Advancing transformative STEM learning: Converging perspectives from education, social science, mathematics, and engineering

1Introduction

Society faces emerging challenges that require re-envisioning what it means to know and use science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and who are STEM scientists. From the current pandemic to climate change, we face events that require the global community to lean into solving problems collectively and at scale. These problems affect communities differentially, and our call to re-envision STEM is an effort to address the inequities that persist across social systems. Systemic issues of injustice calling for transformational approaches to STEM learning must broaden the participation of diverse youth and their communities so that they may generate solutions for local problems that have global implications. Our team draws upon the transdisciplinary expertise of mathematics educators, social scientists, engineers, technologists, and community-based organizers to advance a framework for designing transformational STEM education that positions youth and their communities as STEM authors and actors. We argue that such a transdisciplinary approach is vital for broadening the diversity of participants in STEM learning. Our call for re-envisioning what it means to know and use STEM knowledge and practices is framed within the United States (U.S.) and we draw upon theoretical ideas that have been used across geopolitical contexts. We encourage readers to consider applying these ideas to an international context. Our aim is not just another call for the reform of STEM education driven by the need to fill a “gap” in diverse youth achievement. We argue that community-engaged STEM learning is essential for redefining what is STEM, who does STEM, and how STEM is accomplished.

This position paper presents a framework for designing youth- and family-driven place-based STEM education to promote data literacy and geospatial reasoning by using accessible and relevant tools and technologies for solving community-based problems. We focus on the intersection of data literacy and geospatial reasoning as fertile ground for participatory community science where youth and families are well-positioned to identify needs and problems, pose place-based questions, use a variety of tools, and create community-centered solutions that can be prototyped and iterated to address current and related future issues. One may ask, why are we focusing on this intersection? We believe that the intersection of data literacy and geospatial reasoning is critical to the everyday activities of youth and their families and these areas have a large impact on the quality of their lives.

Geospatial reasoning, the reasoning about space, place, and dimensionality, is place-based (National Research Council, 2006). It builds on the funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005; Moll et al., 2013) that youth and their families exercise as a part of formal and informal learning and shapes how people use and come to understand their place in a community. Likewise, vast bodies of data are being gathered via families’ use of online web searches and geolocation services that continually shape their lived experience via algorithms and data sharing. Data literacy, the ability to read, write and communicate data, is an essential skill and one that has broad application (Bargagliotti et al., 2020). Youth and families are bombarded with data displays in this era of big and small data that demand sense-making and that have social and political consequences for their lives from who represents them in government to the likelihood of contracting a virus with long-lasting impact (Kitchin & Lauriault, 2015). The intersection of data literacy and geospatial reasoning is an untapped area of STEM learning with real impact and relevance for diverse groups and that is in high demand for STEM fields and careers.

Drawing from the teams’ transdisciplinary practices and principles, this framework focuses on the needs and experiences of youth and families within communities. We position youth and families as essential to articulating the multi-dimensional nature of their needs and experiences to engage in human-centered participatory design (Bødker & Kyng, 2018; Marsden et al., 2008; Meyer & Norman, 2020) informed by sociocultural theories of learning (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). We elevate the varied knowledge bases of youth, families, and community organizations to curate and act upon evidence (Lippman, 2010), take up integrated ways of reasoning endemic to solving real-world, complex problems (Makar et al., 2011; Sadler & Zeidler, 2005), and posit that, in collaboration, youth, families, and community organizations are positioned to design solutions to community problems and amplify counter deficit-based narratives on diverse youths’ STEM capacities. The paper’s authors have foundational experiences across three continents and recognize that other educational systems’ resources, policies, and practices will shape how this framework may be used in different educational contexts.

We propose a framework to pilot STEM initiatives for youth and families in the U.S. in anticipation of expanded initiatives aligned to local conditions around the globe. First, we explore current participation barriers for diverse youth to STEM education and the latest thinking about closing those gaps. Next, we present the rationale for our focus on STEM knowledge and practices. We discuss tactics for breaking STEM participation barriers through data literacy, geospatial reasoning, and participatory learning design as contexts for the convergence of STEM subject areas. This discussion is followed by a framework for STEM education presented as an approach for overcoming traditional challenges facing STEM education. We then discuss the possible outcomes, limitations, and further considerations of our framework.

