Leadership, Equity, STEM, and Systems Change in Informal STEM Institutions: A Museum-Based Extension Service Model

• In Event: Informal Science Institutions and Equity: Future-Oriented Historiography of Research and Practice

Abstract

Objectives. Our research goal is to understand how to transform Informal STEM Institution (ISI) culture, making ISIs more inclusive environments in which to learn, engage, and identify with STEM. Our model prepares teams of strategically placed individuals within ISIs to work together and with their colleagues as change agents enacting significant social change with respect to inclusion within their institutions. Our efforts address inclusion in ISIs and its relationship to broader participation in STEM, professional learning opportunities for ISI professionals with respect to inclusion, and a broadly applicable extension service model that works across a diversity of institutional sizes and structures.
Theoretical Framework. The model is grounded in knowledge diffusion and in a novel framework for understanding and action in inclusion, diversity, equity, access, and leadership (IDEAL). This IDEAL framework focuses on systems of oppression, STEM values and beliefs, and leadership for complex environments. The framework draws from critical theory, sociology, social psychology, the nature of STEM, and organizational change. The extension service model includes the IDEAL framework, associated content modules, and andrological facilitation techniques designed to build trusting relationships. Knowledge diffusion literature suggests that change agents trial innovations in real-world contexts either as experiments to see how a given innovation works in context or as showcases that evidence that the innovation is exemplary (Dearing, 2009). As such the model is designed to respond to context-dependent variation across sites.
Methods and Data Sources. We employed a mixed method approach, the center of which is a rich qualitative case study based on five of the eighteen participating ISIs. Data sources include program observations, end-of-day reflections, individual and group interviews, qualitative and quantitative surveys, and site visits. ISI teams were selected through competitive application. Participants have a wide range of demographic identities, titles, and disciplines. The 5 case study sites were determined based on field-wide applicability of the case study and completion of two years of the program.
Results. While data collection is ongoing, preliminary results suggest that normative shifts at sites arise—or don’t—given site-specific variations in three areas: critical mass of people concerned with IDEAL issues, leadership recognition of IDEAL issues, and systems change to continually address IDEAL issues. Analysis reveals that a large majority of participants perceive the impact of the program as personally transformative. Participants also value a new network of colleagues outside of their institution who are focused on IDEAL.
Significance. Diffusion aims to effect normative shifts in attitudes and behaviors, leading to systems change. The inherent messiness of diffusion systems tends to make attribution of causation to any one component inconclusive. IDEAL change agents need support in becoming and being change agents. In order to support normative shifts toward inclusion, they need a strong understanding of how systems of oppression consolidate power to few and how to interrupt those systems; the capacity to see and be open to multiple values and beliefs within disciplines; and practice leadership strategies for complex environments including norms that disrupt harmful status differentials.

Authors

• Liesl Chatman, Science Museum of Minnesota

• Marjorie Bullitt Bequette, Science Museum of Minnesota

• Megan Goeke, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Gretchen Haupt, Science Museum of Minnesota

• Choua Her, Science Museum of Minnesota

• Erin Villegas Strauss

• Travis Sandland

• Scott Van Cleeve, Science Museum of Minnesota