Low-income communities are constantly affected by environmental inequities, with the children of these communities being the most vulnerable to these negative impacts. Increasingly, interventions to reverse such inequities focus on educational interventions supported by technology, including structured access to computers and the internet. A web-infused science, technology, engineering, and math (WI-STEM) after school program that was designed to expose disenfranchised youths to natural resources and give them access to modern technology is expected to support student participants' ecological awareness and to increase their pro-environmental attitudes and actions.
The current research evaluated a WI-STEM program serving 7-12 year old African-American Children in Oakland, California. The program was designed to have a positive impact on the children's understanding of natural sciences. The research asked three central questions: does participation and completion of this WI-STEM program affect the children's environmental awareness, environmental attitudes, and environmental actions?
Two groups of 10 students in economically disadvantaged neighborhood of Oakland, California, participants and non-participants were surveyed and individually interviewed before and after completion of an after-school WI-STEM program. Twenty Likert-style survey questions were developed on the computer (using the survey generator Qualtics), then read out loud to each participant, to ensure understanding.
Results/Conclusions
Upon the completion of the survey, each participant was interviewed using open-ended methodologies.Results showed that although the WI-STEM program participants had somewhat greater environmental awareness, attitudes, and actions than that non-participants, content of the program was poorly connected to the children's lived experience.Concrete information connecting STEM information to the children's local environment appeared to be more important than connecting STEM content to internet resources.