Satisfying Foundation-Based Research in Informal STEM Education

• In Event: When Nothing Is Something: Null Results in Informal Learning Research

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose: Delivering educational programming is the core focus of many nonprofit organizations, including informal learning environments. Presenting null results to the funding agencies supporting the work can be a complicated task. This mini literature review will look at how recent education evaluators and researchers have tackled the issue.

Theoretical Framework: We use a framework for understanding and working with failures through null results is shown by Allan-Plantt et al (2021).
Methods: In this piece, a literature analysis of previously published reports that included null results will be compared and contrasted in regards to how the authors reported their findings. Using the -Platt et al (2021) framework, this paper will look at how evidence is provided to satisfy necessary feedback from different organizations for foundations and grant-funding agencies for educational programming outside of school. This concept is explored through analysis of literature and subsequent examples of reporting, as well as including null reporting of program efforts for different informal learning environments, such as data gathered and not used, and modalities adjusted from previous years in order to provide evidence of program occurrence. These examples, as seen with Cook and Therrian (2017) and Conlin et al (2019) will be explored as well as their subsequent applications in impact of data accepted within reporting through the discussion provided by Stevenson et al (2019). With approval from the original authors, I will compare/contrast how they handled null results.

Evidence: This regards the challenges set upon a nonprofit organization that must provide evidence of program occurrence, even with the occurrence of null results. This is especially relevant during a year in which programs needed to adjust their traditional offerings in the face of closures and shifting of program offerings during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21.

Results: Conlin et al’s argue for using data, no matter the results, in helping push research and program support even in the event of failure. Conclusively, in both Cook et al (2017) and Stevenson et al (2017), the argument for reporting null findings can help forward research in redesigning concepts and ideas for programming. This was especially so in Stevenson et al (2017), where the argument that the pressure to publish desired outcomes could be stifling to program creativity, especially within education outside of the traditional classroom (in this case, an environmental studies program for K-12). For program designers and educational researchers, this combined effort of allowing creativity and reporting through the use of null results can still be beneficial, especially with the application of the applied frameworks as supplied by the combined authors.

Conclusions: It is shown that null results still could serve as supporting evidence of program occurrence, as well as the display of changing metrics, including the application and gathering of null data to explain the nature and occurrence of programs in informal education.

Significance: As more informal education is funded by private funding agencies and foundations, a necessary ability to provide reporting of findings is necessary in order to continually receive funding.

Author

• Kristen Vogt Veggeberg, Boy Scouts of America