NSF Awards: 1323516
Children Investigating Science with Parents and Afterschool (CHISPA, or “spark” in English) is a broad implementation project supported by the National Science Foundation. Partners in this national collaboration, including UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza), the ASPIRA Association, a network of eleven science and children’s museums, and over 25 Hispanic community-based organizations located in cities throughout the U.S., have been working together to increase the engagement of Hispanic children and their families with science and local science resources. Key components include PD for, and implementation of, APEX Science, a hands-on science curriculum for K-5 afterschool programs, available in English and Spanish, a series of Padres Comprometidos con CHISPA family engagement workshops, also in English and Spanish, and special family science events at the science/children’s museums.
In this video you will learn about CHISPA from representatives of the project leadership team, museums, community-based organizations, parents and children. In spite of the challenges, CHISPA has served as a catalyst for change:
- children are doing more hands-on science in afterschool programs in English and Spanish
- parents are learning how to support their children’s STEM experiences
- museums are building relationships with their local Hispanic community
- families are getting to know their local science museums as an educational resource
The project's accomplishments were acknowledged by the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics in September 2015 when CHISPA was named a "Bright Spots in Hispanic Education."
Cheryl Juarez
Sr. Director of Professional Development
Welcome! ¡Bienvenidos!
Thank you for visiting the CHISPA video showcase! We hope you enjoy learning more about the project as you watch the video. You might also want to peruse the project web site, especially the showcase, to learn more about how science/children’s museums and their local Hispanic community organizations have been working together to engage children and families in science.
The CHISPA leadership team and project evaluators are on hand all week to share their project experiences as well as preliminary findings from the summative evaluation.
Please use this space to share your experiences, ideas, questions or comments about how to address the challenges of making STEM resources more accessible to all.
Hasta pronto!
H Chad Lane
H Chad Lane
I love how tangible/hands-on all the activities are! What a great way to get kids and parents working together for shared learning experiences. One of my projects shares a very similar goal - to trigger interest in science - and we are interested in measuring the impact of our intervention and whether or not the interest can be sustained. How are you guys tracking interest changes in your project? Will you be able to look at it longitudinally, at least for some of the kids?
Rebecca Teasdale
Senior Evaluation and Research Associate
Great questions, Chad. For this project, the evaluation focused on engagement — the extent to which youth were physically, intellectually and socially engaged with the activities — and the extent to which youth were able to articulate specific science concepts or experiences that stood out for them. It would be really great to look at those changes longitudinally but, unfortunately, that was not within the scope of the current project.
Looking at interest in follow up work would be a very promising direction to take. Now that these young people have engaged with STEM content in their afterschool programs, do we see individual interest emerging? What supports are needed to foster that individual interest once situational interest in these activities has been sparked? How can the parent component of the program equip parents to support that interest development?
H Chad Lane
Jamie Bell
Project Director and PI
Thank you for this video, Cheryl, Rebecca and team. Hopefully the strong, authentic partnerships you have built will provide for long term opportunities to do longitudinal work, with additional support. Given the significant intergenerational dimension to this work, have there been lessons learned that can be applied to the wider field?
Rebecca Teasdale
Senior Evaluation and Research Associate
Yes, Jamie, there are some very interesting lessons for the field that have arisen from this project. Our final evaluation report (that we'll post to informalscience.org!) will outline those in detail; however, two things stand out as particularly noteworthy.
First, the evidence indicates there is a need for this type of whole-family approach that is based on curricula that are flexible, adaptable, and usable by leaders who have varying levels of experience and skill. The parent piece, in particular, appears to have great potential for broadening participation in STEM. For example, the CHISPA parent sessions helped parents who weren't educated in the US school system to understand how to support their children's STEM learning. This included understanding of how to interact with the school system, understanding the relationship between STEM topics and future careers, learning what was required to go to college and pursue STEM majors, and identifying strategies to engage their children in STEM as part of family life.
