Making Connections Across Settings to Support STEM Learning Transitions for Middle School Girls
0The project presented in this showcase involves a unique research-practice partnership between coordinated networks of afterschool STEM programs and an interdisciplinary team of educators and learning scientists, focused on the goal of connecting STEM learning across settings. The unique nature of the partnership between STEM Next Opportunity Fund, the Million Girls Moonshot, and the 50-State Afterschool Network presents a rare opportunity to examine an understudied aspect of STEM ecosystems: the intentional coordination across culturally relevant programs, all aiming toward a shared inclusion goal. Unlike individual learning organizations, networks such as STEM Next and state afterschool alliances, and coordinated initiatives like MGM have coordination across settings and the broader ecosystem and trajectory of STEM learning as an explicit focus. Their goal is to support greater transparency, visibility, coordination, and guidance around STEM programming to help girls find and persist in STEM pathways.
Through our research with selected state networks, we aim to map target strategies for making connections across settings to design principles that help to systematically show how effective STEM transitions can unlock academic, workforce-related, and civic opportunities for girls. The longer-term goal of the research is to uncover which strategies and models across STEM programs are most effective, for whom, and under which circumstances to support the design of ways to share and scale these strategies and approaches to build capacity across the state networks. Our showcase presentation will highlight promising in-progress findings from our research-practice partnership, illustrating the systematic ways programs and networks are making connections for girls through case studies across five focus state networks (e.g., a near-peer mentorship program in Pennsylvania that aims to connect girls to a career academy or a curated website that showcases local STEM opportunities in Palm Beach County, Florida).