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NASA's Science Activation Program Achievements and Opportunities (2020) / Chapter Skim
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5 Assessing the Science Activation Portfolio: Broadening Participation and Networks
Pages 69-82

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From page 69...
... BROADENING PARTICIPATION SciAct's mission is to deliver activities and experiences to learners of many backgrounds and to leverage scientist-educator partnerships that have demonstrated diverse, broad, and deep national education and communications impact. In her presentation to the committee, Director Kristen Erickson emphasized that SciAct's efforts toward broadening participation are directly aligned with one of the priority areas described in the current national agenda for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
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From page 70...
... Program lead at the National Science Foundation, provided definitions for each of these components. Diversity is defined as the wide range of differences among people and their perspectives; equity refers to the fair and just treatment of all members of a community; inclusion refers to seeking and embracing contributions from all sources, including underrepresented groups, regions, ­ and institutions; and accessibility is giving equitable access to everyone along the continuum of human ability and experience.
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From page 71...
... are afforded. Representation of Broadening Participation Within the Portfolio Promotional materials for the SciAct Program refer to reaching "learners of all ages" and "being active in all 50 states." Additionally, all SciAct projects include metrics for broadening participation with regard to diversity within their evaluation plans.
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From page 72...
... SciAct project evaluation plans often include goals to serve a diverse group of learners, or in particular learners from groups that are underrepresented in STEM, and milestones toward those goals are described in the project annual reports. By employing a metric crosswalk of the portfolio, the committee found evidence of commitments to reaching diverse populations with target metrics for participation by a general population of underrepresented learners or by those from a specifically defined group.
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From page 73...
... The current project evaluation reports regularly describe numbers of participants from different groups, but there are other considerations for broadening participation that could be part of Phase 2 program evaluation plans: • To what extent does the SciAct portfolio map onto the full range of DEIA dimensions? • How are the voices of the key audience(s)
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From page 74...
... Additionally, learning networks must include rules or norms that allow stakeholders to engage in actions that contribute to overall network learning and improvement. In order to function as a learning network, the network needs a carefully designed and strategically implemented infrastructure (also referred to as the "backbone")
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From page 75...
... All of these outcomes can foster willingness of network stakeholders to participate in activities and efforts that constitute the network infrastructure. The SciAct Portfolio as a Network As noted in Chapter 3, the existing SciAct Program has elements that align with a number of network types.
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From page 76...
... assets, including subject matter experts, datasets, research findings, sensors, and platforms, so that they can reach broad audiences across the United States. SciAct also acts as an innovation network: Projects engage in substantive design and development work in order to transform NASA assets into tools that are useful and relevant for learners, learning environments, and education settings.
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From page 77...
... First, SciAct convenes topical working groups where representatives from multiple projects explore issues of shared interest, including Girls in STEM, maker education, educational technology, and use of visualizations in educational programs. Secondly, projects have leveraged major events, such as the 2017 solar eclipse, to coordinate programming, share resources, and aggregate data on reach and impact.
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From page 78...
... Below, the committee offers three possible approaches to establishing collective learning infrastructure for consideration by NASA SciAct staff, and ideally by project stakeholders, as the program moves into Phase 2. Participatory Knowledge-Building Groups As evidenced by some topical working groups within the SciAct network, opportunities exist to build collective knowledge through more intentional development of topical collectives that deliberately engage in
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From page 79...
... For instance, one set of groups might be organized around content and pedagogy (e.g., teaching climate science, doing citizen science, creating inclusive and equitable learning environments) while others might be organized around process (e.g., effective approaches to creating scalable curricula, engaging in community-based partnerships, utilizing formative evaluation data)
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From page 80...
... However, it is more likely that supporting improvement and innovation across such varied projects, as is the case for the SciAct portfolio, can be accomplished by identifying subgroups within the portfolio that are similar enough to benefit from shared measurement on inputs and outcomes, and also considering the stage of each project, given that outcomes may be a shifting target in the case of projects that are in the design phase. For more information on this approach, SciAct could consider drawing on models of networked improvement communities that center on the use of shared measurement in service of improving outcomes on highly specified problems of practice (Bryk et al., 2015)
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From page 81...
... BROADENING PARTICIPATION AND NETWORKS 81 are limited mechanisms for gathering, synthesizing, and sharing these innovations across the portfolio or for learning from cases of success or failure. CONCLUSION 14: The Science Activation Program is at an important inflection point in its history.
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Key Terms

  • learning network
  • science activation
  • sciact program
  • sciact portfolio
  • shared measurement

  • collective learning
  • sciact projects
  • network stakeholders
  • infrastructure supports
  • projected impacts

  • network infrastructure
  • learning networks
  • project stakeholders
  • build capacity
  • supports clarity

  • participation throughout
  • found evidence
  • existing sciact
  • nasa sciact
  • network projects

  • overall network
  • network goals
  • learning infrastructure
  • shared goals
  • learning environments

  • program moves
  • project evaluation
  • mentioned earlier
  • evaluation plans
  • projects include


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