2015 - 2021

The SYNERGIES: Customizing Interventions to Sustain Youth STEM Interest and Participation Pathways was an NSF Research in Service to Practice project (DRL 1516718) which leveraged research findings from a previous longitudinal study to support a systematic design phase involving a variety of educational partners (both informal and formal) to develop a set of customized, connected and coordinated learning opportunities to address the well-documented decline of youth attitudes, interest, and motivation to participate in STEM during early adolescence and beyond.

Our project used an ecosystem approach in which we conceptualized STEM education as a multidimensional, dynamic system in which all educational experiences are connected and coordinated in such a way that their efforts build upon each other to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Over the course of five years, we tracked youth STEM interest, participation, and a number of potentially influential factors (e.g., parental support) to better understand how youth in the Parkrose community developed interest in STEM, and how they navigated the STEM learning ecosystem in ways that supported their interests. Using both large-scale surveys and in-depth interviews, we examined how youth were able to pursue STEM interests over time, as well as the challenges many youth faced in accessing interest-related resources and opportunities in this community. Our findings will help inform the development of targeted educational interventions that better nurture the interest and motivation necessary for children to pursue science pathways long term.

Partner Institutions:

• Institute for Learning Innovation, John Falk

Center Team: