桌前；(2)非密克罗尼西亚人/土著认识论通常在整个研究过程中享有特权；(3)当任何局外人要求查看时，缺乏信任，特别是当种族主义的殖民历史仍然留下日常影响的时候。该项目鼓励所有参与者考虑并回答这个问题：谁的知识的管理者？研究成果、教育材料和资源将分发给研究人员、项目开发人员、非正式科学机构、合作伙伴组织、正式和非正式教育工作者以及社区。本研究项目由推进非正式STEM学习计划(AISL)资助，该计划旨在：(A)促进对非正式环境中STEM学习设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解；(B)为扩大获得和参与STEM学习体验提供多种途径；(C)推进对非正式环境中STEM学习的创新研究和评估；以及(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NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project provides opportunities for Indigenous youth to transform and be transformed by opportunities for STEAM innovation and knowledge building. This project will create opportunities outside of the classroom to invest in youths’ engagement, and interest, and self-efficacy in STEAM by supporting explorations in community settings that value multiple languages and ways of knowing. Through this project, youth can engage in pressing community needs—such as climate change impacts, food and water security, chronic health crises, and out-migration— with community experts, elders, and knowledge holders. The project will expand the picture of what Informal STEAM learning and meaningful engagement in STEAM looks like in Pacific Island contexts. It will employ a collaborative research framework to investigate how Informal STEAM learning activities that foster intergenerational learning—particularly the exploration of traditional stories and the creation of prototypes, storytelling packages, and hands-on models that illustrate Indigenous STEAM practices—impact youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time. By building the capacity of participants—particularly Pacific Islander youth—to become co-researchers, -evaluators and -designers, the project will cultivate spaces for participants to advocate for their interests, perspectives, and needs. This research within the Pacific region is important for fostering science literacy and broadening participation in STEAM fields since early interest in science is a potential indicator of future STEAM interest and career choices. The goal of the project is to investigate how youth’s inductive exploration of local technologies featured in Indigenous stories impact their engagement and interest in STEAM, Informal STEAM learning, and future decision making that affect youth participation in STEAM pathways. The project will be implemented in Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia (comprising the four states of Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Yap) and will address the core research question: To what extent does youths’ participation in STEAM-based storytelling and story exploration lead to increases in youths’ engagement and interest in STEAM and self-efficacy over time? The project approaches story exploration as a cultural and metalinguistic process to investigate a story not solely as an artifact or a process, but as a doorway to investigations of history, Indigenous STEAM, and local innovation. Two cohorts of youth participants will engage in summer and spring out-of-school programs led by elders, partner organizations, and project staff through which youth investigate storytelling, design, research practice, and service learning. Each cohort will also create digital storytelling packages and/or model kits to share with audiences through participant-designed community-level and cross-region sharing events. The project is expected to reach 140 youth and 30 elders. To measure learning outcomes, the project builds upon extant tools to gauge Informal STEAM learning engagement. Lessons about the application of these tools will contribute to the Informal STEAM learning knowledge base—especially regarding underrepresented communities in STEAM. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is the overarching theoretical and methodological framework for the project and will engage participants as co-researchers through multiple methods of observation, data gathering, and analysis. The project will also create community-driven research opportunities that advances the generation of knowledge on topics that are often left unexplored because: (1) Micronesians as underrepresented minorities are not usually at the table during research design; (2) non-Micronesian/Indigenous epistemologies are usually privileged throughout the research; and (3) there is a lack of trust when any outsider asks to look in, especially when racialized colonial histories still leave daily impacts. This project encourages all participants to consider and develop answers to this question: Stewards of whose knowledge? Research findings and educational materials and resources will be disseminated to researchers, program developers, informal science institutions, partner organizations, formal and informal educators, and communities. This research 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.