2Systems barriers to participation in STEM education and STEM careers

Approaches to U.S. STEM education have inadvertently created participation barriers for diverse youth and their families. These barriers result from overly narrow views of knowledge and practices that disrupt participation in STEM across kindergarten through grade 12 (K12) and collegiate education (Champion & Mesa, 2018; Kelly, 2009). Guidelines on the content of U.S. K12 STEM education have attempted to broaden beyond lists of topics to include discipline-based practices, e.g., Standards for Mathematical Practice (NGACBP & CCSO, 2010) and Science and Engineering Practices (NRC, 2013); however, these policies also amplify divisions between school science and math and the content of STEM used every day (Booker & Goldman, 2016; Carlone et al., 2016). These barriers between formal and informal STEM learning are echoed in many international educational settings (Morris et al., 2019; Yang et al., 2021). As a result, limited perceptions of STEM disciplines in school subjects have the potential to marginalize those who draw upon varied ways of reasoning and participating, suggesting those who engage in these epistemically diverse ways are not welcome (Philip et al., 2016). While a comprehensive international review of STEM education is beyond the scope of this paper, we would argue that the framing for this position paper may transcend the geopolitical boundaries of educational settings (Wagner et al., 2020).

The global pandemic has made data reasoning ever more important. It also opened up new modalities for learning online where students have access to greater sources of knowledge and learning. At the same time, the pandemic laid bare deep existing inequities within the U.S. and international educational systems (Brodie et al., 2021). The “digital divide” became more apparent than prior to remote learning and even as U.S. educators raced to put laptops into the hands of students, the access, experience, quality, and quantity of education varied widely (Lee & Campbell, 2020; Walters, 2020).

Currently, numerous indicators, including general U.S. K12 STEM participation and achievement, post-secondary STEM enrollment, conferred STEM degrees, and STEM career attainment, show that the majority of those who engage in STEM are male, white or Asian, and middle to upper economic class (McGee, 2020; Morton & Riegle-Crumb, 2019; National Science Foundation & National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2017; Riegle-Crumb et al., 2019). This is a systemic, multi-dimensional issue, not due to individual choices. With data showing that the lack of broad participation is a persistent trend, the pathway for diverse STEM employment will remain limited if STEM education does not start to shift the perception of who is capable of engaging in STEM.

Leaders in industry and education struggle to increase the diversity of those engaged in STEM. There is a chronic absence of diverse STEM leaders working with diverse youth who are racially, ethnically, and linguistically insiders in that community. Without diverse educational STEM leaders, practices, can emerge that may cause historical, cultural, and curricular damage, further alienating diverse learners and communities from seeing themselves as scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians (Ighodaro & Wiggan, 2011; Philip & Azevedo, 2017). STEM education and educators must create opportunities in which diverse youth see that their contributions matter and that STEM is not a discipline limited to narrow sets of procedures unrelated to the real world, or for a privileged few. We must reposition diverse community educators as central to co-creating STEM learning opportunities for diverse youth.

Central to creating innovative STEM education serving diverse learners is working in partnership with communities, breaking down barriers of knowledge production, and all educators doing the work to check their implicit bias about who is capable and what is STEM. Scholars warn it is imperative that STEM educators, especially but not only white educators, working in minoritized communities examine their motivations for engagement and recognize the historical legacies of assimilationism that have resulted in the erasure of diversity of thought and ways of being (McGee, 2021; Milner, 2020). With the recognition of systemic inequities, educational equity is achieved only when we no longer can predict participation and achievement in education or careers of youth based on their social characteristics, i.e., race, socio-economic status, primary language, gender, or physical or intellectual abilities (Gutiérrez, 2012). To work toward equity, we must act to dismantle the unjust barriers in educational systems, including the exclusionary STEM culture and narrow definitions of what counts as STEM, so that diverse youth are proportionally represented across STEM pathways and careers.

