Cultivating Equitable Educational Opportunities Through Multilayered Networks for Invention Education

• In Event: Creating Equitable Learning Environments to Support Students of Diverse Backgrounds and Needs

Abstract

Invention Education (IvE) promotes early and repeated exposure and engagement in invention and transdisciplinary ways of learning, thinking, and working within and beyond STEM. Creating learning environments to support IvE is challenging for individual teachers and schools, since individual educators may not have access to knowledge, networks and skills needed to engage students in transdisciplinary IvE learning. Drawing on records from a 2-year ethnographically-informed study of one InvenTeam, we explored a multilayered network cultivating equitable educational opportunities for a teacher and her students at an under-resourced school. Based on the ethnographic and discourse analyses, we demonstrate how supports by varied people and organizations can contribute to addressing the gaps in diversity in the fields of invention and engineering

Authors

• Audra Skukauskaite, University of Central Florida

• Cristina Lucia Saenz, University of Central Florida

• Michelle Sullivan, University of Central Florida

• Katrina Hull, McKay High School