Forests After Florence: an informal community-engaged STEM research project promotes STEM identity in disaster-impacted students

ABSTRACT

Background

Natural disasters, such as hurricanes, can have lasting impacts on a community

Purpose

This research evaluated how participation in an STEM education intervention after an ecological disaster affected students’ persistence, resilience, and STEM identity

Sample

Hurricane Florence impacted college students (N = 50) were recruited

Design and Methods

Participants completed pre-test, post-test and daily diary measures before, during and after they completed an intervention where they collected forestry data in their home hurricane-impacted communities

Results

Participants reported higher STEM identity following the intervention learning experience. Daily interest and enjoyment in science was higher on days when they reported more positive experiences. For resilience, for male students, but not female students, the learning opportunity fostered resilience. Male students reported higher STEM identity on days when they reported more positive learning experiences

Conclusion

These findings highlight the benefit of STEM education learning opportunities, particular for disaster-impacted students.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• STEM identity
• gender
• forestry
• hurricanes

Availability of Supporting Data

Supporting data can be provided upon request to the first author.

Authors’ Contributions

KLM, MK, DO and DE designed the study and trained the students prior to the intervention, MK and MC implemented the intervention, KLM surveyed participants, prepared the data file, developed the hypotheses, conducted the analyses and drafted the paper, AJ assisted in preparing the datafile and conducting the analyses. All authors read and helped to edit the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants, the community members who assisted the students during the intervention and the undergraduate research assistants to assisted in cleaning the datafile.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation Grant DUE- 1906366.