Broadening the participation of diverse, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), in high-technology jobs can drive innovative solutions that positively impact diverse communities (McGee, 2021; Muro et al., 2018) and possibly disrupt a disturbing trend of technologies increasingly being used to monitor these communities (Benjamin, 2019). The Pew Research Center (2018) and others have reported that although women are employed in close to 50 percent of jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold fewer than 25 percent of STEM jobs (Beede et al., 2011). Research on U.S. STEM workforce development shows that from 2000 to 2015 high-tech jobs grew nearly three times the rate of non-STEM jobs (Noonan, 2017). Increasing women and diverse learners’ participation in STEM and their access to careers is vital for STEM innovation. Dissecting the reasons why current STEM employment isn’t diverse is beyond the scope of this paper; rather, we raise these issues to point out the systemic nature of the problem and the need to work on shifting STEM educational opportunities for diverse youth to impact the workforce of the future.

International STEM informal education research has documented approaches that break barriers to diverse communities’ STEM participation. Some promising practices have taken place in hybrid spaces outside of schools, such as camps, clubs, and programs associated with community-based organizations (Archer et al., 2021; Booker & Goldman, 2016; Carlone et al., 2016; National Research Council, 2015). Research on informal learning has suggested that when youth develop STEM interests and identities via hybrid spaces they are more likely to weather some of the persistent STEM barriers in schools and persist in their STEM interests (McCreedy & Dierking, 2013; Shaby et al., 2021). These innovative programs can help diverse youth develop interest-based questions, experience opportunities for leadership, and work collectively toward solutions (Krishnamurthi et al., 2013; Philip & Azevedo, 2017).

Not all informal learning spaces are created equal, and not all serve diverse youth (Godec et. al, 2021). Thus, it is important to employ learning designs that value physical, social, cognitive, and emotional engagement that can legitimize youth as authors of STEM knowledge (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Durall et al., 2021). Solving physical and conceptual problems rooted in needs and context provide a sense of competence and identity as a part of a community (Marin & Bang, 2018). Further, these designs support the emergence of STEM identities, disrupting traditional views of who does STEM and what doing STEM looks, sounds, and feels like. Such educational innovations are found in numerous STEM areas, from field ecology to data camps for girls (Carlone et al., 2015; Craig et al., 2011). With careful considerations of design, researchers with minoritized youth have documented promising opportunities for youth to author STEM ideas, harness STEM tools addressing interest-driven questions, and build STEM knowledge and practices (Bell et al., 2017; Lee, 2017; Rahm, 2019). As a result of such experiences, youth see themselves as scientists, innovators, and engineers.

3Breaking barriers with transdisciplinary STEM participation

The world is experiencing a data revolution that dramatically impacts our everyday lives and how we create new knowledge and innovate (Cinnamon, 2020; Gray et al., 2018; Kitchin, 2014). To address how data are used globally and locally in both productive and non-productive ways, we need data literate community members who can decipher valid arguments when bombarded with seemingly well-justified perspectives. The potential impacts of the data revolution drive an urgent need for diverse youth to build their data literacy and geospatial reasoning. When youth are empowered to pose questions about their community, draw upon multiple sources of data that link to features of the community, and leverage resources (i.e., people, tools, information), they are well poised to make sense of situations in innovative ways and imagine creative solutions not necessarily governed by traditional narrow views of disciplines and hierarchies of who has the power to act on their world.

We advocate for leveraging 21st-century mobile technologies to develop STEM reasoning because of the widespread availability of application-based, wearable technologies that can build geospatial awareness and integrate historical and other place-based knowledge (see, e.g., Hall et al., 2014; Lee & Shapiro, 2019; Hsu et al., 2020; Open Street Maps, n.d.). Mobile devices have been shown to break down barriers to access, narrowing the economic digital divide (Rubel et al., 2017). Within the U.S., 84% of teens have a phone, and 53% of youth by age 11 (Common Sense Media, 2019). Previous studies have shown that technology access is nearly equally distributed across genders and those who identify as Hispanic or white (Lenhart, 2009). With this widespread growing availability, mobile technologies offer an economically viable and motivationally enticing vehicle for advancing diverse youth STEM learning opportunities.

Equally essential is considering how technology can obscure geospatial reasoning and the need for embodied opportunities to investigate and build spatial awareness (Bryant & Frazier, 2019). Tools such as physical maps can assist in the development of geospatial reasoning via orienteering, geocaching, map making, and other geospatial-oriented activities, thus expanding opportunities and access to STEM learning. Developing geospatial learning opportunities adapted to the local needs of learners and technologies is essential to breaking barriers to geospatial reasoning. We advocate customizing tools that integrate technologies and embodied opportunities for youth to develop geospatial reasoning. Across these mediums, diverse youth will be able to create and investigate data, drawing upon transdisciplinary forms of STEM knowledge and practices in ways that benefit them, their families, and their communities (Benjamin, 2019).

