NSF Awards: 1720585
The East Bay Academy for Young Scientists (EBAYS) is a community-driven science program based at the University of California, Berkeley Lawrence Hall of Science. EBAYS employs an approach to science learning that engages students directly in science investigations that are both based in the community, and driven by local social justice issues. The program, part of the Schoolyards Scientists NSF-funded DRK12 project (award #1720585), targets Middle School and High School youths who are historically underrepresented in STEM fields by being embedded in urban science classrooms in order to increase capacity for engaging a broader population of youth participants. The program goals include environmental science content learning and developing socially conscious individuals who are capable of both questioning the status quo and identifying sustainable solutions to improve quality of life. In this video, we discuss findings from our research on the program, including how participation in the program supported participants’ value of science and how it can be used to improve their communities. We discuss evidence of promise for the formal-science classroom embedded program model to engage a broader population of youth participants. This work provides evidence of how to support youth outcomes beyond the development of skillsets needed to be successful STEM workers, and considers how to equip youth to marshal science to advocate for justice.
Connie Flanagan
incredible work addressing environmental justice. would love to know more about what steps students took with their data - especially if they did any outreach to local government or educated other community residents about their findings.
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Youth indeed have done outreach to local government officials. In fact, one group of youth met with two city council members at their school and were later invited to present their findings at a meeting that included all of the City Council members. Also, youth have created flyers that present their findings to local residents, which have been distributed to local residents via a door-to-door leafleting campaign.
Marijke Visser
Beatriz Canas
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
On behalf of my co-presenters and other colleagues, I’d like to thank you for expressing interest in our work. As we press on in our efforts to document impacts associated with youth of color participation in community science research projects, one of our principal objectives is to effectively share promising evidence that we have unearthed, which we believe ultimately can support efforts aimed at transforming traditional urban STEM education learning environments. Your feedback on our video presentation will be very helpful in this regard.
Kwame Owusu-Daaku
Eusi Bradford-Cuff
Proud of you pops
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Thank you, Eusi. And thank you and Mathi for inspiring me.
Kwame Owusu-Daaku
Great video and very much needed project! What are your plans to keep this project going? Do you plan on working with the same group of students over time or will you give different sets of students a one-time similar experience?
Beatriz Canas
Sarah Olsen
Research Lead
Hi Kwame, thank you for your message. In the past we have provided a summer program for youth who participated during the school year and wanted to continue. We have more recently provided different versions of the program—for instance a program designed for younger youth (middle school), and an internship format as an after school program. We are also currently preparing to implement the program in two new locations in different parts of the country to understand adaptations that help the program to be successful in new communities. As part of that work the EBAYS programming team is developing an instructor training that will hopefully lead to more educators being able to implement EBAYS in the future, and more students engaging with the program.
We are interested in any thoughts you or others may have on training educators in communities beyond your own in this type of place-based social justice learning.
Warm regards,
Sarah
Billy Spitzer
Billy Spitzer
Executive Director
Kevin,
Thank you for sharing some of the details of this work and your findings so far. I was curious to learn more about how you were able to scaffold and support students in undertaking their investigations and advocacy work. For example, I would be interested in hearing more what was most helpful in enabling students to develop new skills and ways of thinking.
I was also curious about how you were able to support students in the civic engagement work, especially if they came up against challenges in advocating for change.
Thanks,
Billy
Sarah Olsen
Research Lead
Hi Billy, thanks for those interesting discussion points. I will defer to my colleagues for more specifics around the scaffolding, but I can speak to some of what we have found on the research side of things, as we've had a lot of interesting findings from our interview data with 26 youth participants. Related to civic engagement, important program elements include:
There is a lot more to say here, but I think something interesting that came up was that students varied in their perceptions of their ability to use science to make a difference and their evaluation of whether they can have an impact on a science-related social issue. This includes their perceived access to systems, people, and resources, as well as their perceptions of the manageability of the problem. While some youth identified solutions to environmental issues, others felt stymied by systematic barriers. While some youth envisioned a role for themselves, others did not. This is understandable given the complexity of the issues they are investigating, but has important implications for whether and how they choose to engage further. We are currently developing an interview protocol and a survey instrument to better understand youths’ environmental justice perspectives. Any thoughts or resources related to this would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Sarah
Billy Spitzer
Emmanuel Nti-Asante
Sarah gave a great talk about the project during the AERA'22. I learned a lot. I look forward to reading more of your wonderful findings
Sarah Olsen
Research Lead
Hi Emmanuel, thank you for checking out our video and your support of this project! We would love to hear more about your work and any connections you see. It's great to connect with the AERA community.
