¡Hola!  Welcome to Latina SciGirls 

Latina SciGirls: Promoting Middle School-Age Hispanic Girls' Postitive STEM Identity Development is a mainly Spanish-language project produced by Twin Cities Public Television (tpt) that expands SciGirls, the Emmy Award-winning transmedia project based on best practices for engaging elementary and middle school-age girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). At is heart is a television series on PBS designed specifically for girls. The project addresses important barriers that young Latinas face including stereotypes around ability, lack or limited exposure to STEM role models, and lack of knowledge of STEM fields. Evaluation shows that Latino parents and children want culturally responsive STEM media; they enjoy dubbed and translated SciGirls resources from previous SciGirls seasons but want episodes featuring Spanish-speaking girls from Latino communities. Latina SciGirls responds to these barriers and needs; it is the fourth season of the PBS Kids series produced primarily in Spanish with English subtitles. The series includes six half-hour television episodes showing groups of girls and their Latina STEM mentors investigating culturally relevant science and engineering problems of interest to Latinas and their families. Television mentors and girls were filmed in Hispanic communities across the U.S. and represent various cultural backgrounds and ethnicities including Mexican, Central and South American, Puerto Rican and Caribbean. The project also includes a series of family and girl-friendly online video profiles of Latina STEM professionals showing the daily life of a female scientist or engineer, and provides opportunities to connect girls and their families with in-person Latina role models via community outreach in diverse Hispanic communities across the country. Paired with culturally responsive outreach, research and evaluation, this new season furthers SciGirls’ goal of helping change how all girls see STEM, and how the world sees girls!

Thanks for viewing the video about Latina SciGirls!  We hope you enjoy learning about this project as you watch the video. Also, please visit the SciGirls CONNECT website to learn more about our research and access bilingual resources for girls, parents, and educators. We welcome all ideas, comments, questions and feedback about our project!

Gracias por ver nuestro video de Latina SciGirls. Esperamos que disfrutes aprendiendo sobre este proyecto mientras ves el video. También puedes visitar la página web SciGirls CONNECTpara obtener más información sobre nuestra investigación y acceder recursos para niñas, padres de familia y educadores. Nos dará mucho gusto recibir toda clase de ideas, comentarios, preguntas que tengas sobre nuestro proyecto. 

¡Hola!

We would also like to hear your opinion about what features of the project do you think are the most impactful in addressing barriers that young Latinas face in STEM?

También nos interesaría saber tu opinión sobre ¿qué elementos del proyecto crees que sean los más efectivos para abordar las barreras a las que se enfrentan las jóvenes latinas?

¡Muchas gracias!  Thank you!

Thank you for this video, Alicia and team. It does a wonderful job of outlining the urgent need for this work and in showing the range of engaging activities that crosscut the STEM disciplines. The experiences seem to be designed with attention to culture, developmental levels and of course language, well done! Can you share a bit more about the specific research questions you have pursued and given that you are in the third year of the project, what you are learning?

This is wonderful! Love the project and video. What does the literature discuss regard Latin cultures and STEM and how that may or may not impact perspective/biases? 

Great work. 

Hi Shabnam! As Brenda mentioned, we also focus on engaging families. The importance of a family support system for young Latinas has been shown to be key in developing and encouraging their interest in a STEM career. In fact, parental encouragement has been shown to be one of the strongest influences on Latino students’ early educational aspirations (Arbona & Nora, 2007; McClure & Oaxaca, 1998). It is also critical to engage and educate key family members to build students’ networks of support and encouragement (Denner and Rivera, 2011; Engelman, McKlin & Guzdial, 2011). Through a combination of media, role modeling and educational outreach, Latina SciGirls is helping parents view STEM education as a building block for their daughters’ future academic and professional success.

