An official website of the United States government
Museum educators play a major role in how visitors’ experience failure moments during STEM-related activities. The purpose of this study was to explore how museum educators co-constructed iteration through failure moments with visitors during an engineering activity. Utilizing an instrumental case study, we analyzed video data and one-on-one reflective meetings from five museum educators. Through our analysis, we highlight how educators and visitors are able to jointly attend, interpret, and respond to failures that leads to continuous improvements of the prototype and/or design process (i.e., iteration). The significance of this study lies in providing informal educators with approaches they can incorporate to support visitors during the failure-learning process, namely, strategies that develop visitors’ noticing skills around failure.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on March 12, 2026
Co-Adapting a Reflective Video-Based Professional Development in Informal STEM Education
Traditional professional development for informal educators often relies on brief, lecture-based sessions that reinforce familiar teaching practices. In collaboration with 27 informal learning organizations across four years, we attended to the need for authentic, long-term professional development through the co-adaptation and co-refinement of a reflective video-based cycle. This focus on supporting informal educators to productively attend, interpret, and respond to youths’ experiences with failure while engaged in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related activities. This paper describes how and why organizations co-adapted components of the professional development failure cycle to support the operational constraints of their organizations while addressing the specific needs of their informal educators. Co-adaptations addressed the following: (a) educators’ discomfort and vulnerabilities, (b) time constraints, (c) staff turnover, and (d) lack of tools. These adaptations refined the development of a reflective video-based professional development framework that informal STEM institutions can adopt to equip educators with strategies and build a supportive community, helping youths navigate and learn from failure.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2005927
- PAR ID:
- 10659126
- Publisher / Repository:
- MDPI
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Education Sciences
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 2227-7102
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 353
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Abstract BackgroundIn this paper, we add to the scant literature base on learning from failures with a particular focus on understanding educators' shifting mindset in making‐centred learning environments. AimsThe aim of Study 1 was to explore educators' beliefs about failure for learning and instructional practices within their local making‐centred learning environments. The aim of Study 2 was to examine how participation in a video‐based professional development cycle regarding failure moments in making‐centred learning environments might have shifted museum educators' failure pedagogical mindsets. SampleIn Study 1, the sample included 15 educators at either a middle school or museum. In Study 2, the sample included 39 educators across six museums. MethodsIn Study 1, educators engaged in a semi‐structured interview that lasted between 45 and 75 min. In Study 2, the six museums video recorded professional development sessions. ResultsResults from Study 1 highlighted educators' failure pedagogical mindsets as either underdeveloped or rigid and absent of relational thinking between self‐ and youth‐failures. One key result from Study 2 was a shift from an abstract sense of failure as youth‐focused to a practical sense of failure as educator‐focused and/or relational (i.e., youth educator‐focused failure moments). ConclusionsBased on the results from Study 1 and Study 2, our research suggests that exploring an educator's relationship with failure is important and witnessing and reflecting upon their own failure pedagogical mindset in action may facilitate a shift towards a more complex and interconnected space for growth and development of both educators and youth.more » « less
-
Museums offer a unique role and safe space in shaping how youth view and react to experiences with failure. The purpose of this study was to add to the conversation around failure in out‐of‐school learning, particularly from the perspective of educators within museum settings that implement STEAM‐related making exhibits, workshops, and/or camps for youth. We analyzed approximately 9 h of video data from two sources: video recordings of virtual group meetings with 14 museum educators from six partnering institutions, and video recordings from five of the individual partnering sites discussing failure as a concept within their organization and programming. In this article, we demonstrate how the framings of failure by museum educators are bounded, and transformed, by un/seen external forces that ultimately impact the professional practices of educators in their organizations. We contend that the significance of this study lies in how perspectives around failure are produced and how they influence educators' professional practice, specifically in how failure is framed and communicated within STEAM‐related learning opportunities in museum settings.more » « less
-
In response to the low representation of Latinx adults in STEM occupations, this community-based participatory action research study aims to increase the number of middle school youths developing STEM career identities and entering high school with the intention to pursue STEM careers. The students were provided with summer and after-school activities focusing on network science and career development curricula. Using a quasi-experimental pretest–posttest design and career narratives, this study examined the changes in STEM and career self-efficacy, as well as career identity. The results show improvements in self-efficacy, an increased number of youths with intentions of pursuing future STEM career opportunities, and deeper reflections on their talents and skills after program participation. This paper also describes the program development and implementation in detail, as well as the adaptations that resulted from COVID-19, for scholars and educators designing similar programs. This study provides promising evidence for the quality of STEM and career development lessons in supporting the emergence of a STEM career identity and self-efficacy.more » « less
-
IntroductionThere is a critical need to develop innovative educational strategies that engage youth in meaningful mathematics learning, particularly students from groups that have been historically marginalized in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In this study, we explore youths’ participation in two collaborative projects from the Growing Mathletes curriculum which combines baseball contexts and mathematics. Our goal was to understand the potential of these projects to support youths’ engagement with mathematical ideas and practices, and the extent to which youth leveraged a range of resources, including prior experiences and funds of knowledge, to inform their decisions and understanding. MethodsThe Design a Stadium and Baseball Team Roster projects were implemented in two afterschool setting sites and two summer program sites with 102 youth of all genders in grades 3 to 8. Data sources included video recordings of youth participation in the project, project artifacts, and youth interviews. ResultsWe found the projects contained specific features that supported youths’ engagement in three specific mathematical practices: (1) make sense of problems and persevere in solving them, (2) reason abstractly and quantitatively, and (3) construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others. Additionally, there is evidence that while engaging in these projects youth drew on their own funds of knowledge to inform their decisions and understanding. ConclusionOur findings point to key implications for researchers, educators, and curriculum developers in informal STEM learning spaces.more » « less
