Our objective was to develop, implement, and refine an archaeological afterschool program to support and engage youth as multidisciplinary STEM learners.
Research Question 1: How does the archaeology after-school program support adolescents’ participation as STEM learners?
| Our research highlights the following: • The lessons are developed to support middle school students’ participation as STEM learners and these are implemented in such a way that students are becoming familiar with and/or applying science and mathematics concepts and practices. Example lessons include Artifact Identification, Working with Data, and Local Landscapes. • Students are able to identify ways in which they participated as STEM learners. This often was in comparison to concepts they were learning in school, particularly science and mathematics concepts. • Participation was often hidden within the various lessons. As stated by Kitkat, “I think the atlatls because when we were doing them, we didn’t really think about science, we were just like having fun, just throwing them. We weren’t really thinking about the science behind it. After a few tries, I realized that I put force on it, and that’s when I realized that was like science.” |  |
Research Question 2: How does participation in the archaeology after-school program shape and shift adolescent’s identity as a STEM person?
 | Our research highlights the following: • Given the following ten identities, students most often identified themselves as investigator, tinkerer, and/or inventor. • The lessons most often identified as shaping their identity included Atlatl and Experimental Archaeology, Faunal Analysis, Floral Analysis and Cordage Making, and Stone Tools (flintknapping). • Logician was more often identified when engaged in the lessons entitled Pythagorean Theorem and Total Station. |
Research Question 3: How does participation as informal educators in the archaeology after- school program and ongoing professional development (PD) shift graduate/undergraduate students, and archaeologists’ perspectives on ways to support adolescents as STEM learners?
| Our research highlights the following: • As informal educators, graduate and undergraduate students are learning through their own personal tensions and experiences within the afterschool program. They expressed the following growth points: ○ asking better questions and not giving middle school students the answer (e.g., take a step back); ○ becoming more flexible and adaptable; ○ gaining content knowledge in the field of archaeology; and ○ learning how to interact with middle school students, which was often outside their comfort zone. • Educator/archaeologists’ are also experiencing areas of growth through this experience: ○ stepping outside of their comfort zone and being flexible (i.e., being prepared to not be prepared); and ○ shifting mindsets and pedagogical practices regarding the balance and interplay in formal and informal approaches to the program. |  |
Graduate Student Spotlight
As part of the experience, Jessica Coles engaged in an informal educator action research project. We “spotlight” Jessica’s project to highlight how participation in an informal afterschool program shifted a college students’ perspective on supporting youth as STEM learners. This is presented as a remix of statements from Jessica’s perspective.
Self-Exploration: Developing this action research project took a combination of gathering data, making observations, and a decent amount of analysis. Throughout the first few sessions of the afterschool archaeology program, I was able to get a sense of each student’s behavioral tendencies. For example, I observed that some students preferred to work alone and were super engaged in the content and task at hand, while others were also engaged, but preferred to work in large groups. I decided that the “Lone Wolves,” or those who gravitated into their own bubble and struggled with engaging in the activities and other students to their fullest, were the most interesting to work with. I decided to voice record some of the activities that we did to identify which students I wanted to focus my study on.
Purpose of Action Research Project: The purpose of my study was to get those disinterested students to engage in the activity, as well as getting the “Lone Wolves” to engage with their peers. More specifically, my focus was to work on enhancing student engagement with their peers, as well as student engagement with the activity in general. The first step of my plan was to do some research on the most effective ways to engage students with the activity once they lose their focus, and how to inspire students to work with their peers in group activities. I developed methods (or strategies) discussed in research on how to engage an interested and motivated “Lone Wolf” with their peers in the group, as well as research on how to engage the disinterested and unmotivated “Lone Wolf.” My prior experience with kids also influenced my ideas.
Data Collection and Analysis: I was able to implement different strategies with four or five students per session, and each session lasted about two hours. I was able to develop my plan and methods of approach by about the fourth program session, and the rest of the sessions were where I experimented with my approach and my collected data. In each session, I worked with students who were motivated and unmotivated “Lone Wolves,” and I made sure to use my strategies consistently throughout the sessions.
I collected my qualitative data through observations made directly during activities, and I also audio recorded the sessions. Audio recording allowed me to listen and analyze whether the strategies that I was using were working, as sometimes it is hard to take consistent notes during the activity. My data consisted of notes that included the effectiveness of the strategies, meaning whether the students became more engaged in response to my statements, questions, or proposals. My notes also consisted of whether the students increased their involvement with peers in response to my approach. They also included notes regarding any changes I thought I should make to my approach, and which specific students were changing their behavior in response to my actions.
Results: The methods yielded positive results, as the students did become more engaged with their peers and the activities. When I encouraged the motivated “Lone Wolf” to brainstorm or ask their peers what they thought about certain activities, the students sparked conversation and interest. This result was observed as the students had long-lasting conversations after the motivated student-initiated discussion with the uninterested students (at times guided by me with open ended questions). Thus, engagement of unmotivated “Lone Wolves” was improved, and the motivated “Lone Wolf” became more involved in teamwork.
When I asked the motivated “Lone Wolf” to ask their fellow peers questions about the activities, and to discuss their opinions, this also enhanced teamwork, as conversations about the topics lasted and other students asked further questions to the motivated “Lone Wolf.” In addition, when I asked the motivated “Lone Wolf” to explain to the other students what were the key aspects of the activity or asked them to explain what they liked about the activity to their peers, their engagement did increase at that point in time, and it seemed to increase their engagement in the following activities as well. I assume that by speaking more with their peers, they became more comfortable with them, and continued to talk with them throughout the sessions, as if my methods somewhat helped them build relationships.
