Science centers and museums often serve youth as their primary audience but how many have considered involving them in participatory projects that invite their shared leadership? Turns out…quite a few! For instance, the Sciencenter in New York partnered with the Greater Ithaca Activities Center to guide youth in gathering data on local water quality and discussing it with the community. Learn more about this project.
Below we share a series of new resources focused on youth engagement found in our Community Science Resource Library which hosts numerous resources for science center and museum professionals interested in community science. (In case you missed it or need a refresher: community science is a way of working on issues at the intersection of science and society, which centers community priorities, strengths, and leadership to co-create solutions).
New Youth Engagement Resources
Data Jams: Promoting Data Literacy and Science Engagement While Encouraging Creativity
Data Jam is a method for K-12 children to develop creative projects around existing data and can be used in both formal and informal educational environments. Students are provided with existing local data sets and explore the data with support from adult facilitators. The students then create a scientific product (poster, presentation, report) and a creative medium (dance, poetry, song, video, sculpture) to share their major findings from exploring the data. This engaging method helps develop a deeper understanding of core scientific concepts and methods.
Teen Science Café Network: Research Highlights
This resource highlights some of the major research findings from the first four years of the Teen Science Cafe Network (TSCN) project—a National Science Foundation-funded project that engages teens in collaborating with STEM experts on presentations and hands-on activities that explore science topics in-depth. These programs promote STEM learning among diverse participants, encourage teen empowerment, and build community relationships. The research showed that between 2020-2024, approximately 1,948 teens engaged in these programs across the country, with most between 14 and 16 years old. Other evaluation findings include common successes (like producing strong community partnerships) and common challenges (like struggling with low attendance).
Equitable Informal STEM Learning: Tools for Practitioners
The Youth Equity and STEM project (YESTEM) focused on understanding and supporting equitable practice in informal STEM learning. Their website contains a range of tools and resources you can use with your team to better understand and engage with complex issues related to equity and social justice, specifically when working with young people. In one example, an afterschool educator describes how the approaches helped her re-engage a struggling student. When he expressed frustration about creating an e-textile bookmark, an open conversation revealed he was willing to engage in the same kind of difficult technical work to create an e-textile fanny pack, which he viewed as more valuable and interesting than a bookmark.
BONUS! Resource on Planetary Health
This resource, from ASTC’s Seeding Action Initiative describes and provides examples of five major recommendations for communicating about planetary health. Today, most people know of and believe in negative human impacts on the planet, but very few are actively participating in potential solutions. This guide responds to this shortfall by offering recommendations for inviting and inspiring people to take action toward a more sustainable future.
More to Come!
Keep an eye out for another new batch of resources this spring focused on effectively establishing and building community-based partnerships.
If you’d like to stay informed about the Community Science Initiative, you can sign up for our mailing list below and join our next Community Science Clinic to meet and discuss with like-minded professionals working on Community Science projects around the country. In our April clinic, we will be joined by a Geospatial Justice Facilitator from trubel&co to discuss their approach to integrating STEM education and civic innovation to prepare the next generation to address complex societal issues.
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