SRI International (SRI), Girls Incorporated of Alameda County (GIAC), and TERC are collaborating to create and implement Girls InnovaTE3: Girls Innovating with Technology as Entrepreneurial Environmental Engineers. InnovaTE3, a Strategies project in NSF's ITEST program, is an out-of-school youth-centered curriculum for 8th through 11th grade girls. Within this context, InnovaTE3 will investigate the strategy of integrating innovation practices with interest-driven science learning for girls, evaluating the potential of the strategy to accomplish five goals: (1) developing and applying girls understanding of core concepts in Earth systems science content to an engineering design challenge, (2) developing girls interest and confidence in pursuing additional STEM content knowledge, (3) increasing girls? fluency in the innovation process and preparedness for the engineering workforce, (4) enhancing girls knowledge of a variety of STEM careers and interest in pursuing a specific STEM career, and (5) building staff capacity in after-school sites to engage girls in integrating innovation with science content.
The importance of persistence in STEM—taking STEM courses, obtaining a college degree in a STEM field, or pursuing a STEM career—is nationally recognized as key to career opportunities for today’s youth as well as to our nation’s vibrant, competitive 21st-century workforce (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, & National Research Council, 2010; National Science Board, 2010). Support for encouraging interest and persistence in STEM is especially needed for girls and young women from low socioeconomic status households and those with African American and Latina backgrounds because these populations are growing yet remain underrepresented in STEM fields (National Academy of Sciences et al., 2010). Women make up half the workforce, but Latina and African American women hold only 2% of the engineering- and computer-related jobs (National Science Foundation (NSF), 2011). Occupations in these fields are predicted to grow faster than the average rate for all occupations (Lacey & Wright, 2009; National Science Board, 2010; National Science Foundation, 2011). Out-of-school time (OST) settings have the potential to spark underrepresented youths’ interest in STEM and to increase their preparation for STEM careers (NRC, 2009). SRI, in collaboration with Girls Inc of Alameda County, CA (GIAC), has developed a continuum of STEM programing in OST for girls: Build IT (0524762), a middle school program and InnovaTE3 (0833692), a high school program. InnovaTE3 was also co-developed with TERC. These two programs have reached more than 3,000 girls to date in U.S. and Canada, primarily African American and Latina girls from low socio-economic backgrounds. While both programs show gains in girls’ interests in and value of STEM careers and increased taking of STEM in school, the SRI research team found potential barriers in school for girls’ persistence in STEM. The SRI research team focused on investigating the support InnovaTE3 girls at GIAC receive associated with their interests and persistence in STEM across settings of home, school, and afterschool. We conducted case studies of six of these girls. We interviewed girls and their parents, teachers, Girls Inc. program staff, and internship mentors to map girls’ support networks and to collect data on their persistence in different activities, including STEM, across different settings. To investigate girls’ STEM persistence, the case studies were designed to address the following three research questions: 1. What support networks and sociocultural contexts are associated with activities that girls have persisted in and been interested in over time? 2. How have girls’ support networks contributed to their (a) persistence in STEM learning? (b) identity in either science, technology, engineering, or mathematics? (c) career interests and planning? 3. What modifications to the InnovaTE3 program need to be made to strengthen the role that InnovaTE3 can play in supporting STEM persistence, interest, and career thinking? The case studies revealed how parental support in the form of emotional (e.g., encouragement), material (e.g. buying equipment, transporting), social (e.g. co-participating, building social capital, or providing role models), or intellectual support explained girls’ interest and persistence in both STEM and non-STEM activities. But, compared to children in more affluent families (Barron, 2006; 2009; Lareau, 2000), the case study girls’ parental support did not provide access to social and cultural capital beyond their families’ sociocultural contexts, so the support was limited to those things the families valued or practiced already (e.g. soccer, cheerleading, music). The implications for InnovaTE3 are to build in additional curricular and other program features that leverage the family context even further and provide more access to STEM-related social and cultural capital for girls. Intellectual Merit. The case study findings contribute knowledge to an important problem in out-of-school STEM learning: how to encourage persistence in STEM learning and career interests for girls with low socioeconomic status and from African American and Latino communities. Identifying supports and barriers for girls’ persistence in STEM in school, at home, and in out-of-school programs provides new insights into how to make connections across these settings to encourage girls’ STEM persistence. Broader Impacts. The case study findings point to the need for further research to verify these findings with larger numbers of girls and more quantitative measures. The case studies inform the field about the supports needed in out-of-school programs to encourage girls’ persistence in STEM. These findings will be disseminated to academic and practitioner youth development communities through publications and presentations. The findings provide curriculum developers and practitioners with ideas for refining the curriculum to include additional supports to encourage girls’ persistence in STEM. Build IT (0524762), the middle school program that precedes InnovaTE3 in this STEM continuum, is achieving scale and sustainability throughout the Girls Inc. network of affiliates that reach more than 900,000 girls annually. InnovaTE3 has the potential to do the same. Papers by Koch, M., Lundh, P., & Harris, C. J. at AERA 2012 and 2013. Journal articles in preparation.
