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This paper presents findings of a study which explored how family conversations beyond STEM content contribute to the development of STEM identity. Using structural equation modeling, we found that family disposition to engage in conversations about a broad range of topics was linked to more frequent STEM-related conversations during childhood and, in turn, greater identification as a “STEM person” in...

Findings from a study that explore factors that affect STEM interest, identity and career interest for students traditionally underrepresented in STEM were presented during a webinar hosted by the National Association for Research in Science Teaching....

The findings of a research project which investigated the factors that affect STEM interest, identity and career interest for students traditionally underrepresented in STEM were presented as an online workshop hosted by NISE Network. Using science equipment and talking about STEM topics with parents and caregivers were associated with STEM interest and STEM career interest....

This presentation about middle school and high school predictors of STEM identity was part of a larger panel titled Belonging for Nurturing Future Earth and Space Scientists presented at the STEM Learning Ecosystems and Community Partnership meeting, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, August 4-6, 2025, hosted by Arizona State University in partnership with NASA's Science Activation program and NISE Network....

This conference presentation describes how professional learning for afterschool educators can build understanding of youth mattering through coaching in facilitation practices that elevate youth voice and choice....

We shared this presentation with members of the Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE). In these slides, we provide resources to guide professional learning leaders in encouraging and using popular artifacts of practice in professional learning. We specifically look at popular artifacts of practice we have seen in our work: video of practice with youth, audio of student/educator interaction, and...

We illustrate how our professional learning program (Afterschool Coaching for Reflective Educators in STEM) responds to the strands of the 2009 National Academies report on the status of informal science learning. We identify several Strands discussed in the report, questions that those strands raise for practice and research, and how we have addressed these questions in our work....

In this discussion, we create a practical, peer-supported space to work through AISL project puzzles related to costing, evaluation, sustainability, and pressures to justify the budget using a tool...

We describe the activities that afterschool educators engage in as they facilitate programming using the language of engineering practices, illustrating how educators act as "educational engineers"....

Assessing professional learning outcomes can be difficult, particularly for complex behavioral tasks such as asking purposeful questions, without costly and time-intensive data collection. In this article, we describe how we developed and implemented an assessment tool, the Scripted Animation Survey, to measure the impact of our professional learning program for out-of-school educators, particularly our Asking Purposeful Questions in STEM module....

This open-access article describes how our afterschool coaching program invited and valued diverse artifacts of practice that educators contributed to a virtual peer-learning professional learning environment. We show specific strengths and weaknesses of different artifacts of practice and offer coaching guidance for using these artifacts to facilitate peer-to-peer STEM professional learning....

This is the final evaluation report for the Afterschool Coaching for Reflective Educators in STEM (ACRES) program, provided by external evaluators Karyl Askew and Monifa Beverly...

Step-by-step instructions for six data literacy activities tested by teens. In this activity guide we present a sampling of data literacy activities created and tested, alongside teen co-designers, during 24 Data Labs held at the Brooklyn Public Library. This guide was last updated in 2026 by Thalia Richter. ...

This document was prepared by Karen Wang, for Pratt Institute's “Data Literacy with, for, and by Youth” project in 2021, updated in 2026 by Thalia Richter. With the active participation of young people, Pratt’s Data Literacy project aims to design, build, and test prototypes for youth-oriented data literacy activities, for use in after-school STEM programs at the public library. The...

The SciAct STEM Ecosystems to Broaden Participation in Authentic STEM Learning: Connecting Subject Matter Experts, Communities, and Learners of All Ages (“SciAct STEM Ecosystems”) project was developed to understand and share practices used by STEM learning ecosystems that support the creation of authentic learning experience to broaden participation in STEM. The summative evaluation focused on understanding how dissemination of project...

This one-shot scenario teaches and demonstrates gameplay for Adventures with Emmy, using 2nd-level characters....

This guide presents the rules for Adventures with Emmy and the hero creation process for players. We also include 6 sample hero sheets to quick-start a game....

VENOMventure is an educational escape game designed by researchers at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and the UC Museum of Paleontology under an NIH-SEPA award, for children ages 9-13 and their families. The game aims to improve players’ understanding of evolutionary trees and boost interest in biomedical science and careers through a fun and immersive experience. VENOMventure traveled...

This report summarizes the effectiveness of the Understanding Evolution and Understanding Science website modernization project, funded by IMLS award no. MA-10-19-0539-19. To assess these goals, we conducted several online surveys of website users. We conducted baseline satisfaction surveys of site users before upgrading the sites, and then repeated these surveys after upgrades to gauge the project’s impact on satisfaction. We...

Escape rooms are an engaging and increasingly popular game format in which a team is “locked” in a room and challenged to solve a series of narrative-embedded puzzles encoded in the room’s artifacts in order to “escape” within a set period of time. The University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) and partners University of Kansas Natural History Museum (KUNHM)...

In this paper, we explored data reasoning in a data science learning program that bridged data visualization and art creation. After deductive qualitative analysis of the transcripts of the interviews with the program participants, we found data visualization played a pivotal role in data reasoning....

The current data science education requires educators to provide more personally meaningful and culturally relevant data science learning experiences. By incorporating art production, we designed a data-art inquiry program to teach students data science basics and enable them to use art techniques to visualize their data. To understand how students established connections between data and art, we employed epistemic network...

This study aims to investigate the design considerations and tensions in developing data visualization activities that integrate multi-disciplinary, critical, and community-centered approaches to data learning. We do so through conjecture mapping and qualitative analysis in the context of a design-based research study of an informal education program focused on data visualization. We found multiple design considerations tied to each approach,...

Data visualization reimagining can be an effective way for students to develop a deep understanding of a given data visualization. It encompasses three different dimensions: reformatting, reframing, and renarrating. In this study, we explored the role of renarrating in a data reimagining activity. With semi-structured interviews, we found that renarrating can support reformatting and reframing by providing a concrete context...

This poster proposal focuses on entry points as a lens for analyzing learning in community learning events (CLEs), which involve youth ‘data artists’ and community members. Thematic analysis of qualitative data is used to understand how entry points influence learning at CLEs and inform future iterations of the current project. Early analysis shows three emergent themes: geography and physicality; relationality,...