Data literacy and geospatial reasoning are foundational to expanding what, how, and where STEM learning happens. By data literacy, we mean the ability to read, write, and communicate in the data-rich world by making sense of issues and questions using data, understanding data production, critically analyzing situations and identifying tools to address them, and making evidence-based inferences and arguments to address a problem while recognizing the limitations and context from which data were produced (Bargagliotti et al., 2020; NGACBP & CCSO, 2010; NRC, 2013; Rubin, 2005; Vahey et al., 2012). By definition, data reasoning is iterative and involves feedback loops so that models and solutions can be revised and adapted as new assumptions and evidence are brought to light (Lipman, 2010). Geospatial reasoning is a form of reasoning that draws upon concepts about space (e.g., dimensionality, continuity, proximity, and separation) and tool use (National Research Council, 2006). Data literacy and geospatial reasoning concepts link STEM concepts to youths’ communities and lives, thus shifting images of what it means to do STEM and where STEM happens (Brunner et al., 2021; Calabrese Barton & Tan, 2010; (Caspe et al., 2018; Lee & Shapiro, 2019).

National and state education policies in the U.S. have identified the need for youth data literacy opportunities (e.g., Boaler & Levitt, 2019; Daro & Asturias, 2019; Koh, 2020; Matthews, 2019) and geospatial reasoning (National Research Council, 2012; 2013) to be infused into formal education. These policy documents emphasize transdisciplinary, technologically-innovative learning. Yet, research on youths’ statistical literacy, a key construct contributing to data literacy, suggests that it remains marginally developed in school settings (Lehrer et al., 2014; Tarr et al., 2006). Policy efforts calling for the infusion of geospatial reasoning have seen limited success in school settings due to a focus on other content, teachers limited knowledge base, and limited access to technologies and data sources (Hammond et al., 2018, 2019).

This limited focus on statistics and geospatial reasoning in school is one rationale for studies and grant-supported efforts in informal education (e.g., Bodzin et al., 2020; Schlemper et al., 2018; Rubel & Nicol, 2020). These studies focus on developing STEM interests or attitudes and position youth to ask questions relevant to them in ways that leverage data literacy and geographical information systems (GIS) (Kahn, 2020; Lee et al., 2021; Lee & Shapiro, 2019; Rubel et al., 2016a; Taylor, 2017; Taylor, 2020; Taylor & Hall, 2013; Wilkerson & Laina, 2017). Many of these investigations use representational tools, like GIS technologies, that can facilitate the collection, management, analysis, and visualization of data, providing tools for youth and families to pose interest-based questions and frame solutions.

4Breaking barriers with participatory design

Many of the studies on data literacy of diverse youth using geospatial reasoning uncover the tensions of working within educational systems situated within diverse communities and attending to diverse youth interests (e.g., Enyedy & Mukhopadhyay, 2007; Philip et. al., 2016; Rubel et al. 2016b; Wilkerson & Polman, 2020). However, the transdisciplinary context of participatory design that blends ideas from informal learning design principles, participatory design research with participatory community science has proven to break down barriers to STEM participation for youth and families (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Booker & Goldman, 2016; Coenraad et al., 2019; Durall et al., 2021; Tzou et al., 2018). These studies position youth, families, other community members, and researchers in a partnership that rejects typical hierarchies of knowledge, designs for learning, and the design and reporting of research (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Penuel, et al., 2020).