Second, the evaluation found that adaptation and customization to local context were a key factor in CHISPA's success since program sites varied greatly in terms of populations served, communities, organizational structures, and logistics. Therefore, successful “scaling up” of a project like CHISPA is more likely to be accomplished through a process of adaptation rather than one of replication, since customizing the program to local context is a key factor that contributes to success. This requires careful attention to context and considerable planning, even when expanding a strong, successful program, to ensure that new contexts are taken into account.
Jamie Bell
Project Director and PI
Thanks Rebecca. The knowledge you are contributing about the nuances and opportunities of the whole-family approach are welcome. I also get that it takes some special skills to facilitate this type of learning, ones that can be used, or as you say 'adapted' to museum and science center floors and other informal settings.
Kalie Sacco
Hi Cheryl and CHISPA team, thanks for sharing this great video! You have assembled a very impressive and impactful slate of partners for this project. Can you talk a bit about some of the challenges you encountered, if any, in developing and sustaining a collaborative model that involves multiple organizations who have not collaborated before?
Preeti Gupta
Director of Youth Learning and Research
CHISPA has accomplished a lot clearly. What have you learned about the struggles that after-school educators face in learning the materials and then turn-key teaching to children? Relatedly, what have you all learned about how to deal with turnover in after-school sites? Has that impacted the program's ability to sustain in those sites?
Cheryl Juarez
Sr. Director of Professional Development
Hi Preeti,
When we originally developed the APEX Science curriculum, with NSF funding, we worked closely with staff from three community-based organizations who tried out the activities in 90 afterschool programs. Their feedback helped ensure that the format of the materials, and the activities themselves, would be easy to implement for activity leaders, who often had little science background.
Through the CHISPA project we were able to review and update the APEX Science activities as we developed the Spanish version. The evaluation found that APEX Science filled a need for K-5 science curriculum for afterschool programs and was valued for being hands-on, engaging, easy to implement, culturally relevant and age-appropriate. The CHISPA toolkits with the non-consumable and consumable materials needed to implement the activities, were well received. Many affiliate staff members had no prior experience offering STEM activities for youth, and CHISPA built the capacities of affiliate organizations and staff members. However, while they found APEX Science training very helpful, some staff expressed a desire for more detailed, in-depth training.
The issue of turnover is always a challenge for any project, no? It was an issue at some of the CHISPA museums as well as their community-based organization partners. CHISPA was a multi-year project, and designed to use a train-the-trainer model to provide yearly workshops plus limited onsite support for affiliate staff. Interviews with affiliates and museums and discussions with national leaders showed that staff turnover highlighted a need and ability to train affiliate staff members. At many affiliates, APEX Science instructors changed each year (or more frequently if staff members left the organization and/or changed roles within the affiliate). In some cases, knowledge was transferred from outgoing staff to new staff. At one affiliate, for example, a very successful instructor was promoted to a new role providing coordination and mentoring for all of the APEX Science instructors. For many affiliates, however, there was little or no knowledge transfer to new instructors. This meant that introductory training became an ongoing requirement rather than a once-a-year need. Turnover at museums also affected APEX Science training.
A next step would be to develop an online training component that could serve as “just-in-time” support for afterschool staff as well as museum educators.
Doris Baker
What a great program engaging parents and children together in science! What were some of the key activities you did to ensure that parents would attend the workshops, and use what they learned to play with their children?
Jennifer Atkinson
What an impressive program. So many transferable lessons and resources. What are you finding about interactions around science at home for parents engaged in programs or workshops? DO these parents receive support (in addition to information) to try at-home STEM activities with their kids or to engage in conversations about the STEM in their world?
Jessica Bleiler
I think it is great that this program gets families and parents involved in the STEM activities while creating bridges in culture and education. The hands-on, interactive, bi-lingual, and bi-cultural aspects of the program push the bounds of great STEM learning!
