Morriss Math and Engineering Elementary School: A Case Study of K-5 STEM Education Program Development focuses on the development process of the Texarkana Independent School District’s STEM school program including the programs unique partnership with Texas A&M University, Texarkana regarding teacher development. The same school district is in the planning stages of expanding STEM to Middle and High School.

Using ethnographic methods to capture the emergence of the K-5 program and teacher professional development as well as the districts intentions for further expansion, Texarkana sought better understanding of the systems of community at work in order to continuously evaluate and agilely course correct so that they attain robust STEM programs from K -12 grades. This project was made possible with a grant from the OSLN.

Metro High School – An Emerging STEM School Community Study (ESSC) focuses on the Metro High School community and network in Columbus, Ohio. It is the first step in establishing a new approach to understanding how these educationally oriented, public networks form community and operate. The goal of this case study is to systematically explore the principles, processes, structure, and expectations associated with the Metro High School community and network. Unlike raw student assessment, this case study examines how to optimize community building processes as well as the networks. In this way, it is possible to recognize the strengths of each through systematic social science analysis and identify community and network processes that are present in a given place and situation. The larger goal of understanding the Metro networked community is to identify the key mechanisms that ensure sustainability and enable others to propagate the Metro High School model in different locales where STEM education is emerging.

In combining anthropological ethnography and public policy, we set out to conduct a research-based investigation to better understand effective education reform. In this approach, the study becomes a vehicle for providing information about the fundamental components of a learning community. This differs from the typical formal assessment and evaluation of educational programs that focus simply on whether the model is working or not. This study provides the opportunity to consider the foundational mechanisms, linkages, and potentialities that will sustain the school as a system and contribute to the overall community’s growth. In essence, this study does not assess, but instead points to ways that further strengthen relationships, inculcate good practices, and nurture long-term, sustainable processes. The study is presented in two volumes; Study Findings and Research Data. This project was conducted in partnership with the Battelle Center for Mathematics and Science Education Policy.

Empire State STEM Initiative (in press) focuses on the emergence of STEM reform in New York State both regionally and statewide. It represents a concerted effort to capture the voices across New York and help understand them in terms of consistent threads and unique regional issues. Ethnographic observers sat in on the organized dialogues from Long Island to Buffalo and six other locations in between recording the voices of industry, higher education, teachers, regents, and parents.

The organized data collected from the dialogues is being used to assist local, regional, and state decision makers in the development of strategies for implementing STEM educational reform throughout New York State.

Garbology

Audience: 3rd Grade through adult

In the early 1970s, Dr. William Rathje of the University of Arizona and a group of students applied archaeological methods to studying modern garbage. The results shattered many of the common held myths regarding what people threw away and consumed. Forty years later, PAST in partnership with Dr. Rathje evolved the university program into a transdisciplinary program for K-12 students, Garbology, a word Rathje coined. Piloted and developed at the Metro Early College High School in Columbus, Ohio the program partnered with the local landfill company SWACO, Ohio State University engineering students, and high school students. The challenge put forth by SWACO was to change the worldview of people about waste.

Garbology focuses on helping students identify their own waste footprint with an eye to changing behavior. Piloted at Metro high school the following year students began an organized effort to bring the program to schools across Ohio. In doing so they began to see how the program could be modified to have greater impact on the students they reached and insure that the program was both scalable and sustainable. Today the program has reached kids from third grade to twelfth and had accelerated the shift in thinking among students across Ohio.

Forensics in the Classroom

Audience: 7th through 9th grades

Forensics in the Classroom, affectionately known as FITC, captures the intrigue of a good mystery while providing students with solid training in scientific methodologies and concepts. Learning Algebra was never so fun. Through a series of short activities students explore the world of Forensic Sciences learning important concepts and processes along the way. In a race to solve the mystery of the missing persons, students are exposed to fingerprinting, Osteology, trajectories of spatter, DNA, analytical thinking and preparation of evidence.

Begun in 2006 through a partnership with Nebraska Wesleyan’s well respected Forensic Science Program and a local high school, the program today serves a much larger community providing experience for graduate students, professional development for teachers, solid partnerships within the community and lots of fun for students.

Cave Ecology

Audience: 10th through 12th grades

Humans impact most of the world today, leaving few places on earth that do not bear evidence that humans have been there. The Cave Ecology program evolved out of a graduate’s study of spiders at the Ohio State University, Newark. The caves of Kentucky are home to a specific species of spiders but they are also some of the most visited caves in the US park system. Teaming with high school students the project director, Meghan Rector designed a program that partnered with Kentucky State Parks to provide valuable data on the environmental health of the caves while using them as a wondrous biology and cultural anthropology classroom for students. As the program evolved students helped evolve the program so that it can be used in a variety of environments exposing students to the importance of environments and the impact we have on them.

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Growing America

Audience: 10th through 12th grades

In 2007 the world population shifted from more people living rurally to more people living in an urban setting. Ask any suburban or urban student where their food comes from and they will be hard pressed to answer. Growing America is an ambitious program that partners the local university student farm, with high school students and the community. The program is a multi pronged approach to engaging students in cycle of food from ‘seed to table’. Part of the program pairs college students with high school students in the development and production of produce on the student farm. Another part of the program enables students to develop and run a farmers market that provides an outlet for the student farm produce as well as partners with local growers. Still another prong of the program ties ethnographic knowledge capture of the foods that resonate with local ethnic populations to readily available, year round production.
The activity book currently in production shows how to take the whole program or parts of it into other communities and engage students and teachers.

Underwater Archaeology

Audience: Collegiate and Adult

America’s waters are rich with the remains of the world’s maritime heritage. The stewardship of these shipwrecks is important. PAST partners with state and federal agencies to study the archaeological sites through the mechanism of a field school. Each year students and adults from around the world join the team to learn how archaeological expeditions are done while providing the program’s partner with valuable information to help further the management and care for our maritime heritage.
Since the initiation of the underwater field school, the PAST teams have helped study two California Gold Rush shipwrecks, Yellowstone’s first hotel, a paddlewheeler, a World War II Corsair, two Civil War shipwrecks, and a cotton carrier producing publications and databases for the partnering agencies.