For the past 20 years, engineering education settings have included attention to the user during design and moved to connect designers and the community via service learning (Oakes, 2004). User-centered design has included (but not limited to) human-centered design (Bødker & Kyng, 2018; Marsden et al., 2008; Meyer & Norman, 2020), evidence based-design (Lippman, 2010), and industry-sponsored design projects in educational settings (Okudan et al., 2006). For the last decade, design thinking sensibilities and engineering practices have been integrated into U.S. K12 education policy (Katechi et al., 2009; NRC, 2013). Many of these approaches involve the integration of resources (people, tools, and ideas) in the scoping of problems, identifying potential assumptions, partnering with users to identify community projects, and building solutions. While these policies offer opportunities to integrate STEM education and professional engineering practices there are shortcomings in these approaches due to the hierarchy of roles (designers maintain an expert position) or the interests of different genders or disciplines (Günay et al., 2020; Okudan & Mohammed, 2006). Without explicit attention to the power dynamics of these approaches and intentionality to examine what is perceived as STEM disciplinary practices, we risk perpetuating persistent educational inequities (Agarwal & Sengupta-Irving, 2019; Philip & Azevedo, 2017).

Through partnerships, we see the potential for unleashing creativity and innovation as envisioned in human-centered design and design thinking (Kelly & Kelly, 2013) and confronting the divide between designers and users. This collaborative effort repositions all partners as designers in the process of question-posing, solution ideation, prototyping, and testing evidence-based ideas (Corburn, 2003; Bonney et al., 2016; Loh & Kim, 2021). As a result, we elevate youth authority and cultivate a community’s transformative agency (Booker & Goldman, 2016).

Researchers engaged with participatory approaches attend to who has access and power in learning and what knowledge is privileged historically and currently. In STEM, this means interrogating and shifting who is seen as capable, whose knowledge is valued, and what practices are central (Coenraad et al., 2019; Penuel et al., 2020). This critical perspective allows for a (re)positioning of minoritized youth and families as central in STEM. It means broadening definitions of STEM domains and who is capable of facilitating STEM learning. We propose a framework for informal learning (e.g., community organizations, after-school programs, and other youth-serving spaces) as settings for taking up our design considerations. We posit that data literacy and geospatial reasoning are well-suited for a participatory approach because they are accessible, connected to everyday life, and relevant to diverse multigenerational communities. We advance a participatory approach to data literacy and geospatial reasoning by taking up place-based STEM questions formulated by youth, families, and their communities to impact them and the world ((Caspe et al., 2018; Gutstein, 2006; Caspe et al., 2018; Moses & Cobb, 2002).

5Transdisciplinary framework for participatory STEM education serving diverse youth

The framework guiding our thinking for transdisciplinary STEM education draws on the expertise of the authors of this article, leveraging the complementary disciplinary, professional, and personal, educational histories of international and U.S. contexts. Our partnership grew as we worked across boundaries, negotiating a hybrid space to begin building understandings of different terminology and disciplinary language, disciplinary practices, and core ideas informing learning opportunities. As we brought respective areas of expertise to bear on how to support diverse youth and family STEM learning, we found that we had to define and justify our ideas to one another and open ourselves to new and fresh perspectives from others. We found convergence on a set of ideas from these discussions, not rooted in any one discipline. We view this convergence framework as a transdisciplinary boundary-spanning object for engaging diverse youth. Positioning this framework in the informal learning setting creates a liminal space for youth, families, community organizations, university educators, and researchers between formal learning spaces and everyday learning (Thomassen, 2016). Outside the confines of formal education, we can reimagine agency and structure, spark innovation, and creatively consider new possibilities of not what is but what can be (Greene, 1986; 2010).

This participatory-design framework focused on increasing data literacy and geospatial reasoning leverages linkages between learning and identities. We propose an interest-driven, place-based, community-centered framework that engages a wide range of participants to do STEM and experience the world as problem-solvers. As a result, learning takes place in the context of a partnership of youth, families, and community-based organizations in which diverse youth may realize STEM identities. In this vision, youth and families bring knowledge and practices vital to STEM education, and their participation shapes the tools and discourses of STEM disciplines as STEM disciplines shape their involvement.

5.1A transformational STEM education vignette

To give a sense of the STEM education we envision, we provide a glimpse into a transformational STEM program situated within a community organization. Though the scene is imaginary, the setting is real: a bicycle shop in Southwest Detroit that has been a gathering place for youth for many years. The shop offers free bicycles to students who use them to travel to work and has become a magnet for neighborhood youth of all ages. This is an ideal setting for expanding STEM learning opportunities to youth in this neighborhood. Imagine that a nearby community center partners with the bike shop to offer bike mechanic classes to support local youth. Through these classes, youth talk about mobility in the neighborhood and have noticed that bus routes in the area have changed. They discuss that more bike lanes are needed to ensure safe bike commuting to school and work. In addition to impacting the youths’ transportation, these changes in public transit have impacted their families’ access to work, school, shopping, and visiting friends and family members. Along with the community center educator, the group of about ten middle school-age youth who regularly visit the bike shop after school start posing questions about these changes and decide to investigate why changes were made and what were the resulting impacts on their community.

