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STEM Inside

Broadening participation through trans-disciplinary youth development programs leveraging technology, arts, design, and the sciences

The project is a multi-year ethnographic study that investigates how creative software learning experiences in music and video production also develop understandings of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in young people aged 14-18

STEM Inside aims to drive and transform the next generation of broadening participation efforts targeting teen-aged youth from communities historically underrepresented in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. Co-led by the University of Washington and Science Gallery Dublin, and in partnership with researchers and practitioners from University of California at Irvine, Guerrilla Science, and YR Media (formerly Youth Radio), the project runs five studies to understand how arts-and-sciences learning and communication programmes engage young people from economically and racially marginalised communities, and how this engagement can offer insight into the potential for transdisciplinary approaches to decolonise STEM education policies and practices. LSE leads on the UK study, Learning from creative software production: Music and video in London and contributes to two other studies within the project, Carnival, spectacle, and hybridity: Connecting scientists with teens and young adults, and the project’s cross-site longitudinal study in the US, UK and Ireland.

Project website

Overview

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has attained a level of importance in education policy that sees it in receipt of far greater support than other educational disciplines, particularly the arts. Proponents argue that STEM is needed to prepare future generations to be economically and nationally competitive in a globalized knowledge society. Obscured in the rhetorical and material support for STEM is the tendency of such learning opportunities to disproportionately benefit dominant social groups, and marginalize historically underrepresented and dominated groups. There is a need to address the inequities in provision and take-up of STEM that reproduce historical patterns of educational attainment inequality. This project contributes to this gap by studying the experiences of young students from underrepresented backgrounds as they engage in STEM learning through media arts.

Led by Dr Sam Mejias, Learning from Creative Software Production: Music and Video in London will generate an evidence base for educational policies that foreground equity in STEM through an emphasis on transdisciplinary learning. The project is a multi-year ethnographic study that investigates how creative software learning experiences in music and video production also develop understandings of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in young people aged 14-18. Working with an alternative education creative arts sixth form school, Wac Arts College, the project follows students’ usage of creative software for making and learning. Through collaborative knowledge construction processes – such as co-production of original music using mappable software-hardware interfaces – the project investigates how digital technologies associated with creative arts production develop wider scientific/technological understandings, and what motivates young people disillusioned with education to pursue creative software.

Throughout the project, we track how young people’s learning trajectories lead to or encourage STEM-related connections, understandings and outcomes. Individual case studies will explore the differences in software engagement experiences of young people who are from a range of different economic, social and educational backgrounds; have differential access to creative learning opportunities or resources; possess varying experience levels in the creative arts, or science and technology; and have different motivationsorpurposes for using creative software. The young people involved, urban residents of London, are mainly from underrepresented and socially, economically and ethnically diverse backgrounds. 

LSE Participants

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Dr Sam Mejias is Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He conducts multidisciplinary research on the cultural politics of human rights and equity, to understand how rights-based discourse and policies drive individual and structural change for a more equitable society.

Funding

This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council.