Assessing STEM Identities in Intergenerational Informal STEM Programming

This research analyzed two years of data from a 5-year NSF-funded informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program. Our program aims to support development and maintenance of STEM identities in intergenerational teams learning geospatial technologies and conservation science to develop and implement community land-use projects. The conservation science and technology identity (CSTI) surveys were developed as a potential method to characterize and quantify a person's STEM identity. The surveys examined five identity constructs for science and technology: competence, performance, external recognition, self-recognition, and ways of seeing and being. CSTI was administered before the workshop to evaluate the participants' historical STEM identity, and after to determine the workshop's impact on science and technology competences and ways of seeing and being. CSTI was also administered as a delayed-postsurvey after the year-long project was completed. This work is needed due to: (1) the importance of the development and maintenance of STEM identity for persistence in engaging in science-related work; (2) the lack of reliable, quantitative measures supported by research on the constructs of identity; and (3) the need for development of empirical instruments to determine the impact of informal science learning programs on STEM identification.