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.

 

For more information, please see the following publications:

Falk, J. H., Dierking, L. D., Staus, N. L., Wyld, J. N., Bailey, D. L., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). The Synergies research-practice partnership project: a 2020 Vision case study. Cultural Studies of Science Education 11, 195-212. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-015-9716-2

Falk, J. H., Staus, N. L., Dierking, L. D., Penuel, W., Wyld, J., Bailey, D. (2016). Understanding youth STEM interest pathways within a single community: the Synergies project. International Journal of Science Education, Part B, 11, 195-212. DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/21548455.2015.1093670

Falk, J. H., Staus, N., Dierking, L. D., Wyld, J., Bailey, D., & Penuel, W. R. (2015). The Synergies project: Preliminary results and insights from two years of longitudinal survey research. Museology Quarterly, 29(1), 15-21.

Shaby, N., Staus, N., Dierking, L. D., & Falk, J. H. (2021). Pathways of interest and participation: How STEM-interested youth navigate a learning ecosystem. Science Education, 105(4), 628–652. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21621
 

Staus, N.L., Falk, J.H., Penuel, W., Dierking, L., Wyld, J., & Bailey, D. (2020). Interested, disinterested, or neutral: Exploring STEM interest pathways in a low income urban community. EURASIA Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education. 16(6), em1853. https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/7927

Staus, N.L., Lesseig, K., Lamb, R., Falk, J.H., & Dierking, L. (2019). Validation of a measure of STEM interest for adolescents. International Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. DOI https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-019-09970-7