- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

Innovative Collaboration equals success for Award-winning STEM Starters+ Program

Ajani Oyindamola — Thu, 13 Dec 2018 19:30:31 +0000

Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Museum of Science, Boston, are being recognized for the success of their collaborative project to bring engineering curricula coupled with biographies of famous scientists and engineers to elementary school students in Arkansas. STEM Starters+ is a five-year, $2.5 million research and demonstration funded by the U.S. Department of Education. It began with researchers introducing talent spotting, engineering curricula, and engaging biographies into four Arkansas school districts with high rates of culturally diverse and low-income children. Those school districts included Cabot, El Dorado, Little Rock, and the Pulaski County Special School District. Dr. Ann Robinson, director of the Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, led the project as principal investigator in collaboration with Dr. Christine Cunningham of the Museum of Science, Boston. She was joined by project director Kristy Kidd of ��Vlog��ý Little Rock and external evaluator Dr. Jill Adelson of the Talent Identification Program (TIP) at Duke University. Studies conducted by the collaborators have shown that students who participate in the STEM Starters+ not only develop a greater understanding of engineering, but they also learn more science and are more highly engaged in learning. Teachers learn to spot academic talents in increased numbers of primary-grade students. “In K-12 education, we often measure success by achievement, but we should also measure our effectiveness by how engaged children are,” Robinson said. “This project has engaged children and teachers profoundly. That is how you know you have hit the sweet spot, when learning is fun, collaborative, and creative and improves science scores and engineering knowledge. It is wonderful when classroom experiences increase engagement for teachers and students.” Robinson, Adelson, and Cunningham recently learned they received the Senior Investigator Research Paper Award from the Mensa Foundation. The foundation’s Awards for Excellence in Research are given internationally for outstanding research on intelligence, intellectual giftedness, and related fields. In April, the researchers received the Michael Pyryt Collaboration Award at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association in New York City for their paper, “A Talent for Tinkering: Developing Talents in Children From Low-Income Households Through Engineering Curriculum.” The award recognizes the work of a scholar who researches giftedness and an influential collaborator who has no previously published scholarship associated with giftedness, creativity, or talent.

Dr. Christine Cunningham

Additionally, the Jodie Mahony Center and the STEM Starters+ program were featured in a produced last year by the National Science Teachers Association. The Cabot School District, one of four districts in Arkansas to collaborate with ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, has seen tremendous success with the STEM Starters+ program. First-grade and gifted and talented education specialists at Westside Elementary, Southside Elementary, Magness Creek Elementary, and Cabot Middle School South were trained to implement the STEM Starters+ Project. “The level of engagement from our students while using these units has been remarkable,” said Aaron Randolph, director of Gifted and Advanced Placement Programs at Cabot Public Schools. “Due to the success we’ve had implementing this curricula into our five targeted schools, our G/T program will be implementing one EiE unit per grade level for the 2018-19 school year.” STEM Starters+ teachers receive a biography of an engineer, inventor, or scientist whose ideas are linked to the EiE units. Additionally, teachers receive a curriculum guide, “Blueprints for Biography,” which includes complex discussion questions, enrichment activities, and a science investigation or engineering design challenge. “If young children can ‘see’ the scientist or engineer, they respond so much better to the research behind the life,” Robinson said. “We took interesting trade biographies and then created teacher curriculum guides. ‘Blueprints for Biography’ shows kids the life behind the invention or the life behind the discovery and makes engineering and science very personal for children.” Some examples of the Engineering is Elementary units included in the STEM Starters+ project are “Sounds Like Fun: Seeing Animal Sounds,” which focuses on the design of a visual representation for various bird sounds, as well as “Lighten Up: Designing Lighting Systems,” which culminates with the design and creation of a lighting system for a tomb of hieroglyphs. “I love the structure and flow of the lessons,” said Joyce Dalton, a gifted and talented education specialist at Southside Elementary. “My students love the content and hands-on experiences. From discovering how real scientists look, to learning about what engineers do and don’t do, to meeting a real engineer, I see my students making progress in so many ways. They come to think of themselves as engineers because they are thinking like engineers. I see excitement as they build the projects and test them, and I see impressive science scores on the state test.”

Aaron Randolph

Kristy Kidd, Dr. Christine Deitz, and other staff members from the Jodie Mahony Center hosted trainings and workshops for Cabot educators focusing on the curricular components of STEM Starters+ as well as the use of the components to identify and develop talent in young students. The Museum of Science, Boston developed the engineering units used in the STEM Starters+ project. The EiE units use a cross disciplinary and hands-on approach to introduce the engineering design process to elementary students. Robinson attributes the success of STEM Starters+ to the development of an effective collaboration among teachers, researchers, educational specialists, school districts, and agencies to establish effective STEM opportunities in schools. “This collaboration was a perfect match of enthusiasm, expertise, and commitment. It just shows how powerful collaboration can be when it works,” Robinson said. “Dr. Cunningham brought her wealth of knowledge in engineering education. The Mahony Center brought its developed curriculum and teacher training knowledge. Our research methodologist, Dr. Jill Adelson, brought an understanding of early childhood education and a really powerful skill set for the analysis of classroom data in rigorously designed field studies. The final collaborators are our very effective school administrators who go above and beyond what a research and demonstration project requires. Leadership is what makes this collaboration work.” The program is currently in the fifth year of its research and development cycle, but two of the participating school districts have already expanded the program to additional schools. “At this phase of the project, we have worked with four school districts, and two school districts took the project district wide rather than in experimental schools only,” Robinson said. “You want projects like this to have a life beyond federal funding. Collaboration with school partners allows STEM Starters+ to be sustainable. I have no doubt that our partnership will continue to collaborate long beyond the life of the current grant. With universities, schools, and a museum working together, kids and teachers benefit from educational innovation.”

