Collaborative Research: Promoting Meaningful Collaboration in a STEM + Medicine Learning Ecosystem

While integrated science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM) learning is gaining popularity in informal learning environments, it remains less common in formal in-school settings. Sharing STEMM resources across informal and formal learning contexts for youth is particularly challenging in under-resourced school districts, exacerbating the underrepresentation of minoritized learners in STEMM fields.

This project seeks to address this challenge by fostering a STEMM learning ecosystem that brings secondary teachers in historically under-resourced schools together with local STEMM professionals to co-design and allocate STEMM based resources for youth. Ultimately, this work will contribute to a deeper understanding of the structures that lead to inequitable resource allocations and possible approaches to facilitate the creation of a dynamic and responsive STEMM learning environment.

The research team will employ an ethnographic design to understand how integrating STEMM lessons in under-resourced schools can advance equitable learning opportunities for minoritized learners. Grounded in culturally responsive teaching, social constructivism, and situated learning theories, the research involves co-designing curricula and instructional strategies with 20 local educators, STEMM professionals, and community stakeholders.

Methods include conducting semi-structured interviews and focus groups with school leaders, middle school teachers, students, and community members to gather insights into their experiences and perceptions of STEMM teaching and learning. Classroom observations and document analysis of the iterative refinements of project-based learning materials will complement these interviews, providing a comprehensive view of the effects of integrating STEMM into formal school settings and how resource allocations can impact social-ecological system transformations.

The team will identify actionable recommendations for enhancing the capacity of teachers to integrate justice-oriented approaches in STEMM lessons, thereby providing effective STEMM teacher education experiences that foster minoritized learners’ STEMM identities.

This project is funded through the Racial Equity in STEM Education activity (EDU Racial Equity). The activity supports research and practice projects that investigate how considerations of racial equity factor into the improvement of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and workforce. Awarded projects seek to center the voices, knowledge, and experiences of the individuals, communities, and institutions most impacted by systemic inequities within the STEM enterprise.

This activity aligns with NSF’s core value of supporting outstanding researchers and innovative thinkers from across the Nation's diversity of demographic groups, regions, and types of organizations. Programs across EDU contribute funds to the Racial Equity activity in recognition of the alignment of its projects with the collective research and development thrusts of the four divisions of the directorate.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.