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1. Growing Mathletes: A Model for Integrating Growth Mindset and Other Content in Informal Settings

   Buxner, S; Baze, C; Miller, S; Rendes, C; Turner, E; Valerdi, R (January 2024, Astronomical Society of the Pacific)

   Schultz, Greg; Barnes, Jonathan; Shore, Linda (Ed.)

   Growing Mathletes is an NSF-funded program that is developing a curricular model to successfully integrate growth mindset principles, baseball, and math and science concepts for youth in grades 3 to 8 in out of school learning settings. Using a Design-Based Implementation Research framework for implementing, testing, and revising a curriculum and professional learning model, we are working on best practices to support youth learning and confidence as well as facilitator training and support in both afterschool and summer programs. We present youth outcomes as evidence of successes in how the program has integrated growth mindset with other content as a way to support youth’s productive mindset in their own learning along with content gains. 

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2. A Reflexive Analysis of University-Community Partnership in Computer Science Research

   Codding, D.; Mouza, C.; Rolon-Dow, R.; Pollock, L. (January 2020, American Educational Research Association)

   Informal learning environments are an important part of the educational landscape for diverse learners, and do their best work when creating learning experiences that align with community interests, needs, and ways of knowing. While models exist for exploring design partnerships between schools and communities, fewer evidence-based models are available for these design collaborations between informal learning environments and communities. The overarching question of the proposed session is: How do informal learning environment designers, researchers, and practitioners work with communities to co-design and co-implement socially engaged and equitable educational programs in different sociocultural contexts across the world? As a part of this symposium we highlight projects from Asia, Africa, South and North America that vary both in partnership scale and duration. 

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3. Effective inclusion practices for neurodiverse children and adolescents in informal STEM learning: a systematic review protocol

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s13643-023-02278-2  

   Jenson, Ronda J.; Lee, Michele S; Day, Arden D.; Hughes, Amy E.; Maroushek, Emma E.; Roberts, Kelly D. (December 2023, Systematic Reviews)

   Abstract Background Informal learning experiences in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) can enhance STEM learning that occurs in formal educational settings and curricula as well as generate enthusiasm for considering STEM careers. The aim of this systematic review is to focus on the experiences of neurodiverse students in informal STEM learning. Neurodiversity is a subgroup of neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism, attention deficit disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other neurological conditions. The neurodiversity movement regards these conditions as natural forms of human variation, as opposed to dysfunction, and recognizes that neurodiverse individuals possess many strengths relevant to STEM fields. Methods The authors will systematically search electronic databases for relevant research and evaluation articles addressing informal STEM learning for K-12 children and youth with neurodiverse conditions. Seven databases and content-relevant websites (e.g., informalscience.org) will be searched using a predetermined search strategy and retrieved articles will be screened by two members of the research team. Data synthesis will include meta-synthesis techniques, depending on the designs of the studies. Discussion The synthesis of the findings resulting from various research and evaluation designs, across the K-12 age span, and across various informal STEM learning contexts, will lead to depth and breadth of understanding of ways to improve informal STEM learning programs for neurodiverse children and youth. The identification of informal STEM learning program components and contexts shown to yield positive results will provide specific recommendations for improving inclusiveness, accessibility, and STEM learning for neurodiverse children and youth. Trial registration The current study has been registered in PROSPERO. Registration number: CRD42021278618. 

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4. Analyzing K-12 Education as a Complex System

   Llewellyn, D. C. (July 2013, ASEE annual conference & exposition)

   Schools and school districts are complex, dynamic systems affected by numerous factors, specific to the particular environment. These factors, which range from the stability of the home life of the enrolled children, to the interpersonal relationships of the school staff, to the funding decisions of the school board, to the laws passed by the U.S. Congress (and innumerable additional factors in between), all interact in sometimes predictable but often completely surprising ways. Educational initiatives and interventions that work well in one environment can prove completely ineffective (or un-implementable) in a different school setting, for a myriad of reasons. For university faculty and STEM professionals who partner with K-12 schools to implement and assess STEM educational reform initiatives, particularly for those who choose to work or scale up projects in non-charter or non-specialized lab school settings, the complexity of the system of K-12 education makes it difficult to identify all the potential barriers that can impact the proposed project. Unexpected factors can easily derail an otherwise well thought-out project, both in terms of project implementation and also in the success of assessing student outcomes. Educational researchers have long studied school reform and the issues of what facilitates and hinders success in curricular and other interventions. Experts in educational policy and public policy also have studied the interaction of policies and practices of reform agendas within social and organizational contexts. Industrial engineering, which had its origins in studying manufacturing systems, is a field where researchers have made great contributions towards understanding complex systems including transportation systems, financial systems, health care, and even recently humanitarian support systems. The Advanced Manufacturing and Prototyping Integrated to Unlock Potential (AMP-IT-UP) NSF Math/Science Partnership at the Georgia Institute of Technology is creating an innovative framework, which is both conceptual and theoretical and rooted within the field of industrial and systems engineering, to examine barriers and enablers to school change and reform. The framework describes the system in terms of both agents and the attributes of those agents and will become the foundation for identifying a subset of attribute combinations that allow for successful change in the system. In this paper we describe the first step in creating this framework, namely identifying the agents within K-12 education and the attributes of these agents that are critical to educational change. The paper also presents a sample scale for describing these attributes. 

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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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