Jamie M. Bracey, Ph.D. Director, STEM Education & Research Founding Director, Pennsylvania MESA

Temple University College of Engineering

November 6, 2014

Leveraging Culture to Create a Powerful

Eco-System for Success in STEM Diversity

STEM Talent Development Continuum – Early 21st Century

Institution of Higher

Education

Community & Civic Leaders

Formal/Informal STEM Learning Resources

K-12 Schools Parents/Students

Business/Industry Partners

Tech Transfer via R&D/IP

Digital Tech Infrastructure

Degree Pathways Real Estate

Tuition Credits

Research OSP/IRB/RAS

Produce Viable Talent

Economy Elements of a University Eco-system

Environment

ACCESS TO RESOURCES

Labor Religion

Procreation

Law/Justice

Entertainment

Education

Politics

War

9 AREAS OF HUMAN INTERACTION WITHIN AN ECONOMIC ECO-SYSTEM

SUSTAINABLE NATIONAL ECONOMY

Economic Eco-System

In MY lab??!! Noooo….sob

I’m not interested in preserving the status quo, I want to overthrow it. Niccolo Machiavelli

Key Cultural Elements of IHE’s Producing Diverse STEM Talent

� Clear leadership from President/Provost/Deans

� Clear investment in infrastructure (technology, facilities, advising capacity)

� Clear incentives for early adoptors of cognitive and noncognitive supports for retention and graduation

                           

SOCIAL

l Quality of Transactional Relationships in the classroom are CRITICAL (Boykin, 2006; Hurley, et al, 2005; Delpit, 1988 )

l Language accommodation (ELL) accelerates cognition when learning math (Abedi, 2006)

l Expectation of high verve, communal, metaphoric and analogous communication (Akbar, 1985)

l Identity within education is fundamental to student achievement (Bracey, 2013; Cokley, 2003; Hilliard, 1998)

Research on Cultural Assets for African American and Latino Children Socio-Cultural Elements of Learning

Environments for Minority URGs

                           

NEURAL

l Cultural orientations affects neural processing (Hedden et al, 2008; Nisbett & Miyamoto, 2005; Floyd, et al, 2003) )

l There are cultural differences in children’s memory scales and recall (Cash, 2008)

l Approaching tasks using your own cultural assets gives your brain a cognitive advantage of “attending” more deeply to concepts during information processing (Kitayama, Duffy, Kawamura and Larsen,2003)

, Duffy, Kawamura and Larsen (2003)

Research on Cultural Assets for Cultural & Linguistic Minorities

Black children scored higher on most of the subtests for complex memory, including memories for stories, order sequencing, and word reminding. One can now make the argument that this performance is aligned with the heavy African oral tradition that continues in today’s heavily allegorical black church. White children performed better on tests measuring spatial memory and object recall, again consistent with the emerging research on their cognitive bias toward knowing where and what something is.

Cultural Attributes that Provide Cognitively Advantages

                           

Family Values SME

Values

Community Values

Infusing Cultural Constructs to Produce Diverse STEM 2.0 Talent

Cognitive Apprenticeship

Cognitive

Apprenticeship Cognitive Apprenticeship

                           

White House Equal Futures Mobile Apps Challenge (Girls) 2013

10 ASEE Science & Engineering Apprenticeships as of 2014 #2 in the Nation, MESA USA 2014 National Engineering Championships 4 Team Medals MESA USA 2013 National Engineering Championships Mobile Apps Team Recognized by 2013 US Conference of Mayors Completed Mobile App Prototype for VA Suicide Prevention Team 2013 Navy STEM skills camps in 4 cities in 2013 – replicated 9 cities in 2014 Winners 2013 AT&T Hackathon $5,000 Launched Community Tech Makerspace: Creative Tech Works Design Studio 100% have matriculated in Engineering or Computer Science – Temple, Drexel, Penn State, Villanova, CCP 100% of work study students in programs graduated with financial help; 2 are completing NSF LSAMP MS/PhD Programs ss:

First, the results of using Culture & Cognition in STEM Education: Results of Integrating Social, Institutional and Expert Cultures for URGs STEM 2.0

From Engagement to Motivation to Persist (M2P): Seven years after congressional reports raised awareness of the threat poor education in STEM posed to our nation’s security and wealth, strategies to accelerate student learning in STEM are still evolving. For underrepresented groups, recent STEM programs (where they exist) have provided exposure and engagement activities designed to increase interest and academic achievement. STEM 1.0 has focused on providing access, and is highly dependent on creating tools and materials – as if providing “stuff” they didn’t have before would motivate students in underperforming schools to stick with academically challenging coursework. Providing materials, resources and improving K-20 teacher expertise in STEM content delivery are critical. But engagement is often episodic in learning environments that are mandated to focus on remediation. STEM 1.0 exposure, engagement and experiences are important, but the current approach does not provide clear guidance on how to help students from underrepresented groups navigate STEM opportunities with sufficient efficacy to achieve individual goals. STEM 2.0 broadens participation by elevating engagement from a series of activities to a process that helps create identity and agency in a valued eco-system. The activities become less important than the principles used to design the experiences, and those experiences are tied to being able to transform the individual, their community and society. Just as inquiry and project based learning are synonymous with the culture of STEM 1.0 learning environments, STEM 2.0 leverages social, classroom and expertise culture to accelerate identity formation. The hypothesis is that the intersection of engagement and identity development can be applied to promote M2P in STEM domains for any student, but uniquely accelerate that emotional and cognitive state for minority students.

STEM Education 2.0: The Quest to Broaden Participation Jamie M. Bracey, Ph.D. Director, STEM Education

Temple University College of Engineering

Recommendations to Advance STEM 2.0: •  Evolve our thinking from programs to approaches, from models to applied principles •  Treat culture as a social science, not a series of symbolic activities •  Develop engagement strategies that require immersion in an eco-system •  Promote interpersonal relationships, self sufficiency, and freedom •  Create evaluation models that assess navigation of STEM over time

Guiding Principles to CREATE a STEM 2.0 Initiative to Broaden Participation & M2P of Underrepresented Groups Culturally and socially relevant projects accelerate cognition Reflection increases academic and technical skill rigor Engagement is designed to support identity formation Access to experts is required to navigate an ecosystem Technology extends learning to access on demand 24/7 Entrepreneurship, wealth creation and philanthropy are demystified Learning & Instructional Theories Used with URGs in STEM: Situated Cognition; Social and Cognitive Constructivism; Motivation; Cognitive Apprenticeships; Cultural Competence & Creativity. Contact info: jamie.bracey@temple.edu.

What kind of “Scale” makes sense to Broaden Participation in STEM? • Scaling for impact • Scaling for influence