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This research project focuses on understanding the immediate and long-term impacts of an intensive workshop series for rural families with youth aged 8-11 years old at two science museums. Families spent six hours on six Saturdays with their children learning about wildlife and marine ecology. Our research focuses on how youth and family science identity work is constructed within and beyond the workshops ultimately supporting family persistence in science. Through survey and interview analysis we found two broad themes related to the building of science identities and persistence. First, through these intensive workshops families, including youth, develop science identities directly as well as broader, more accessible views of science and scientists. The design of the programming around families rather than just youth pointed to the important role of family learning in shaping youth science learning, identity, and participation. And, second, that families and youth begin viewing science as all around them and not just in the lab. There was an increase in their own sense of science identity and confidence as someone who knows about and can engage in science. They benefited from being scientists, using scientific tools, and meeting different types of science professionals. 

This case study describes the iterative process used to develop a virtual coaching program for out-of-school-time (OST) educators, particularly those who work in afterschool and library settings. The program, called ACRES (Afterschool Coaching for Reflective Educators in STEM), used a design-based implementation research (DBIR) approach to consider issues related to scale-up. Afterschool and library settings are complex systems that include supports and barriers that require adaptation for implementation. Throughout the design process, program developers worked to identify the essential elements of the program that should be maintained across contexts, while attending to the diverse needs of individual OST settings. Survey and interview data were collected from the full range of stakeholders throughout the implementation process to verify the importance of the essential elements to the professional learning model, and to gather early indicators of the program’s potential related to three key concepts for successful scale-up of programs: sustainability, spread, and shift. Conclusions are shared in relation to how these types of results support the scale-up of programs, and the strengths and gaps in the process used to apply the DBIR approach in our work.