The community center leader, a former youth from the neighborhood, supports the group in thinking about these changes in the historical context of Southwest Detroit, community resources, and how youth might build evidence for safe bike commuting routes and their families’ mobility needs. The youth and the leader collect knowledge of the community and insights they have developed from years of living and commuting. Collectively, they find ways to represent their community via images and maps in order to decide what additional information is needed. As they decide on ways to collect new evidence to contribute to the collective mapping of the community, the community center leader guides them to use mobile tools accessible while on their bikes to observe bus ridership, and map existing bike lanes and road conditions that impact bike safety and accessibility. The youth speak with community members about their needs, and create maps to indicate where current bike lanes and new bus routes intersect. They also decide that they need more than just their needs served and survey to find out what are families’ common bike and bus commutes in the area.

The youth, in partnership with the community center leader and bike shop owner, enlist family members and local university partners who offer technological tools such as GIS and other resources to help them coordinate data, analyze the data spatially, and uncover what bike lanes and bus routes are most used and needed, taking into account needs of different users and their mobilities. With the support of their families and the community center leader, the youth use these data as the basis of a presentation to city leaders to gain support for allocating more resources to mobility needs based on their analysis of the evidence they have gathered in collaboration with their families and other community members. The youth realize this is a temporary solution. As the community’s needs change, they will need to refine their solution based on the analysis of new evidence. For now, their model solution for proposed bus routes and bike lanes is a good start; it provides the needed assurance that bikes and buses can safely share the road and that community needs can be better met with active, collaborative engagement using STEM and other tools.

5.1.1Reflection on the vignette toward a framework for STEM education

This transdisciplinary, interest-driven experience gives youth the opportunity to formulate their own questions about mobility (i.e., bike lanes and bus routes) and the ways in which the neighborhood members can collect and use data to construct a persuasive argument. Youth, with their family members and other trusted adults in the community, expand their data literacy through their investigation, reporting, use of GIS-based tools, and application of analytic resources. Further, the youth frame what is the evidence needed to shape access to resources, fostering their agency and demonstrating their authority. Finally, they hone their communication literacies with community stakeholders to contribute to their community.

Five intertwined design considerations shape the kind of transformational STEM learning that we are posing in this aspirational vignette (see Fig. 1). First, STEM learning is propelled by youths’ interest-driven, place-based learning rooted in community issues and advocacy for solutions. Youth, immersed in their community and working with their families, initiate investigations relevant to themselves and their neighborhood. Second, the STEM learning that takes place builds upon the interests, expertise, and assets of community organizations. The third consideration in this learning process is youth and their families are recognized as experts on community needs, assets, and how to advance new knowledge. They assert agency by accessing knowledge, tools, and resources needed to address their needs. A fourth design consideration is the authentic and productive disciplinary learning of STEM knowledge and practice –posing evidence-centered questions, data collection using geolocation technologies, data analysis, data representations, and communicating a data-based story –involving rigorous, authentic, and transdisciplinary STEM. Fifth, this vignette provides an example of participatory community science, where youth and their families engage in and contribute scientific knowledge working on behalf of their own community.

What can be the expected outcomes of this kind of educational experience? Through their investigation of transportation, the youths and family members assert and enhance their STEM identities and interests. That experience, in turn, leads to expanded access and participation of diverse youth and adults in STEM fields. While it may not be directly thought of in terms of doing STEM by the youth and families, since the activity is a community-centered civics project, it provides an opportunity for the STEM leaders and educators involved to communicate aspects that are components of STEM careers.

Design considerations and expected outcomes of our proposed framework for transformational STEM education are shown in Fig. 1. The theoretical concepts and research underlying the design elements of our framework for designing transformational STEM learning opportunities and expected outcomes are discussed below.

Fig. 1

Framework for Transformational STEM Education.

