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1. Neighborhood characteristics on environmental literacy in urban youth: a case from Detroit Metropolitan Area, USA

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2025.106042  

   Harris, Nyeema C; González, Germar; Vrla, Stephen (August 2025, Cities)

   Urban youth are exposed to a myriad of conditions that may influence environmental literacy in their informal learning settings. In partnership with the Detroit Zoological Society's Education program, we implemented an environmental literacy questionnaire to 43 participants from ages 9–13. We investigated how place dependency, place identity, research competencies, empathy for wildlife, ecological knowledge – all components of environmental literacy using stepwise regression were influenced by social and environmental neighborhood characteristics in youth residing in the Detroit metropolitan area. While distance to park, road density, and impervious surface affected environmental literacy, social variables such as education attainment and housing burden were most important. Because environmental literacy is crucial to growing advocacy and promoting pro-environmental behavior understanding drivers that influence attitudes towards nature has ramifications for securing both an inclusive STEM workforce and sustainable future. 

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2. Designing for future action: How STEAM programming can support youth engagement in community changemaking projects

   Hurley, M.; Rhinehart, A.; Bell, P.; Brown, A.; Price, N.; Roche, J. (January 2022, Connected science learning)

   Murphy, B. (Ed.)

   A key form of scientific literacy is being able to leverage the knowledge, practices, and commitments of ethical science to everyday civic matters of social consequence. Learning how to engage in civic life in equity-focused ways needs to be intertwined with learning disciplinary—or transdisciplinary—knowledge and practices. In this article we discuss how an art-science learning program at Science Gallery Dublin in Ireland supported subsequent civic participation by adolescent youth. Using longitudinal case studies of young people, we document how they became agents of change in their homes, schools, and wider communities over several years after participating in the program. This work provides insight into how specific design features of informal learning environments help launch or expand the science-linked identities of youth interested in participation in civic life and social action. These cases also illustrate how to develop educational models that support young people to take informed action toward matters of community and environmental consequence, a key aspect of building a more sustainable and thriving future. 

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3. Advancing a collaborative network toward equitable STEM pathways in intensive youth programs

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2025.101764  

   Weiss, Emily Landon; Mulvey, Kelly Lynn; Wasserman, Deborah L; Chi, Bernadette; Klein, Christine; Abouelkheir, Mahmoud (March 2025, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology)

   Intensive youth STEM programs serve high school students in informal learning spaces such as museums and community centers. They engage participants over weeks, months, or years, focusing on long-term STEM out- comes, especially for populations historically marginalized in STEM fields. However, many of these programs operate independently or in silos, limiting opportunities for collective learning and improvement. Isolation is driven by factors such as diverse organizational types, funding sources, program sizes, content focus, and research and evaluation capacities. Furthermore, conducting longitudinal studies to track participant outcomes is rare and expensive. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a conversation toward the establishment of a collaborative network to support research collaboration and knowledge integration, exchange, and translation. Such a network would strengthen the capacity of these programs, improve long-term outcomes for participants, and contribute to the broader STEM education and career research community, enhancing the overall impact of intensive youth STEM programs. 

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4. Practical Rubrics for Informal Science Education Studies: (1) a STEM Research Design Rubric for Assessing Study Design and a (2) STEM Impact Rubric for Measuring Evidence of Impact

   https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.554806  

   Habig, Bobby (December 2020, Frontiers in Education)

   null (Ed.)

   Informal learning institutions, such as museums, science centers, and community-based organizations, play a critical role in providing opportunities for students to engage in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) activities during out-of-school time hours. In recent years, thousands of studies, evaluations, and conference proceedings have been published measuring the impact that these programs have had on their participants. However, because studies of informal science education (ISE) programs vary considerably in how they are designed and in the quality of their designs, it is often quite difficult to assess their impact on participants. Knowing whether the outcomes reported by these studies are supported with sufficient evidence is important not only for maximizing participant impact, but also because there are considerable economic and human resources invested to support informal learning initiatives. To address this problem, I used the theories of impact analysis and triangulation as a framework for developing user-friendly rubrics for assessing quality of research designs and evidence of impact. I used two main sources, research-based recommendations from STEM governing bodies and feedback from a focus group, to identify criteria indicative of high-quality STEM research and study design. Accordingly, I developed three STEM Research Design Rubrics, one for quantitative studies, one for qualitative studies, and another for mixed methods studies, that can be used by ISE researchers, practitioners, and evaluators to assess research design quality. Likewise, I developed three STEM Impact Rubrics, one for quantitative studies, one for qualitative studies, and another for mixed methods studies, that can be used by ISE researchers, practitioners, and evaluators to assess evidence of outcomes. The rubrics developed in this study are practical tools that can be used by ISE researchers, practitioners, and evaluators to improve the field of informal science learning by increasing the quality of study design and for discerning whether studies or program evaluations are providing sufficient evidence of impact. 

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5. Partnering to Develop a Coordinated Engineering Education Program Across Schools, Museum Field Trips, and Afterschool Programs

   Harlow, D. (January 2020, Connected science learning)

   Engineering Explorations are curriculum modules that engage children across contexts in learning about science and engineering. We used them to leverage multiple education sectors (K–12 schools, museums, higher education, and afterschool programs) across a community to provide engineering learning experiences for youth, while increasing local teachers’ capacity to deliver high-quality engineering learning opportunities that align with school standards. Focusing on multiple partners that serve youth in the same community provides opportunities for long-term collaborations and programs developed in response to local needs. In a significant shift from earlier sets of standards, the Next Generation Science Standards include engineering design, with the goal of providing students with a foundation “to better engage in and aspire to solve the major societal and environmental challenges they will face in decades ahead” (NGSS Lead States 2013, Appendix I). Including engineering in K–12 standards is a positive step forward in introducing students to engineering; however, K–12 teachers are not prepared to facilitate high-quality engineering activities. Research has consistently shown that elementary teachers are not confident in teaching science, especially physical science, and generally have little knowledge of engineering (Trygstad 2013). K–12 teachers, therefore, will need support. Our goal was to create a program that took advantage of the varied resources across a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education ecosystem to support engineering instruction for youth across multiple contexts, while building the capacity of educators and meeting the needs of each organization. Specifically, we developed mutually reinforcing classroom and field trip activities to improve student learning and a curriculum to improve teacher learning. This challenging task required expertise in school-based standards, engineering education, informal education, teacher professional development, and classroom and museum contexts. 

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