NSF Awards: 2005776
A long history of research suggests that early informal STEM learning experiences such as block play, puzzles, visiting zoos and science museums can build a strong foundation for STEM learning and which leads to later STEM success. Yet, children from low-income and historically underserved communities have less access to these opportunities due to scarce resources and barriers to access such as transportation and cost. To address these challenges, this project endeavors to infuse public urban spaces such as local parks, bus-stops, and grocery stores with playful and engaging informal STEM learning opportunities in low-income Latine neighborhoods as a strategy for understanding how public spaces, when co-designed with community partners and informed by the science of learning, can foster rich, informal STEM learning experiences for young children in neighborhood places where families naturally spend time. Using techniques of Community-Based, Participatory Design Research, we collaborate closely with families from a community-based organization in Santa Ana, California. This video elaborates on our co-design process for creating a series of outdoor Playful Learning Landscape installations with our community partners that reflect the goals, values, and cultural capital of the Latine community in Santa Ana. We also showcase several culturally situated design prototypes and share our vision long-term vision for this work.
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Hi Everyone! We are so excited to share our work with this community, engage in dialog, and hear folks feedback and ideas. To provide some context we are finishing year 2 of this 4 year project and have mostly focused on designing these public space installations with our community partners. We are now transitioning to fabricating and installing our designs in Santa Ana, CA, and will evaluate the impacts of the installations over the next 2 years. We will have several members of our team stopping by to chat so please feel free to leave questions/comments!
David Haury
Emeritus Professor
I really like the idea of using familiar public spaces to engage young kids and families with informal STEM learning. Could you say more about how the focus topics are generated and chosen, as well as deciding where the learning landscapes are installed?
Karlena Ochoa
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Great question! We came with a framing of STEM learning because this is an NSF AISL project :) However, we engaged our community partners in a variety of co-design activities like storytelling, madlibs, and crafting to surface community values, goals, and practices. We also followed our community partners lead in regards to choosing locations. We worked together to create criteria for a good location (e.g., places where families frequently wait or spend time or places that capitalize on or leverage existing resources) and then we used those criteria to select sites. Hope this helps and thank you for your interest in our project!
Jessica Young
This is such a great project and your prototypes look so fun! I love the idea of co-designing using storytelling as well as using other activities like mad libs and crafting. Did you start with a storytelling prompt? How did you build trust within the community to support storytelling (for example)?
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Thanks for the question Jessica! We are so lucky to have found a partner organization that has engaged in years of community organizing and trust building which we have greatly benefitted from. But we also put a lot of effort into being good partners, we center our community partners voices throughout every phase of the project, we listen when they expresses concerns or goals for our project, and try to be responsive to what they tell us. Once you've built trust and established some common goals then families are much more willing to share stories and contribute.
E Paul Goldenberg
What a wonderful project idea, and what a wonderful way of getting the input into it! Absolutely lovely!! Thanks.
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Thank you!
Susan Letourneau
This is an exciting project! I was very interested in the ways you gathered input and engaged in co-design with your community. Could you elaborate on how you decided on topics and locations for the installations, as well as how families would interact with them, based on the conversations you had with families? Also, did you iterate on the designs throughout the project based on families' feedback, and were there any interesting revelations during the process?
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Thanks for these questions! I touched on some of the co-design approaches and decisions for location in a reply to David Haury above. And yes we solicited feedback and iterated throughout the design process. One approach was creating low-fidelity mock ups of our prototypes for families to play test. Families came to a local community center with their children and played with the mock installations and then we did interviewing right after to get their thoughts on what worked and what we might change. We got SO much great feedback from families! Certain designs were very intuitive and families jumped right in, while other designs were less clear and took some nudging and explanation for families to start playing with.
Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein
How cool! I'd love to hear more about the co-design process -- what has worked well, and what has needed rethinking as you've been working?
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Great question! Early in our co-design process we got feedback from families that some of the activities were a little too "pie in the sky" and they didn't necessarily understand the connection to our project. From then on we made sure to communicate back to families what we learned from each session and how it was contributing to the project designs. Families time is valuable and they are willing to give their time as long as they see what the impact is!