6Limitations and further considerations of this framework

While we are optimistic that the transformative framework described above can overcome some traditional challenges of broadening STEM education, we acknowledge that it introduces significant challenges and limitations. First, this approach depends on cultivating partnerships within diverse communities focused on designing solutions to community-based problems. We see community organizations as key to developing these partnerships because they are rooted within communities and generally focused on building capacities with communities. We also recognize that not all community-based organizations have access to and capacity with technology that may be needed to address the community-based problems. As a result, we advocate for customization to local needs and leveraging mobile technologies, such as applications that can be accessed via phones and other low-cost devices, because of their ease of use and the ways that youth’s expertise as “digital natives” can be elevated and leveraged. Through the use of mobile technologies and other analytic tools, diverse youth may be empowered with skills and competencies transferable to high-tech degrees and careers.

Second, developing a mobile application for geospatial data collection and analysis easy enough for GIScience novices to use but powerful enough for meaningful analysis will require resources. A mobile application would require funding and likely an industry partner for development. Numerous committed community and educational partners will be needed for testing, validation, and collaboration. This approach is ambitious in the level of scientific effort and engagement necessary for success. While such engagement is beneficial, it will be important to strike a balance between making any such learning experience attractive and fun, providing learning opportunities centered on data literacy, geospatial reasoning, GIScience concepts, problem solving, and advancing youth and family interest-driven questions and designs. Buy-in and technical savvy from youth, families, community partners, and university members will be in high demand when each actor must also be engaged in their respective prior commitments.

When youth interest drives STEM learning, a great deal of care and intentionality is required to ensure that youth have a comprehensive and cohesive STEM experience (Rubel et al., 2016a). When knowledge generation and learning are driven by youth, families, community members, and university-based members this demands that all stakeholders make a commitment to negotiate and persist with one another. These are not qualities easily cultivated nor typical in educational innovations (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016), thus these challenges are not to be taken lightly. We see promise in working within informal educational settings, because of the learning context that is less rigid and policy-driven by federal and state accountability assessment practices. Long-term, sustainable partnerships among community members, youth, community organizations, and outside expertise must be cultivated to allow for distributed expertise and trust-building.

Likewise, it will be important to get the pacing right. Going too slowly, youth may be disinterested. Moving too quickly could mean that the development of STEM identity is thwarted by participants’ confusion or anxiety. As mentioned earlier, high-quality facilitation is required to allow youth to drive their own learning, pose questions of interest to themselves, draw in families, and make community connections in ways that allow learners to take the lead (Elliott & Lesseig, 2022; Forman et al., 2014; Lewis, 2016). Projects informed by this framework also will need to shift the perception that learning is fast and automatic. In this framework, learning is iterative and proceeds at a pace set by youth, their interests, and engagement.

Along those same lines, it will be important to figure out ways to bridge in-school STEM learning with these hands-on and interactive ways of knowing, in order for youth to see themselves as “the kind of people who do this stuff.” Many community organizations and after-school programs are facilitated by certified teachers, who teach school as a part of their “day job.” These educators offer a bridge to school and its possible transformation. Further, recent shifts being made in U.S. STEM policy, namely standards that value connecting STEM to real-world problems, less focus on endless lists of content to cover, and reduced focus on accountability assessments are positive changes that are supportive of the proposed framework for STEM education. As these policy changes take root, educational practices guided by informal learning principles like those in this framework may become more present in schools. Teacher education and professional development programs for formal and informal educators will be essential to scale the implementation of the transdisciplinary STEM (content and instructional) practices consistent with our framework.

Ongoing formative and summative evaluation will be vital for projects informed by this proposed framework. Evaluation would need to track youth’s perceptions of the activities, capacities of projects to take up multiple perspectives across stakeholders, distribution of data literacy and geospatial reasoning expertise, and the sustainability of partnerships. We advocate for using methods that trace outcomes such as youth’s and communities’ STEM engagement, STEM interests, and emerging STEM identities including expanded expertise. Such methods would likely include the use of multiple observational protocols, analysis of design products, interviews, and surveys. The aim of this constellation of measures would provide project partners with ongoing and retrospective evaluations of project effectiveness.

