Webinar
STEM Learning Through Place and Environment
This webinar was presented on Nov. 9, 2026
Where does meaningful, consequential, and transformative STEM learning take place? And what can we, as researchers, practitioners, evaluators, and program designers, understand about the power of place-based learning when we shift our lens towards everyday community spaces, like bus stops, playgrounds and grocery stores? Playful Learning Landscapes: Promoting Informal STEM Learning in Public Spaces project, an NSF-AISL project led by Dr. Andres Bustamante and Dr. June Ahn, explores these questions.
Join us on November 9, 2026 for our STEM Learning Through Place and Environment webinar where Dr. Bustamante and Dr. Ahn will discuss how they use community-centered participatory design methods to transform ordinary public spaces into opportunities for playful, intergenerational STEM learning that meets families and children where they already are.
Attendees will learn how the team involved communities in the design process, what they discovered about families’ experiences of public spaces, and how these insights can inform playful STEM learning opportunities in their own communities. This session aims to support researchers, educators, evaluators, and designers who want to take up place-based, community-led approaches in their own work.
Panelists:
- From the AISL project: Playful Learning Landscapes: Promoting Informal STEM Learning in Public Spaces
- Andres Bustamante, Project PI, Associate Professor, UC Irvine
- June Ahn, Project Co-PI, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Personnel, UC Irvine
Webinar recording coming soon!
Webinar Slides
Designing Playful STEM Learning in School and Community Spaces
AISL Project Spotlight
Coming soon!
AISL Project Resources
Resources from the AISL project: Roads Taken: A Long-Term Follow-up Study of Program Strategies and Long-term Impacts of Intensive, Multi-year, STEM Youth Programs
Resources from the AISL project: Playful Learning Landscapes: Promoting Informal STEM Learning in Public Spaces
- Using a participatory design approach for co-creating culturally situated STEM enrichment activities
- Designing culturally situated playful environments for early STEM learning with a Latine community
- Engaging Parents as Co-Designers and Researchers in Research-Practice Partnerships
- Playful Learning in the Community: An interactive tour of community based early learning installations. Proceedings of International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
- Reimagining urban design for play and learning
- Understanding pedagogical frameworks, relationships, and learning opportunities in community-based participatory design
- Elevating the Ways in Which Latina Mothers Perceive, Do, and Envision Early STEM learning
- “Los niños tienen derecho de jugar”: Exploring Latina Mothers’ Experiences as Co-Researchers and Advocates for Playful Learning in Community Spaces
- Reinventing the public square and early educational settings through culturally informed, community co-design: Playful Learning Landscapes
- Leveraging community science to encourage a more inclusive and culturally representative developmental science
References
2 Bermudez, V. N., Lara, A., Ochoa, K., Garcia, L., Pesch, A., Anderson, M. J., Salazar, J., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Ahn, J., Bustamante, A. S., Gomez, W., and Rodriguez, R. Engaging Parents as Co-Designers and Researchers in Research-Practice Partnerships. NNERPP Extra, 6(4), 2-10. https://doi.org/10.25613/93AV-WF30
3 Bermudez, V. N., Salazar, J., Garcia, L., Ochoa, K. D., Pesch, A., Roldan, W., Soto-Lara, S., Gomez, W., Rodriguez, R., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Ahn, J., & Bustamante, A. S. (2023). Designing culturally situated playful environments for early STEM learning with a Latine community. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 65, 205–216. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2023.06.003