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Although different scholars have offered several reasons behind why Latinx students do not pursue STEM careers–particularly engineering–many scholars have argued that one particularly powerful reason is that the cultures of students do not fit the dominant discourse of engineering. It has been argued that curriculum materials do not portray the lived experiences and embodied knowledge of students who come from non-White, non-English-speaking backgrounds. In addition, teacher preparation has been questioned regarding the opportunities available for teachers to identify with engineering and make the curriculum more culturally relevant to students. Building this capacity is critical for the recruitment, preparation and roader participation of underserved communities in STEM. Moreover, teacher preparation is necessary to dismantle the dominant narratives in STEM and to provide the space for underrepresented students' embodied knowledge to be acknowledged, valued, and integrated into the curriculum. This project presents the ongoing efforts to analyze how a more situated view of engineering, particularly through asset-based approaches, can serve as a pathway to and through engineering for Latinx students. The goal is to provide teachers with the tools to identify, elicit, and recognize students' funds of knowledge as assets in solving engineering problems.

The concept of funds of knowledge has been widely studied in different educational contexts. Funds of knowledge are described as the historically accumulated skills, experiences, practices, and ways of knowing that develop within a household for functioning and well-being. Sometimes these include the intellectual, communicative, emotional, resistance and even spiritual resources for learning that emerge from household and community practices. As a framework, funds of knowledge is important when trying to understand the learning processes occurring at home and communities that can be transferred into any learning environment (e.g., school, museum, library, after-school program). However, there has been little discussion on how immediate role models, such as STEM summer program facilitators, can engage in eliciting the funds of knowledge of summer enrichment program participants in order to make their experiences more enriching and culturally responsive. This pilot study sought to understand how STEM facilitators, also known as pod leaders in this study, understood “funds of knowledge” as a framework and utilized it as a tool to elicit and make the most of the funds of knowledge participants (middle school students) brought to a two-week STEM summer enrichment program. The study, which is a small piece of a much larger researchmore »endeavor, primarily relied on data collected from interviews with eight individual pod leaders. The results of this study indicated that elicitation strategies are sometimes hindered by programmatic features–primarily the time constraints and subsequent lack of time for reflection–of summer enrichment programs.« less

A bstract We present a search for the charged lepton-flavor-violating decays ϒ(1 S ) → ℓ ± ℓ ′ ∓ and radiative charged lepton-flavour-violating decays ϒ(1 S ) → γ ℓ ± ℓ ′ ∓ [ ℓ , ℓ ′ = e, μ, τ ] using the 158 million ϒ(2 S ) sample collected by the Belle detector at the KEKB collider. This search uses ϒ(1 S ) mesons produced in ϒ(2 S ) → π + π − ϒ(1 S ) transitions. We do not find any significant signal, so we provide upper limits on the branching fractions at the 90% confidence level.

A bstract We present the first measurement of the branching fraction of the singly Cabibbo-suppressed (SCS) decay $$ {\Lambda}_c^{+} $$ Λ c + → pη ′ with η ′ → ηπ + π − , using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 981 fb − 1 , collected by the Belle detector at the KEKB e + e − asymmetric-energy collider. A significant $$ {\Lambda}_c^{+} $$ Λ c + → pη ′ signal is observed for the first time with a signal significance of 5.4 σ . The relative branching fraction with respect to the normalization mode $$ {\Lambda}_c^{+} $$ Λ c + → pK − π + is measured to be $$ \frac{\mathcal{B}\left({\Lambda}_c^{+}\to p\eta^{\prime}\right)}{\mathcal{B}\left({\Lambda}_c^{+}\to {pK}^{-}{\pi}^{+}\right)}=\left(7.54\pm 1.32\pm 0.73\right)\times {10}^{-3}, $$ B Λ c + → pη ′ B Λ c + → pK − π + = 7.54 ± 1.32 ± 0.73 × 10 − 3 , where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. Using the world-average value of $$ \mathcal{B}\left({\Lambda}_c^{+}\to {pK}^{-}{\pi}^{+}\right) $$ B Λ c + → pK − π + = (6 . 28 ± 0 . 32) × 10 − 2 , we obtain $$ \mathcal{B}\left({\Lambda}_c^{+}\to p\eta^{\prime}\right)=\left(4.73\pm 0.82\pm 0.46\pm 0.24\right)\times {10}^{-4}, $$ Bmore »Λ c + → pη ′ = 4.73 ± 0.82 ± 0.46 ± 0.24 × 10 − 4 , where the uncertainties are statistical, systematic, and from $$ \mathcal{B}\left({\Lambda}_c^{+}\to {pK}^{-}{\pi}^{+}\right) $$ B Λ c + → pK − π + , respectively.« less