Beatriz Canas
Director of equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility
Kevin,
Thank you so much for sharing about the work you and your team are doing in the Easy Bay. What type of professional development do you do with program leaders/staff to help prepare them to teach STEM and environmental justice in a culturally responsive way?
Christina Baze
Sarah Olsen
Research Lead
Hi Beatriz, in addition to Kevin's response below, I wanted to share that we recently had the opportunity to evaluate students' perceptions of the cultural-responsiveness of the program through the use of an equity pedagogy scale developed by Dr. Brandi Hinnat-Crawford and colleagues (citation below), which we are interested in continuing to attend to in our future research.
Hinnnat-Crawford, B., Bergeron, L., Virtue, E., Cromartie, S., Harrington, S. Good teaching, warm and demanding classrooms, and critically conscious students: measuring student perceptions of asset-based equity pedagogy in the classroom. [Manuscript submitted for publication]. College of Education Allied Professions, Western Carolina University.
Beatriz Canas
Billy Spitzer
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Hi Billy. Thank you for your message. The primary mechanism we use to scaffold and support students' investigations is embedded in the "curriculum" we employ, which provides multiple opportunities for them to gain experience with key science practices. Initially, students engage in "mini-investigations" (e.g., mapping particulate matter concentration levels near a given programming site.) that are highly guided. In time, students are provided with more and more opportunities to develop research questions and design investigation elements. In terms of supporting their advocacy efforts and civic engagement work, at present, our go-to mechanism entails providing opportunities for students to brainstorm their ideas and proposed approaches with experienced representatives of local environmental and social justice organizations with whom we have partnerships.
Billy Spitzer
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Beatriz: First off, in working with interested program leaders and staff, we stress the fact that the community-based research environment is an ideal space within which culturally responsive approaches can be manifest given that within this space numerous social justice issues of importance to many intersect. Our principal professional learning approach entails sharing our curriculum that emphasizes the importance of student/community voice. Within the curriculum, all of the activities (including those that are used to scaffold science practice skills development) provide multiple opportunities for open discussions that allow for expressions of a wide variety of perspectives.
Beatriz Canas
Rebecca Lowe
Hi, your video and discussion of your work was very engaging. I am aware of many projects that are interested in promoting community engagement and citizen science engagement in marginalized communities to advance environmental justice. Many of these projects wish to use efforts to first engage students in these activities with the goal of using those activities as a platform which they can build greater awareness and participation of parents and other members of the community. Do you have any insights or observations about how you have seen your work with students leveraged or connected to other efforts that have successfully bolstered the engagement of members of the larger community in citizen science in the areas in which the students are collecting data? Do you have any strategies that you think are effective in building from student engagement to to promote parent engagement in environmental justice activities?
Rebecca Lowe
I also wanted to say that your work connects well with the project for which we have a video in the showcase which is an effort to engage freshman students enrolled in an HBCU in introductory data explorations related to pressing social and environmental justice issues to promote relevance, interest, and future engagement of students in data science connected educational and career pursuits. In particular, I say many opportunities for you to engage in work similar to ours with the data that is being collected through your student activities. If you are interested in learning more about our work you can find our video here: https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentati...
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Hi Rebecca: Thank you for the link to your video. I agree that our work overlaps. We would certainly be able to enhance what we have program participants do with data by learning more about your work.
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Hi Rebecca: With regard to strategies that build from student engagement to promote parent engagement and engagement of other community members in environmental justice (and social justice) activities, several thoughts come to mind: 1) We have learned that it is important to first develop and express narratives that emphasize how such activities relate to other salient issues and are thus extremely relevant to the community at large. 2) It is important to work with as many frontline community-based organizations embedded in a given community (even if their focus of these is not science or STEM) to help disseminate such narratives on a broader scale. In many cases, working with such organizations will initially require effectively conveying how community science research endeavors connect with other issues. 3) With the help of embedded community-based organization partners, provide ample opportunities for students, their family members, and other interested community members to interact. One approach that we have seen as being quite effective is presenting themed "town hall" events, to which local policymakers, organizations whose focus relates to a given theme, youth, and families are invited to attend. During these events, students present their research findings, policymakers respond to these presentations, and local organizations describe their resources and related opportunities that they provide.
