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The Talking Science with Family project focuses on understanding how best to support family science talk and other forms of engagement that foster and sustain Latine youth’s STEM identities. Learning alongside caregivers, children, and college STEM students, we discover the ways science talk happens during activities, like car trips, baking, building, playing video games, watching videos, and other everyday family experiences. By centering the strengths of family culture and knowledge, we highlight what we call, "familial STEM identity".
Family talk about science is often prompted by children’s video viewing habits, like spending time on YouTube. By interviewing caregivers and their children, we learn about their watching habits, the types of videos they search for, and programs they follow. Through our conversations we learn the role that short-form videos play in both initiating and sustaining youth’s STEM interests and identity development.
Talking Science in the Kitchen is a multi-pronged startup effort to inspire children from Latine families to see themselves as STEM people and future STEM professionals through the medium of cooking. This endeavor builds on families’ existing co-cooking habits to create discovery experiences that build valuable skills for STEM hobbies or careers.
More and more researchers are discovering the valuable contributions that out-of-school time (OST) experiences make toward children’s STEM identity development--above and beyond their school experiences. To better understand the different ways OST experiences inspire youth from diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds to pursue STEM careers, we have partnered with Harvard and the Smithsonian Institute to develop a survey for large-scale, national distribution.
Our social interactions with family members not only shape who we are, they also shape what we think of the people around us, including what we think of people who participate in STEM activities. When we see ourselves as the kind of people who can also participate in those kinds of activities, we pen opportunities or lifelong fulfillment through STEM related careers and hobbies.