Students’ Most Favored Learning Environment Aspects at a Middle School Summer Math and Technology Camp

• In Event: Creating Equitable Informal Mathematics/STEM Learning Environments: Addressing Racial Injustice and Underrepresentation

Abstract

Informal STEM learning environments, which occur outside of regular school hours, can have a favorable influence on underrepresented groups, such as girls and minoritized racial/ethnic groups. Research findings have shown that these programs improve participants’ content knowledge and perspectives, such as a sense of their own competence and valuing of STEM (Morton & Smith-Mutegi, 2022; Robinson-Hill, 2022; Yu et al., 2022). Culturally responsive practices have been shown to be beneficial in these settings (Yu et al., 2022). Despite strong evidence to this effect, some unintended unfavorable outcomes sometimes occur, such as a decrease in likeliness to pursue a STEM career, perhaps due to a reduced perception of oneself as being capable of success through comparison with others (Boston & Cimpian, 2018; Robinson-Hill, 2022).

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the middle school students’ perceptions of their experiences at an intensive one-week residential mathematics and technology summer camp. Specifically, 47 middle school students completed a questionnaire consisting of four open-ended questions on the program’s learning environment.

Participant comments focused almost entirely on favorable aspects of the learning environment. In order of frequency, the most common were the staff (their helpful, enthusiastic, and encouraging teaching style), use of small-group work that included a high degree of communication and helpfulness, and active learning (e.g., hands-on and interactive). Younger students (rising seventh graders) were proportionally more likely to name active learning than older students (rising eighth graders), and students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups were proportionally more likely to identify staff as a positive factor in their learning experience. In comparison with school, 80% of the participants preferred the camp environment due to its interactivity, more accessible presentation of material, and safe environment), 10% preferred the school environment (e.g., because school has more subjects), and 10% expressed enjoyment of both environments. Two participants addressed negative camper interactions in opposite manners. One noted that the camp staff did a good job of addressing bullying, but another indicated that some peers made sexist, racist, and homophobic comments that detracted from the learning environment.

The top three favorable aspects of the learning environment align with current literature for school youth in general and in informal learning environments (e.g., Author et al. 2021). However, it is interesting that proportionally more students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups reported the importance of staff in their mathematics learning experience. Perhaps this is because this short-term, informal learning environment had the luxury of choosing an especially high-quality, experienced staff who had high expectations for all students and supported them accordingly, and this might not reflect the experiences of minoritized racial/ethnic groups in formal schooling (e.g., Breese et al., 2023; Copur-Gencturk et al., 2019). Informal learning environments can inform formal school practices through their favorable aspects, but they should be examined further for their potential biases toward specific student groups, which might be more salient in environments that sometimes have more informal interactions within or outside of the academic portion.

Authors

• Lynda R. Wiest, University of Nevada - Reno

• Heather Crawford-Ferre, Nevada Department of Education