7Conclusion

In this position paper, we identify leverage points for a new place-based community science approach to STEM education. Drawing upon extant research across our teams’ fields of expertise, we argue that a transdisciplinary framework is necessary to address barriers in our current educational system and imagine beyond those boundaries what has not yet been made possible (Greene, 2010). We believe this proposed framework has the potential to overcome some of the persistent challenges to broadening STEM education and subsequent STEM careers for diverse youth. We argue that an interest-driven, place-based approach that leverages partnerships among youth, families, and community organizations can lead to authentic and productive transdisciplinary STEM learning. When youth have opportunities to identify locally relevant problems and investigate them through geospatial technology, data literacy, and design-based problem solving to propose persuasive solutions, they will increase their STEM knowledge, have an expanded sense that STEM is relevant to their life, and develop robust STEM identities may shape their community and their future.

Author Biographies

Rebekah L. Elliott was a high school mathematics teacher in two urban areas of the U.S. prior to completing her Ph.D. in mathematics education. In her maternal and paternal families her generation is the first to obtain a college degree after high school. She studies equitable and ambitious mathematics teaching and leading in diverse schools with a focus on mathematical modelling and data literacy. She draws upon sociocultural views of learning and examines how social practices are mediated by tools and discourses. Her recently funded research examines how mathematics teacher leaders develop antibias teaching practices through community-centered professional development.

Carolyn G. Loh is an associate professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Wayne State University. A former practicing planner, she studies local land use decision making, comprehensive planning, arts and cultural planning, and diversity, equity, and inclusion in planning and plans. She has taught courses in Geographic Information Systems and urban geography for more than a decade. She has recently written about how a community science approach could benefit planners and planning researchers.

Carolyn E. Psenka was raised within a family of engineers and artists, educated in business, and experienced as a public accountant before receiving her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology. As an applied anthropologist, she has studied knowledge sharing and information technology in large scale aviation, aerospace, manufacturing, and medical systems in private and governmental contexts. Her current research is concerned with understanding the relationship of technology, culture, and the participation in families and communities in STEM learning.

Jennifer M. Lewis was an elementary and middle school teacher for ten years before earning a doctorate and joining the faculty at Wayne State University. She has recently returned to her position as associate professor of mathematics education and teacher education at WSU after a leave of absence to serve as the Executive Director of Educator Excellence in Detroit Public Schools Community District. Jenny’s research focuses on how teachers learn mathematics during instruction. She is particularly interested in building systemic efforts to improve mathematics teaching and learning in high-poverty communities.

Kyoung-Yun Kim is a professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Wayne State University, where he directs the Computational Intelligence and Design Informatics (CInDI) Laboratory and Smart Manufacturing Demonstration Center (SMDC). Dr. Kim is a site director of NSF I/UCRC Center for e-Design. Dr. Kim was the lead PI of the NSF CooL:SLiCE (Constructionism in Learning: Sustainable Life Cycle Engineering) project. Dr. Kim’s research focuses on design science; design informatics; semantic assembly design; welding and joining; and smart manufacturing.

Karl R. Haapala is an associate professor in the School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering at Oregon State University. He serves as the manufacturing engineering undergraduate program coordinator, most recently leading a curriculum redesign in 2018 that resulted in a four-fold increase in enrollment. He is lead PI for an NSF ECR: PEER project developing an online curriculum in mechatronics for manufacturing engineering, and serves as director of OSU’s DOE Industrial Assessment Center (IAC), focused on workforce development through experiential engineering education at the undergraduate and graduate student levels. His research focuses on manufacturing process and system modeling methods, life cycle engineering, and engineering education.

Don Neal is currently the Principal Investigator/Project Director for the C2 Pipeline program sponsored by the College of Nursing at Wayne State University. His expertise is in program development, implementation and management, which also includes community collaborations, marketing and strategic planning. His entire career has been focused on working with youth in some capacity and his past work experience includes 23 years of management with non-profits and in K-12 education, and ten years in higher education. He has been a project director for 21st CCLC programs for a total of 22 years.

Gül E. Okudan Kremer is the oldest child of high school teachers and has been the only woman engineer in her extended family since her graduation to present. Her education related scholarly works focus on engineering design learning, team dynamics and design performance, and gender differences. Most recently, along with an interdisciplinary team of scholars, she has been studying neurophysiology of creative behaviour and gender differences. She is Dean and Professor with School of Engineering at University of Dayton.