Impacts of an informal teen stem café program on the stem experiences and perceptions of teen participants
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One of the most underutilized resources that has great potentiaacl to boost the STEM experiences of students are informal science centers (Anderson, Druger, James, Katz, & Ernisse, 2001; Dierking& Falk, 1994). To improve the STEM experiences of teens, the Texas State Aquarium has become a host for a local chapter of the Teen Science Café Network. It is hoped that this Teen Science Café program will positively impact its participants, as it has been proposed that by “acting like a scientist,” people are able to not only better learn STEM material, but also the true Nature of Science (Summers & Abd-El-Khalick, 2019). To evaluate if the Teen Café program is positively impacting participants, a pilot case study was conducted on three teen participants. The teens were interviewed at the beginning and end of the school year and surveyed before and after each monthly event (September 2018 – April 2019). The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions and open-ended survey questions were coded via open coding methodology. The four Likert-scaled questions on the surveys were analyzed with a paired t-test. Interviews revealed in all three cases, overall perceptions of STEM fields, STEM professionals, and the Café program trended positively. In two out of three cases, participants were inspired to consider pursuing specific STEM careers. A paired t-test (α ≤ 0.05) of the pre/post survey questions revealed significant changes in participant responses over time for questions regarding content knowledge and general excitement towards STEM topics, and positively trending results for questions regarding STEM careers and communicating STEM information with others. However, while there were many positive impacts made on participants, they still displayed very stereotypical silo views of STEM fields.