Jessica Parker
Senior Director
Thanks so much for sharing this wonderful video on how you co-designed playful learning landscapes with Latine families and communities in Santa Anna. I know you are just entering your 3rd year of this project, and I was wondering if you could discuss your preliminary plans for engaging the city and other local government entities in the approval process for installing the designs in public areas - I am assuming that the public spaces need approval. Please correct if I am wrong as I am interested in learning how you approached developing relationships and partnerships that support the installations of your wonderful co-created designs.
Karlena Ochoa
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
This is such an important topic! We are indeed spending lots of time engaging with city of Santa Ana to ensure that these designs are not only implemented but also maintained and replicated. We have built relationships with city council, parks and recreation, the school district, public works, and the mayors office. One thing that we have heard consistently and has continued to open doors for us is that it's clear that the community is bought into this work. The advocacy that our co-design partners engage in (e.g., showing up to public forums about new parks in the city) demonstrated to the city that this is what their residents want. And most of the public officials we have worked with feel it is their charge to carry out what their constituents want to see for their community. City of Santa Ana is actually already implementing some of the designs from this project in other locations using city funds!
Zach Mbasu
This is an amazing idea that demonstrates how letting learners enjoy themselves creates engagement that leads to deeper concentration and learning? How do you create appropriate challenges through play? How do you also help learners find moments of satisfaction by both succeeding and also making mistakes while playing games at this public spaces?
Annelise Pesch
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Excellent questions! Our installations are designed to foster guided play. This type of play capitalizes on the joys of engaging in play, while incorporating a target learning goal like STEM learning or literacy. Our activities are intentionally designed to encourage playful learning, to spark discussion, and to be iterative. By making activities playful and iterative, we allow the learner to find new challenges in the game and to have fun while doing it.
Nancy Songer
Dean
Thank you for sharing your inspiring video. Can you share more about how you are measuring the impact of these creative informal STEM education materials in informal spaces?
Karlena Ochoa
Annelise Pesch
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Great question! We will use multiple methods to evaluate impact. We will be conducting observations of caregiver-child interactions at these spaces pre and post installation to evaluate caregiver-child interaction quality and language use. We also plan to administer surveys to families at these sites pre and post installation to evaluate attitudes about play and learning, STEM self-efficacy, and views on early science learning. In addition, we plan to examine the impact installations have on school readiness by examining whether PLLs result in population-level shifts in teacher-reported assessments of school readiness. Finally, we will measure the impact of these installations on the community by measuring civic engagement, small business impact, and frequency and duration of visits to these sites.
Hui Yang
Thanks for sharing this wonderful project. It is always amazing to see how different community members are actively involved in designing and implementing the programs. Could you please say a little bit more about the sustainability aspect of the program especially towards the year 4 project?
Karlena Ochoa
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Important question thank you Hui. Our goal is that the City of Santa Ana (and other cities ideally) owns and sustains these installations and adopts these designs each time they build a new park, bus-stop, or community space. We already have a few examples of the city and the local school district implementing some of these designs which is very encouraging because it serves as a model for these organizations to implement these ideas within their existing budgets and processes.
Karlena Ochoa
Chih Ing Lim
Thanks for sharing this amazing project and how you all co-created with the families. I could have missed it but I'm wondering if the spaces and materials are also accessible to children with disabilities.
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Great question. We are working with a fabrication company to build these installations to meet ADA guidelines for accessibility. Our goal is that the installations are accessible to all children. We are also working on some technology elements that can further enhance accessibility and deepen and extend the learning opportunities.
Chih Ing Lim
Karlena Ochoa
Fenice Boyd
Phenomenal work. I do like the idea of designing these informal learning spaces around science and math with the families rather than "for" the families. Working together is key and it's very impressive. I'm looking forward to following your work and learning about it's impact.
Karlena Ochoa
Andres Bustamante
University of California Irvine
Thank you!