Journal of STEM outreach最新文献

Charles Darwin is largely unknown and poorly understood as a historical figure. Similarly the fundamental principles of evolution are often misstated, misunderstood, or entirely rejected by large numbers of Americans. Simply trying to communicate more facts about Darwin, or facts supporting the principles of evaluation, is inadequate; neither students nor members of the public will care or retain the information. On the contrary, building facts into a one-on-one conversational narrative creates a memorable opportunity to learn. Here we create a digital media, self-guided question and answer 'synthetic interview' with Charles Darwin. Questions are derived from a survey of nearly 1,000 people. Answers spoken by an actor portraying Darwin are derived from Darwin's own writings. Questions on modern topics are answered by scientists, theologians, and lawyers. First produced as a museum exhibit and then later reproduced as an app (iOS/Android), the Darwin Synthetic Interview has been evaluated with more than 3,000 surveyed users, of which 69% indicated that they learned and more than 75% would recommend the experience. Students who interacted with the synthetic interview in a classroom setting found answers were unexpected and clarifying. Using a format of personal narrative, the Darwin Synthetic Interview creates a new way to engage students and the public in a process of self-directed discovery of a topic that is often considered difficult to teach.

The current study explores patterns of informal science experiences among youth in urban and rural middle schools by gender and socioeconomic status. Data come from surveys in two Midwestern middle schools, one in a mid-sized city, and the other in a rural-remote town. We asked about participation in informal science activities (e.g. visiting zoos or museums, or watching shows about science) and if youth had participated in science-focused clubs in the last 12 months (e.g. after-school science clubs, 4-H, scouts). Rural youth reported lower rates of participation in after-school science clubs and a greater desire to participate in after-school science programming than urban youth. Latino/a youth tend to have fewer informal science experiences than non-Latino/a youth, particularly in urban areas. There were few differences in informal science experiences between boys and girls, but in urban areas, girls report more science experiences than boys. Reported science experiences are overall higher in urban areas, yet youth with fewer resources (i.e. books in the home) have fewer informal science experiences overall. This study sheds new light on how socioeconomic status, gender, ethnicity, and geography interact with one another to shape youth science exposure and interest.

To combat educational and health disparities, out-of-school-time (OST) STEM enrichment programs provide services to underserved youth to encourage them to pursue college and health careers. This article describes a study conducted to determine if the Health Sciences and Technology Academy (HSTA) program participants who receive year-round educational interventions to prepare them for STEM and health sciences majors performed better on the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST2) than non-participants. This study provides descriptive and inferential statistics, specifically one-way ANOVAs with one-to-one matching based on grade level, gender, race, and GPA at the end of the 8th grade year for 336 students. Statistically significant differences were found favoring HSTA participants on the WESTEST2 math and reading/language scores.

Effective science teaching critically requires content focused professional development (PD), particularly in life sciences where content evolves rapidly. How subject matter knowledge related to teaching (SCK) is most effectively incorporated into PD has not been investigated. We studied how a professional learning community of high school teachers and scientists co-designing a bioscience curriculum produced the accompanying SCK-focused PD. SCK was level-specific but teachers could not generate it alone. Co-designing SCK with scientists was valuable to teachers, as evidenced by significant increases in their cognitive and attitudinal attributes toward the PD, in turn promoting change in practice and student learning gains, both within and outside the initial partnership. Surprisingly, social network analysis of how the collaborators interacted revealed that though the network was cognitively and effectively robust, it was behaviorally much sparser than anticipated for such a high functioning partnership, counter to commonly accepted PD best practices. We suggest that the scientist/educator facilitators who intentionally promoted collaboration in the context of distributed leadership were able to eliminate extraneous interactions, optimizing the process. The results are further evidence that developing content-focused PD relevant to 21^st century life sciences requires dismantling the institutionalized segregation between practitioners of science and teaching.