Billy Spitzer
Rebecca Lowe
Thank you so much for this extremely thoughtful and very meaningful response. I am definitely sharing your insights with my project partners engaging in these efforts and I am very grateful that they will have your emergent lessons learned to leverage in their work to promote resilient communities.
Christina Baze
This is a wonderful project! I am wondering if your students have any opportunities to explore or learn about careers where they would be able to continue to engage in justice-centered science and/or advocacy work? Given the ages of these participants, I think this would be both timely and impactful.
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Christina: Currently we do not have specific activities that provide students with information related to careers that feature advocacy-centered science. However, we do provide opportunities for students to interact with science practitioners who are engaged in justice-centered science, and we do include discussions that provide opportunities for students to learn about careers related to their particular research focus.
Christina Baze
Christine Goforth
This is such a great project! Love that you’re engaging students in relevant and meaningful environmental justice work that potentially impacts their own health and wellbeing. Do the students create presentations or engage in any sort of activism based on their findings? I feel like it could be great experience to present their work to people who can effect change in their local area and give them that scientific experience that is often overlooked in science education, dissemination of results
aujanee young
Research Analyst
Hello Christine,
Thank you for your question. Within this project, we began to understand how youth reflect on engaging their communities in their research. We operate with a broad understanding of activism that is inclusive of a range of activities from youth sharing their findings with family and school communities with the aim of raising awareness of environmental justice issues to engaging civic leaders, such as city councilpersons, in conversations about their findings and strategies for addressing the problem.
I also appreciate the thought of engaging with groups and individuals who identify as engaging in activism. As Kevin had mentioned the youth work with scientists who engage in activism work in the program but there is certainly potential to expand those networks.
Billy Spitzer
Brian Drayton
Co-Director
A great project and a really interesting discussion so far!
My question for you is about the "scaffolding" of community participants — parents and others — and the building of a set of shared objectives. I have seen or heard about projects where the community partners (and families) see their role as supporting and nurturing their youth, rather than doing that by means of involving them in community learning and growth. And are there community partners who are now wanting to join with you, now that they see what's happening?
aujanee young
Research Analyst
Hi Brian,
Thanks for your question. We are continuing to work with youth and expand programming to a number of communities nationwide. As far as partnerships go, there is interest in the program from a range of communities and organizations and each of the partnerships is unique. This work could not happen without the engagement and support of partner organizations, youth, their guardians, and other members of the communities.
Nicole Freidenfelds
This a wonderful project - thank you for sharing!
I was wondering about your recruitment strategy. How do students in the different grade levels (middle versus high school) join EBAYS? Do you partner with specific schools/teachers and/or community groups?
aujanee young
Research Analyst
Hi Nicole,
There are a number of ways youth join EBAYS. This project leveraged a partnership with a local school district to embed the program in formal science classrooms. There were also partnerships with after-school programs and other community organizations. Some youth returned to participate in additional EBAYS activities and shared their experiences with peers.
Russanne Low
Excellent video and very cool project! I can see that this is a very powerful approach with significant outcomes. Is this a free choice activity, and how long do participants stay involved in the project?
I also wanted to ask about the research and science piece and the advocacy piece. Are both of these domains highlighted equally in this project, or are some students motivated to participate in one of these domains than the other? Do participants collect the data using ArcGIS Field Maps, or a similar app, and do students build GIS skills through analysis of map data? Thanks for this stimulating presentation!
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Russanne: Thank you for expressing interest in our work.
Actually, we present programming that includes community science research in a variety of ways that offer both free choice and non-free choice options. Free choice programming occurs as out-of-school weekend and/or summer “Internship” iterations. These programs occur over a 4 to 6-week period during which participants meet weekly for approximately 4 hours. Non-free choice programming occurs when our activities are embedded in various courses presented in classrooms during school days. In this iteration youth work on projects every class period over an approximately three-week period.
Regarding how we highlight various elements of our programming, it really depends on the partner with whom we collaborate (e.g., school districts versus community-based organizations). That said, I suppose that in most cases we highlight both science/research and advocacy pieces (with slightly more emphasis on the science/research). Interestingly, we have seen that in cases where the science/research piece has been emphasized more, participating youth become extremely more interested in advocacy than they were initially.
Currently, we provide youth with maps that we generate using ArcGIS, which are then employed in data analysis activities. In the future, we do intend to provide more opportunities for youth to develop mapping skills using more intuitive mapping apps such as Field Maps.
Billy Spitzer
Russanne Low
Thanks for answering so quickly! That makes sense, I was wondering what time commitment would be required for your cohort to design and create their own project. Great that there are multiple options for engagement, both guided, short term, and open, long term.
It is indeed interesting that the science can drive the advocacy interest, and not the other way around. That is definitely a significant finding, thanks for sharing this as well!
Ravanasamudram Uma
Again, a wonderful project! Kudos to your team!
When you have students from diverse academic backgrounds (different grades having taken different science courses in high school), what resources/activities did you use to get them all on the same page as far as pre-requisite science knowledge?
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Hi Ravanasamudram:
One way that we address the issue of the need for pre-requisite science knowledge is by first engaging youth in hands-on activities that provide experiences that will at least familiarize them with crucial content they will need to engage in research activities in meaningful ways. In our case, that content is primarily related to what NGSS refers to as “science practices.” In addition, we assign youth with content learning tasks that we expect them to execute during times when we are not together. When working in schools, we commonly rely on classroom teachers to prepare youth by presenting some content prior to our engagement with their students.
Francheska Figueroa
Great video and project empowering students to advocate for environmental and social injustices. I'm wondering if you have had English learners who have participated in the project. If so, how have they been recruited and/or encouraged to participate in this great work that you are doing?
Christina Baze
Colleen Sutherland
Public Education Specialist
Thanks for the great question, Francheska! We do indeed have English learners who participate, particularly youth who speak Spanish. We want to help spread this information and action through all communities, not just those that speak primarily English!
In terms of recruitment, we do this in a number of ways. One way is through our existing partnerships in local schools. We already work in the public schools were there are a multitude of different languages spoken. Teachers, administrators, and even students we have worked with in the past are an important aspect of this. We also have strong partnerships in many East Bay communities, many of which work directly with non-native English speakers. We can either do direct recruitment through them, or we will "plug in" to one of their existing programs. Once we are working a lot in one community, word of mouth helps a lot.
During the program, we encourage students to use each other as resources (no matter what language they speak). This features a lot of collaborative work, in which we can strategically pair students of varying English language comfort levels, so they can work in whatever language they feel most comfortable. Bilingual educators also help bridge some of the language challenges, and all of our materials (for both in-class and in-community use) are in English and in Spanish. If we are working with youth who speak a language other than Spanish, we can have written activities translated in advance, or modify activities to support. Some youth also return to the program multiple times, and are then in a more "leadership" role and can assist.
Hopefully this answered your question. Thanks for checking out our project!
Patrik Lundh
Such a great project, and a wonderful way of involving youth in ways that authentically connect them to their own communities. I was wondering to what degree you engage students in conversations about or support them doing more inquiry into the historical and structural aspects of the environmental racism and social inequities that have contributed to polluting their communities?
Janet Coffey
I've admired this project from afar for some time! Thank you for your commitment and persistence for the youth who are fortunate to cross paths with this effort, and for educating the rest of us. What are three key insights you think important to share with others who may be interested in replicating such programming?
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Hi Janet: Thank you for this poignant question. Off the top of my head, the following are three insights that may be useful to those interested in attempting to replicate programming similar to ours to some extent:
Patti Parson
Such a great way of engaging teens and showing them not only that STEM is relevant but that by performing "citizen science" they have the potential to make change through their findings. You have made STEM less abstract, more concrete.
Suzanne Dikker
What an amazing project! Most of my questions have been asked/answered in the discussion in one way or another, but I saw that you are looking to expand the programming to other communities and I was wondering if you would be interested in connecting about working with local communities in New York City? we (www.mindhive.science) support HS citizen science projects on the environmental impacts of climate change on human brain and behavior and the social psychology of climate change action, and we collaborate with community organizers in Brownsville, BK (https://www.publicsentiment.org/brownsville/).
Kevin Cuff
EBAYS, Director
Hi Suzanne: Thank you for your post. We would indeed be interested in connecting to explore ways of collaborating. I suppose we should communicate via email for the time being. I can be reached at: kcuff@berkeley.edu
Suzanne Dikker
fantastic! i'll reach out to you from my nyu email suzanne.dikker@nyu.edu