National Science Teachers Association shines spotlight on Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education

Janea Snyder — Fri, 30 Mar 2018 19:33:14 +0000

The Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock is the subject of a new short film featuring the center’s work in outreach programs to children and teachers.Each year the (NSTA) chooses a program to highlight at the conference, and this year, they chose ��Vlog��ý Little Rock’s Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education. The film debuted March 15 at the NSTA national conference in Atlanta, the largest science educators professional group in the U.S. The March conference reached 9,000 to 11,000 educators. Subsequently, the film will be distributed by NSTA-TV to the much larger membership. “We are thrilled for this kind of recognition for our work,” said Ann Robinson, professor and director of the Jodie Mahony Center and past president of the National Association for Gifted Children. “There are only about 20 centers in the U.S., and they picked ��Vlog��ý Little Rock.” The film tells the story of developing academic talents and meeting the needs of advanced learners in classrooms in the context of the center’s activities. One program in particular that drew interest was the center’s STEM Starters+ program, which investigates the effectiveness of creative and rigorous curricula with a focus on science and engineering and companion teacher professional development on spotting talent and serving children from low-income and ethnically diverse households. The program, funded by a five-year Research and Development Jacob K. Javits Grant from the U.S. Department of Education, operates in 23 elementary schools in the El Dorado, Pulaski County Special, North Little Rock and Little Rock School Districts. Students and teachers from Terry Elementary, one of the participating Little Rock schools, were featured in the film alongside Robinson; Dr. Christine Deitz, associate director of the Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education; and Kristy Kidd, project director of STEM Starters+. In the film, Robinson shares the philosophy of the Jodie Mahony Center saying, “If they’re not challenged, in other words, if there is not an optimal match between what a child knows now and what they need to learn next, then you don’t get the opportunity for every child to learn something new every day.” This NSTA-TV film allows the center to share this vision and hope for fulfilling the academic needs of all children. STEM Starters+ is just one of the ways the Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education supports and advocates for gifted education. The other areas of service are professional development and graduate education for teachers and schools through online graduate programs and Advanced Placement Summer Institutes for teachers; programs for talented youth such as Summer Laureate University for Youth; curriculum development through the Blueprints for Biography series; and research on talent development.

STEM Starters+ finds engineering lessons help first-graders

Jenny Lambert — Wed, 23 Nov 2016 20:26:49 +0000

After extensive investigation through the STEM Starters+ program, researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock found that even at the first-grade level, students can benefit from engineering lessons. Students who participated in the STEM Starters+ lessons not only developed a greater understanding of engineering, but they also learned more science and were more highly engaged in learning. “We have some really spectacular results from this study,” said Dr. Ann Robinson, professor of educational psychology and ��Vlog��ýLR Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education. “Before these students can even spell engineer, they can learn about it.” Robinson led the project as principal investigator in collaboration with the Museum of Science in Boston. She was joined by project director Kristy Kidd of ��Vlog��ýLR and external evaluator Dr. Jill Adelson of the University of Louisville. STEM Starters+ is a five-year, $2.5 million project funded by the U.S. Department of Education. It began with researchers introducing engineering curricula into four Arkansas school districts with high rates of culturally diverse and low-income children. Those school districts included Cabot, El Dorado, Little Rock, and the Pulaski County Special School District. “To put the increases of engineering knowledge results from this study in context, we found that STEM Starters+ produced effects approximately 50 percent greater than many other STEM curriculum interventions in education,” Robinson said. Prior to STEM Starters+, the school districts included in the study did not provide first-graders with engineering lessons. Researchers investigated whether students could be exposed to and engage in engineering programs at a much earlier age than is typical in elementary school education. “We have uncovered academic talents in young children through exposure to curriculum focused on the engineering design process and innovative thinking,” Robinson said. “Our approach is particularly important for low-income children who have had to develop talents for tinkering and improvising at an early age.” Researchers analyzed data for more than 1,300 students in 62 first-grade classrooms in 18 schools. They investigated the effects of the program by comparing students participating in STEM Starters+ and those learning science and math as usual. Both groups were assessed using a science content test constructed using resources from the and the . Students who participated in the STEM Starters+ curricula also completed an emotional and behavioral engineering engagement test following the program. “The new study of STEM Starters+ clearly shows that primary school children can increase their science achievement and engineering knowledge when provided with this exceptional learning opportunity,” said Ann Bain, dean of the ��Vlog��ýLR College of Education and Health Professions. “The participating teachers utilized the knowledge and skills gained through our professional development in order to make a positive difference in the lives of these children,” Bain said. “The research and project implementation have had amazing results that will hopefully result in future engineers and scientists.” In the future, the project will include further studies of children ranging from second to fifth grade. “Our collaboration with the Museum of Science, in charge of developing the engineering curricula implemented as part of STEM Starters+, provides us with the opportunity to learn a great deal more about how young children learn engineering, what engages them, and how schools can incorporate engineering design and innovation into classrooms,” Robinson said. For more information, contact Robinson at aerobinson@ualr.edu or visit the project’s website. Pictured above, Researchers involved in the STEM Starters+ project. From left: Dr. Jill L. Adelson, external evaluator, University of Louisville, Kristy Kidd, project director, Jodie Mahony Center, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Dr. Ann Robinson, principal investigator, Jodie Mahony Center, School of Education, University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Contributed photo.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

Innovative Collaboration equals success for Award-winning STEM Starters+ Program

National Science Teachers Association shines spotlight on Jodie Mahony Center for Gifted Education

STEM Starters+ finds engineering lessons help first-graders

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock