Bryan named PI on NSF grant to examine youth STEM learning

A College of Education faculty member is the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation (NSF) DRK-12 grant, in collaboration with Morgan State University.

Lynn Bryan
Lynn Bryan

Lynn Bryan, director of the Center for Advancing the Teaching and Learning of STEM (CATALYST) and professor of science education in the College’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, is the lead principal investigator (PI) of a cross-institutional, cross-disciplinary team that was awarded the NSF grant. The project will examine students’ science and engineering learning and their development of science/STEM interest and agency. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) grant is funded for $3 million over a four-year period.

Title: Youth Learning Science and Engineering While Developing Community-based Agency Through Resourceful Engagement in STEM (Youth CARES)

The research team includes Bryan; Ala Samarapungvan (Co-PI), professor of educational psychology and research methodology in the College of Education Department of Educational Studies; William Oaks (Co-PI), professor of engineering education in the College of Engineering; and Khanh Tran, post doctoral researcher in the College of Education Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Purdue University as the lead institution will receive $2,445,000. The collaborating institution, Morgan State University, will receive $555,000 and its research team includes James Hunter (PI), associate professor of civil engineering.

According to Bryan, the project has three main goals:

  1. Collaborate across institutions and with middle school teachers in urban classrooms in Indiana (Indianapolis, Lafayette) and Maryland (Baltimore) to develop and implement cognitively grounded, standards-aligned integrated STEM units in earth and physical sciences that lead to robust learning of science and engineering content and practices, emphasize environmental justice, and meaningfully integrate culturally nurturing engineering design projects in to service the students’ local communities.
  2. Develop a concomitant professional development program for middle school science teachers to foster their use of asset-based pedagogical practices for delivering high-quality, discourse-rich integrated STEM instruction.  
  3. Conduct empirical research with teachers and students to understand of how teachers’ implementation of the STEM units supports learning, interest, and agency development among middle schoolers from culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse backgrounds.

“Integrating science and engineering content and practices is a vital curricular addition to K-12 science education,” Bryan said. “This integration facilitates closer links between knowledge and practices within and between disciplines (i.e., science and engineering) and encourages a deeper understanding of disciplinary content through its application in designing solutions for real-life problems in local communities.”

Bryan added that incorporating engineering design into the science curriculum is especially important at the middle school level, as this is when students begin building a more robust and thorough understanding of core science concepts and interest in pursuing STEM coursework and careers. She said that prior research has shown that students who establish a deeper understanding and greater interest in STEM as early as middle school are more likely to pursue STEM majors and careers.

Bryan also said that this project emphasizes environmental justice.

“The environmental justice orientation in the Youth CARES STEM units is important because we believe that science teachers, particularly in urban areas, have the responsibility to develop students’ knowledge, skills, and practices for becoming informed members of society and offer students thoughtful opportunities to learn about the relationship between sociodemographic variables and environmental health risks,” Bryan said. “Each unit is aligned with the middle school science disciplinary core idea addressing ‘human impacts on Earth systems’.”

Lastly, Bryan said that this project will be significant in providing a counter-narrative to the plethora of deficit-based research on student achievement.

“We will examine theoretically and practically important aspects of science and engineering learning that emphasize the academic strengths and the positive role of cultural values students bring to STEM learning opportunities,” she said.

Sources: Lynn Bryan, lbryan@purdue.edu; Community for Advancing Discovery Research in Education