Broadening participation, building STEM competencies, and strengthening identity formation through cross-cultural and international collaboration in project-based learning

该项目在科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）领域的国际，基于项目的学习和媒体制作社区中吸引了大学前拉丁裔，黑人和土著学习者，教育工作者和合作本科生。该项目解决了主要挑战，包括扩大非正式STEM学习的参与，发展领导非正式STEM项目的能力，以及在青春期STEM学习与个人和社会身份形成之间建立更强的联系。该项目的参与者社区是一个基于资产的学习环境，它将每个参与者、他们的背景、技能和兴趣视为对整体有益的独特因素。在每个中心的导师（教师，科学组织或其他校外学习环境的领导者）的带领下，参与者与来自美国和其他国家的同行合作。这些合作涵盖了广泛的STEM项目。参与者还创建数字媒体来传达他们的项目。项目活动反映了在全球范围内对STEM内容，协作和沟通的关注，其中包括来自美国的学龄学习者以及来自中美洲和南美洲，中东，亚洲和撒哈拉以南地区的同龄人。将复杂的STEM能力技能与跨国际和文化界限的合作技能以及精通媒体的沟通能力相结合，对于国家未来的STEM劳动力和建立一个充满科学活力的公民群体至关重要。该项目解决了与教师和其他非正式科学提供者共同开发的两个主要研究问题。第一个研究问题涉及理解和优化通过这种跨越文化，种族，性别，能力，国籍和社会经济地位的分布式或虚拟协作来扩大参与的条件。该项目的特点是一个设计实验，通过这个实验，整个参与者社区包括四个独立的中心，每个中心由不同的项目合作伙伴（主要是教师）主持。教育工作者设计，测试和修改组织STEM合作的替代设计。出版这些教师主导的设计并对其进行评价是该项目的主要成果。这些设计修改和改进了根据该项目的概念验证前身（NSF 1612824）开发的模板。第二个研究问题涉及STEM能力，协作和沟通的增长如何相互加强青少年个人和社会身份的形成。美国的参与学生将有意反映异质背景。项目分析将集中在文化和国家的跨境合作是否可以加强学习者的个人身份和学习成绩的发展。该项目的方法在很大程度上依赖于定量民族志和认知网络分析。这种方法可以创建视觉模型，突出显示与每个研究问题相关的结构之间存在或不存在联系，沿着组间和组内的变化。这些结构包括在追踪身份形成和STEM能力方面的自主性、能力和联系（自决理论的支柱）的变化。定量人种学方法提供了统计上可靠的脚手架和有关枢纽设计及其在促进扩大参与和促进相互加强的STEM能力和身份形成的目标方面的功效的见解。这种跨越文化、国籍、种族、年龄、性别、经济阶层或能力界限的虚拟协作，可以切实地期待在下一代学习环境中发挥重要作用，特别是通过校外活动。该项目预计每年将有120名美国学生和80名非美国学生参加。研究成果、设计原则和课程将广泛传播给研究人员、设计人员、项目开发人员、非正式科学机构和社区组织。该研究项目由推进非正式STEM学习（AISL）计划资助，旨在（a）推进非正式环境中STEM学习设计和发展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;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学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

This project engages pre-college Latinx, Black, and Indigenous learners, educators, and collaborating undergraduates in an international, project-based learning and media-making community in areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). The project addresses key challenges including broadening participation in informal STEM learning, developing capacity for leading informal STEM programs, and building stronger connections between STEM learning and personal and social identity formation during adolescence. The project’s community of participants is an asset-based learning environment that treats each participant, their background, skills, and interests as uniquely beneficial to the whole. Led by mentors at each hub (teachers, leaders from science organizations, or other out-of-school learning environments), participants collaborate with peers from the US and from other countries. The collaborations encompass a broad spectrum of STEM projects. Participants also create digital media to communicate their projects. The project activities reflect a focus on STEM content, collaboration, and communication, in a global context that includes school-age learners from the US and peers from Central and South America, the Middle East, Asia, and Sub-Sahara. The combination of the sophisticated STEM competencies skills for collaborating across international and cultural boundaries, and media-savvy communication abilities are essential to the nation’s future STEM workforce and to building a scientifically vibrant citizenry. The project addresses two primary research questions co-developed with teachers and other informal science providers. The first research question involves understanding and optimizing conditions for broadening participation through this type of distributed or virtual collaboration across boundaries of culture, race, gender, ability, nationality, and socioeconomic status. The project features a design experiment by which the overall community of participants comprises four separate hubs, each hosted by the different project partners (primarily teachers). Educators devise, test, and revise alternative designs for organizing STEM collaborations. Publication of these teacher-led designs and their evaluation are among the primary outputs of the project. The designs modify and improve a template developed under this project’s proof-of-concept precursor (NSF1612824). The second research question addresses how growth in STEM abilities, collaboration, and communication mutually reinforce adolescent personal and social identity formation. Participating students in the US will intentionally reflect heterogeneous backgrounds. The project analysis will focus on whether cultural and national cross-boundary collaboration can strengthen the development of learners' personal identity and academic performance. The project methodology relies heavily on quantitative ethnography and epistemic network analysis. This approach enables the creation of visual models that highlight the presence or absence of connections between constructs relevant to each research question, along with changes between and within groups. The constructs include variations of autonomy, competence, and connection (pillars of self-determination theory) in tracing identity formation and STEM abilities. The quantitative ethnography approach provides statistically reliable scaffolding and insights about the hub designs and their efficacy in promoting goals of broadening participation and fostering mutually reinforcing STEM competencies and identity formation. This type of virtual collaboration, crossing boundaries of culture, nationality, ethnicity, age, gender, economic strata, or ability, can realistically be expected to play a significant role in next-generation learning environments, especially through out-of-school activities. The project is expected to reach 120 U.S. and 80 non-U.S. students annually. Research findings, design principles and curricula will be widely disseminated to researchers, designers, program developers, informal science institutions and community organizations.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.