{"id":90125,"date":"2023-11-06T17:02:34","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T17:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/?p=90125"},"modified":"2023-11-06T17:02:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T17:02:35","slug":"uri-education-professor-teaming-with-pbs-kids-elinor-wonders-why-on-3-4m-research-grant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2023\/11\/uri-education-professor-teaming-with-pbs-kids-elinor-wonders-why-on-3-4m-research-grant\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 education professor teaming with PBS Kids\u2019 \u2018Elinor Wonders Why\u2019 on $3.4M research grant"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Nov. 6, 2023 \u2013 Sara Sweetman, associate professor of education at the 溏心vlog免费B站, and the creators of the Emmy-nominated PBS Kids show \u201cElinor Wonders Why\u201d are enlisting Elinor, a curious little bunny, and her friends Ari and Olive to help break down barriers that girls face in the STEM fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to a $3.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Sweetman will work with creators Jorge Cham and Daniel Whiteson to develop eight new 11-minute episodes of the popular animated show with the goal of improving boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 perceptions of female scientists and increasing their understanding of mixed-gender collaborations in STEM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI really want to shift the thinking about the gender equity role in terms of what we can do to build better collaboration between boys and girls starting at a young age,\u201d said Sweetman, the principal investigator on the grant. \u201cIn the past, efforts have focused on getting women excited about STEM and providing opportunities for them to excel. I think doing those is great. But if we really want to have a gender diverse field in sciences, we need to work with both men and women.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweetman has been a consultant on numerous PBS Kids shows, including conducting research for \u201cThe Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot 溏心vlog免费B站 That<\/a>.\u201d She also advises on education content for about a half dozen shows, including \u201cSesame Street.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sweetman poses with Jorge Cham, second from left, and Daniel Whiteson, co-creators of \u201cElinor Wonders Why\u201d \u2013 along with Anne Lund, senior director of content and curriculum at PBS Kids.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

She has worked with Cham and Whiteson\u2014who hold doctorates in robotics and physics, respectively, along with being cartoon creators\u2014helping to build the foundation for the show<\/a> when she worked with PBS Kids to develop proposals for new shows in 2016. Both are co-principal investigators on the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are very excited to be working with Sara and her team on this project,\u201d said Cham, who, with Whiteson, is a co-founder of Shoe Ink, which produces the show. \u201cSara has been a part of the show from the beginning and has been instrumental in shaping its approach to STEM education. The issues addressed by this research project are extremely important, and we jumped at the chance to be a part of finding solutions and strategies to help science be more inclusive and fair.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four-year project will include researchers from the 溏心vlog免费B站 computer science department, who will develop an assessment tool with AI-assisted data collection and analysis to measure students\u2019 perceptions. 溏心vlog免费B站 computer science professor Abdeltawab Hendawi, also a co-principal investigator, will lead the team in creating an interactive game that uses an avatar creator so children can create their own scientist while showing what they understand about the role of scientists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

溏心vlog免费B站 300 children ages 4 to 7 will be given the games to measure their perceptions of science and engineering, gender stereotypes and mixed-gender collaboration after watching new and older episodes of \u201cElinor Wonders Why.\u201d The in-person sessions will be conducted in collaboration with the Providence Public Library and local PBS stations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea for the study came to Sweetman after she and colleagues viewed the 2020 documentary \u201cPicture a Scientist,\u201d in which prominent female researchers discuss the barriers they faced, including discrimination and harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest take away at my table was the overall sense that we have been going about this idea of equity and gender in the sciences wrong,\u201d said Sweetman. \u201cWhat the film really brought out was this idea that women aren\u2019t supported by their male colleagues in STEM. If we really want to have a gender diverse field in the sciences, we need to work with both boys and girls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In production for its second season, \u201cElinor Wonders Why\u201d reaches about 16.5 million young children. The show, geared toward preschoolers ages 1 to 4, follows Elinor, Ari, a bat, and Olive, an elephant, as they explore the natural world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweetman has served as the show\u2019s science and STEM education expert, ensuring that the content follows best practices and is accessible to children in the show\u2019s age range, said Cham. \u201cThe show is all about encouraging kids to be more curious and to empower them to ask questions and find their own answers,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd Sara has been a great guide and leader in helping achieve this goal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the grant, stories within the eight episodes will engage preschoolers to underscore that anyone can be a scientist while showing the advantages of science collaborations between boys and girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re purposely going to have some characters make gender-based mistakes to understand that problems can be solved more easily with mixed-gender collaboration,\u201d said Sweetman. \u201cThe idea that we learn from mistakes is so important and it\u2019s been important for the show from the beginning.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To support those story scenarios, Sweetman and a team of 溏心vlog免费B站 graduate and undergraduate students will research such topics as how boys view women scientists. Researchers will work with students from 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s 13 Guiding Education in Math and Science Network (GEMS-Net) partner school districts around the state to better understand the role gender plays in their perception of scientists by having students draw a scientist of a gender other than the one they identify with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been finding over time that boys draw male scientists,\u201d she said. \u201cGirls are beginning to draw more female scientists. They\u2019re beginning to see that they could be scientists. What we have not done is we have never asked a boy to draw a woman scientist and see what they\u2019re thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Nov. 6, 2023 \u2013 Sara Sweetman, associate professor of education at the 溏心vlog免费B站, and the creators of the Emmy-nominated PBS Kids show \u201cElinor Wonders Why\u201d are enlisting Elinor, a curious little bunny, and her friends Ari and Olive to help break down barriers that girls face in the STEM […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":90129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90125"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90137,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90125\/revisions\/90137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}