Cheryl Juarez
Cheryl Juarez
Sr. Director of Professional Development
First, thanks to H Chad, Jamie, Kalie, Preeti, Doris, Jennifer and Jessica for your thoughtful comments and probing questions over the past couple of days. We appreciate that you have taken time in a busy week to learn more about CHISPA. I have to admit here that this discussion format is not an environment that I find to be easy or comfortable, but I am trying to take a lesson from the CHISPA families who trusted us enough to say "Si!" when we invited them to visit and explore our museums. While about 54% of the families had never visited the museum before, more than three-quarters rated the activities as very educational, agreed strongly that the event provided opportunities to learn about interesting science topics, agreed strongly that they would feel comfortable returning to the museum, and agreed strongly that they gained a greater understanding of what the museum had to offer their family. So here I am, trusting the video showcase process, and already starting to feel a little more comfortable!
The project team is very excited to have this venue be able to share CHISPA with a broader audience, and we hope that the video revealed how passionate we are about finding ways to build bridges between Hispanic families and their local science/children's museums, and to provide K-5 afterschool program leaders with resources that help them build excitement about science. And speaking of passion, we have another video - we call it The CHISPA Journey - that I encourage you to view as well.
Second, we are in our final year of the project, and the summative evaluation, prepared by Garibay Group, will be posted in all the right places, starting with informalscience.org, by the end of this year. It addresses the issues that have surfaced in the questions posted here, and more, and provides key findings, as well as recommendations and lessons for the field.
We will all try to respond to your questions, and would love to hear your ideas and experiences. If only we were sitting in a little cafe, drinking a cafecito, and getting to know each other before delving into the deeper questions! (That is a CHISPA strategy for bridge building, by the way!)
Jamie Bell
Project Director and PI
The additional video is inspiring Cheryl, thanks. Looking forward to the summative evaluation and to helping disseminate your findings when and where we can.
Cheryl Juarez
Erinne Lynch
Under-representation of females and minorities in STEM careers is a topic of interest of mine. As an educator, I work hard to provide equitable learning to all of my students. Your research and the CHISPA program piqued my interest, as I am going to be teaching a Migrant Summer Program this Summer whose theme is "STEAM into the World Cup." I am currently a 5th grade math and science teacher, working on a master's degree in STEM education. I am excited to provide these children with opportunities to explore STEM activities and learning throughout the summer. I'm curious if the CHISPA program incorporates their science activities and curricula into the other disciplines as well. As I am thinking about my plans for the summer program, I am the most nervous about providing these students with authentic learning experiences that encompass math, language arts, science, and social studies as well as an emphasis in STEM. Through further investigation, I appreciate and am looking forward to researching the CHISPA resources on your website. They will be very helpful in working with families and students to ensure they are being provided with hands-on experiences throughout their short time with me. Thanks for sharing!
Cheryl Juarez
Sr. Director of Professional Development
Hi Erinne,
I think your summer theme is awesome! Here in Miami World Cup mania has begun, and there is a LOT of trading going on between children - and adults - to be able to complete their 2018 Panini Russia FIFA World Cup Soccer Sticker Albums! Too bad the US didn't qualify, but the children in our - and your - programs represent many of the competing countries, no?
When we developed the Afterschool Program EXploring Science (APEX Science) curriculum we were intentional about incorporating all the STEAM areas wherever possible. Through the CHISPA project we were able to provide a Spanish version, as I described above, and have found that many of the afterschool activity leaders who are Spanish speakers have really appreciated having this version as it increased their own STEM vocabulary.
It would be great to hear how the summer goes!
Jamie Bell
Project Director and PI
Thanks again Cheryl And Rebecca. CHISPA provides a great model for learning about holistic factors that spark and sustain interest and engagement and we look forward to reading the evaluation when it becomes available.
Jillian Conry
Thanks for sharing your project. I love how CHISPA brings families, education, and museums together. There are so many incredible educational community resources that parents either do not know about or cannot readily access. Kudos on bridging that gap and doing it with bilingualism and biculturalism in mind! Any chance CHISPA will make its way to Dallas?
Cheryl Juarez
Sr. Director of Professional Development
Hi Jiilian,
Thanks for your comments! It would be great to see CHISPA in action in Dallas, or at least a version of it. We are in the process of thinking through what that might look like now that the federal funding period is ending. Check back on the CHISPA website in a few months!
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.