 Alicia, Brenda, Jamie and Rita - Fantastic video and wonderful project. I love that SciGirls has blossomed in so many ways!  Are you planning on publishing a list of the resources you used for this topic, or perhaps there is a full literature review? Dale

Hi Dale! So great to hear from you! We are super excited about Latina SciGirls! Educators, girls and families around the nation have welcomed the program and its resources enthusiastically!  :)  We are definitively interested in publishing the results from the evaluation and research efforts of the project. We haven't shared a list of resources or a full literature review. That is a great idea!  In the next couple of months I will be working on updating the "Engaging Latino Families" guide, and will also put together an updated list of resources that I will be happy to share with you and everyone else!  

Great discussion. Could a next step for research include longitudinal tracking of the girls?

Alicia, thank you for sharing the thoughtful research design and questions you are working on with Brad. The knowledge you are gaining about the intersectionality of cultural and STEM identities in this work will be a valuable contribution to the literature.

Awesome video and program! Will the study determine how a girl's participation affects their self-efficacy in STEM? 

Yes! The research team is investigating how girls' experiences with the program impact their science identity in terms of personal agency and self-efficacy, comfort with science content and processes, emotional connection (interest, enthusiasm, excitement, and personal relevance. 

Thanks so much Terri for watching the video!  

Brenda,

Definitely contact Dale McCreedy and Lynn Dierking on their longitudinal tracking work. Their Cascading Influences report has been instrumental in moving the field forward. We are engaged in a longitudinal study where I work at American Museum of Natural History focused on tracking high school youth who do a science research experience alongside scientists. In this study we are interested in the pathways the youth take, and focus on the choke points but also the success points. We want to study their networks of people - we are hypothesizing that the capital that youth have already and then gain should show in the relationships they maintain and grow while they are in college. We don't have findings yet. We are in year 2 of 3 and building the instruments took the longest time. 

Is this helpful to you?

Thank you Preeti! Your study sounds very interesting. We do a lot of work with role models and facilitating interactions between youth and STEM professionals and I am intrigued by the experience and potential benefits of youth engaging in research with scientists (above and beyond exposure to and other types of interactions). I look forward to learning more when you are in a place to share findings.

And yes, I am very familiar with Dale and Lynn's work and have found it incredibly valuable. Thanks again!

Love the attention to broadening STEM participation with Latinas and their families. There appears to be so many real-life examples in disaster relief that could inspire these young women!

Our work was not related to disaster relief but we had early- and mid-career faculty, as well as emeritus faculty who focused in that engineering area. We were lucky to have Dr. Terri Norton from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln participate in our IMPACT mentoring program--I enjoyed hearing about her work in this field and particularly her efforts in Japan.

On a related note, the episode we filmed in Puerto Rico was on the importance of big trees in San Juan and the U.S. National Forest there (the only U.S. national rainforest). It was filmed before the hurricane. A year later, the girls have shared their stories with us on social media around how their families decided to stay despite the devastation; what happened to the trees they studied and how the rainforest is slowly coming back. It's a really moving story.

Rita, thank you. Roxanne Hughes work at the MagLab is exemplary of a rich partnership with SciGirls and her longitudinal work and Dale/Lynn's Cascading Influences are a good references here (thanks Preeti!). As this work evolves, Rita, I imagine SciGirls Seven is foundational. Are you finding new strategies through the Latina SciGirls work that might ultimately be added ?

Thanks, Jamie! Through our related NSF-funded SciGirls CONNECT 2 project work, we have conducted a comprehensive literature review over the past year. We have focused on research from 2013-2017 in gender equity and STEM within a specific framework that includes STEM identity and creating an inclusive learning environment using culturally responsive strategies. This framework did come out of our diversity and inclusion work in SciGirls over the course of the last decade, including Latina SciGirls. As we share the emerging themes (the updated strategies are being tested in outreach this year) and the new strategies next year; you will see a strong correlation between our work with Engaging Latino Families and our SciGirls Strategies.

Hola Alicia:

Gracias por este esfuerzo para nuestras chicas latinas. ¡Y muchas gracias por incluir puertorriqueñas! ¡Exito!

Thanks Rita! This work is providing important knowledge for the field and CAISE looks forward to helping you, Brenda and Alicia disseminate updated strategies informed by your outreach findings.