By far the most successful method of getting students engaged with the activity was by relating it to things that they enjoyed. The unmotivated “Lone Wolves” showed increased involvement and focus when I related the activities to their interests such as sports, drawing, or music. This was observed and the students even stated that they were having more fun than they were in previous activities where they did not discuss or relate them to their interests in some way. Long term, across the four sessions where I was able to implement these strategies, the students responded positively relating their tasks to their daily lives and interests as I allowed them to continue to go about activities in this way, as well as take breaks to discuss their day, talk about what they enjoy, and play some music. This result was shown predominantly in their final experiment, where they created a PowerPoint presentation. I encouraged the students who tended to doodle in their notebooks to make a drawing of the stone tools that they worked hard to build for our experiment; I would ask the students who loved Pokémon to relate their cordage activity to those characters, asking “What character in Pokémon do you think is as strong as the cordage you braided?”, to which they responded excitedly; and another example is when I told the students that they could design their bar charts and PowerPoint slides to the color schemes of their favorite TV shows, which they loved.
Post Reflection: This action research project supported my growth as an informal educator because I was able to work towards better methods of student engagement. With my efforts, students went from simply sitting in a group, to collaborating. I was able to expand the students’ skills outside of the classroom and develop them through more laid-back conversations and fun activities. I benefited because I was in a position where I had to adapt to each student’s personality and their response to my ideas and strategies, as well as be flexible with the differences from session to session. Adaptation is super important in all careers, and so are teaching skills, which I got to explore. My future career goals are in the health field, as well as being a professor, so this afterschool program allowed me to gain more experience in using teaching skills that I also practiced in my education minor courses including communication, collaboration, patience, empathy, and adaptability.
As part of their experience working with the afterschool program, Binghamton University students were asked to do a final project. In addition to those posted below, some can be found in specific lesson plans (e.g., https://archaeolessons.com/lesson-plans/floral-analysis-and-cordage-making/).
An undergraduate, Cate, wrote a blog post on her experience working with one group in the afterschool program on their research project. It is presented below in full.
Blog: Student Research Projects
As a part of the after school archeology program, students are asked to create a research project. The students were divided into two groups, and I worked closely with one group of students to design an experiment, produce data, and create a poster. My group of students chose to work with atlatl throwing, a lesson that had been taught previously. An atlatl is a tool used to throw spears with a greater leverage than simply using your arm. We began by asking the students to create a hypothesis to test, and after some brainstorming, they came up with the question, “does a five-foot or six-foot dart travel farther when thrown with an atlatl?” We then discussed how we could create our hypothesis, and the students decided on the hypothesis that the five-foot darts would be thrown farther because of their lighter weight. Our next step was to go outside and test this hypothesis. The four students each took turns throwing three, five-foot darts with an atlatl. Then, one student would hold the end of a measuring tape at the starting point while another student brought the measuring tape to each dart. A third student recorded the lengths, in meters, in a chart. I found the students to be more engaged in the experiment when they each had a specific role, and we switched each student’s task so they all were able to throw, measure, and record.
We then discussed the importance of having precise data. It took the students a few tries to be accurate in their measurements. Some of the students had a tendency to round off the lengths the first time through, but eventually they got the hang of observing and recording exact measurements. The students then repeated each step with the six-foot darts.
In a subsequent class, the group was asked to create a poster to explain their experiment. We began by introducing the aspects of a research poster and brainstorming a title that would best describe the experiment. Students also played around with the design of the poster on this day. During the next class, we discussed who would work on each section. One student decided to write the abstract, another wanted to work on the introduction, and the other two worked together to write the method section. We worked with individual students to talk about the important aspects of the section they were going to write.
The next class began with a presentation about how to create graphs of the data that had been collected. The students used google sheets to record their data, calculate averages, and then use those averages to create bar graphs and tables to display what we had found. During this class, the students also worked on the results and conclusions sections of their poster, and added in photos that had been taken.
My role during this class was to assist with the process of evaluating and interpreting the results of our data collection. After averages were calculated and graphs were made, we discussed the importance of adding a title, labeling the X and Y axes, writing a note explaining the figure, and including units. I found it very important to not directly answer the students’ questions, but instead guide them through the process of coming up with an answer for themselves.
During the final class, the group presented their projects to other students. They began by deciding which aspect of the poster each student would explain. When it was time for them to present, they took turns going through written sections, charts, and pictures and describing the process. We asked them questions about how they might change their method in the future, and conducting the experiment and designing the graphs themselves, rather than how they typically the graphs themselves, rather than how they typically participant throw more times. When asked how this might change their results, they came to the conclusion that having more participants might cancel out outliers, and give them more consistent results. After presentations were done, we went back outside to throw the darts again, and we discussed what other questions we could test. The students noticed that some ran before throwing, while others stood in place, so they suggested testing whether this might affect how far the darts were thrown. They also noticed how different students had different methods of throwing the darts, which might account for the student-to-student differences.
The experiment provided students with STEM-based skills to help them understand the rigors of a scientific experiment. Some of the many skills they learned throughout this process included:
- how to test a hypothesis using the scientific method
- how to create a research poster
- how to revise an experiment for future trial
- how to make graphs and charts from collected data
It was hoped that this program would instill in the students a deeper understanding of what is required to design and test a hypothesis, and from what I observed with these students, the process can be both educational and enjoyable. The students expressed to me the fun they had conducting the experiment and designing the graphs themselves, rather than how they typically learn in a classroom — reading a textbook.