Hello, Barbara!

You bring up some great points. This project encourages educators to make a series of small changes, reflecting along the way, which add up to a much larger difference over time.

At SciGirls, we are also concerned about institutional change, and are happy to have our content used by legislators and other stakeholders, but feel that our expertise and research are better suited for professional development on the educator and/or school district level. We hope that a both/and approach will lead to better student outcomes.

Thank you Barbara! To see the entire collection of equity films, please visit our SciGirls CONNECT Educator's page which also has a direct link to the SciGirls Strategies as well as the accompanying SciGirls Snapshots.

The course is currently only open to educators and counselors in Minnesota and Wisconsin, but we are very interested in piloting it in other parts of the country through potentially a train-the-trainer model (similar to our SciGirls CONNECT model) for CTE and STEM leads in schools districts in other states.

Thank you, Genie!

Hello, Courtney!

Implicit bias is a challenging topic, and one that we do face head-on. We were fortunate enough to have three years of implementation in this project, and were able to be iterative in the way we discussed this bias. What we found most helpful, by the third year, was creating a cultural responsiveness rubric and requiring educators to grade themselves, then create an individualized plan, with help from project staff, to move forward in areas where they lack. We found that this gave educators concrete steps to take, and broke down these slightly nebulous concepts into smaller issues that educators could tackle.

Changes in school culture vary widely in this project. The best examples of school culture change have happened when both administration and school counselors have been willing and excited to work with educators in order to achieve these goals.

Our evaluator observes each educator, as well as interviewing them, in order to try to tease out the differences in teachers' intent vs. their actions. We have seen that educators have changed their practice, but, as you correctly point out, there are still lingering habits that our evaluator notices, and she will give feedback to the educator that addresses such.

Additionally, we are currently conducting research on student outcomes which we hope will better answer this question.

Hello, Kelly!

Teachers each implement the strategies different ways. They self-evaluate using a rubric created by the SciGirls curriculum team, and then work with SciGirls' staff implement changes.

We greatly appreciate the NSF for funding SciGirls for many years. This project is one of the few that targets formal educators, but we have many research and evaluation projects that study the efficacy of the SciGirls Seven in informal education environments. All of our STEM evaluations can be found here: http://www.scigirlsconnect.org/evaluations/

Thank you!

The SciGirls Strategies research component consists of a quasi-experimental mixed methods study to contribute to improved programming and knowledge in the field, particularly concerning the innovative STEM role-modeling strategies employed in this project. The research study includes both a quantitative and qualitative component. For the quantitative component we have a series of validated instruments we are using to ask girls of the trained educators before the course begins and at the end of an entire year of implementation. We are comparing these findings to a comparison group of girls whose teachers have not taken the course. The qualitative component includes ten case studies of girls of educators who have implemented the strategies and uses interviews, journalling and student-created autobiographical video. This work is being led by Dr. Brad McLain, CU-Boulder.

The research component is testing the hypothesis, girls, currently underrepresented in computing and engineering pathways and workforce will develop a more positive STEM identity and interest in these careers when their educators are trained to employ research-based gender equitable teaching practices and female role models. 

The researchers are investigating girls’ personal learning experiences engaging with the project strategies and deliverables and how those experiences contribute to their science (or STEM-related) identity development against cultural and gender-based stereotypes. Our research question is "To what extent do girls' experiences impact their self-concepts in terms of sense of agency and self-efficacy, science and STEM concepts, capacity for STEM learning, and future choice aspirations for technical education studies and related careers?"

We look forward to sharing our findings in the coming year!

Great questions! Though we do discuss cultural competency with the educators in this initiative, and several teachers focused their projects on cultural competence in their classrooms, our research doesn't specifically ask about race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. 

However, we do have many initiatives around Latinas in STEM that show that representation and intentional intersectionality are essential when working with young people who are racial, ethnic, or SES minorities. I don't want to extrapolate to all groups, so I will stick to our Latinx evaluation. Middle school Latinas have a positive STEM identity development when in STEM groups that are Latina-focused, doing activities that are created with Latinx cultures in mind, using role models that are Latinas, and watching media that shows Latinas in STEM careers.

There are more and different barriers for Latinas vs. white female students when it comes to engaging with STEM classes and careers, and though our goal is to 'move the needle,' it is really a full community goal, with parents, schools, community partners, and more as stakeholders. We strive to make sure our programs involve the full community with family nights, role model visits, and educational partners that reflect a girl's full culture.

You can read more about these evaluations here: http://www.scigirlsconnect.org/evaluations/

Does this answer your question?

Hi, Jameela!

There are definitely differences. Formal educators are constrained by time, group size and composition, and curriculum/standards. Because of this, we encourage a sort of small, experimental approach to changing a teacher's practice. For example, a teacher may look at group work one week, and keep the assignment the same, but assign real-world roles to the group. A different week, the teacher may adjust the assignment to give the student more choice in how they complete the project, making it more open-ended.

Informal educators, on the other hand, have more flexibility in what activities they choose, and more student input in how they deliver programming. However, because of the large spectrum of different kinds of programming (summer camps, Boys and Girls clubs, etc), they may have struggles around role model visits, having the same youth visit every day (and being able to carry projects over day-to-day), and other things that make consistency in delivering strategies a struggle.

However, I would say that the strategies themselves are broad enough that they lend themselves to either environment. Educators just need to explore the needs of their institution, as well as their own teaching practice, and work from there to implement gender equity.

(And if they'd like a brainstroming partner in this endeavor, they are always free to email me at ldefenbaugh - at - tpt - dot - org)