Blossom STEM: A Bilingual Parent-Child Co-Reading Platform for Promoting a Growth Mindset towards STEM Interest among English Language Learners (ELL) and Their Caregivers

Project Summary English language learners (ELLs) are a growing population and underserved with regards to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) resources. Of the limited supply of bilingual STEM materials, the majority follows an outdated, side-by-side presentation of English content and its foreign-language translation. On top of the many academic and socioeconomic obstacles, the ELL population must also contend with stereotypes and misperceptions that are detrimental to STEM achievement. Furthermore, outcome-based research thus far has concentrated on STEM educational and career achievement as the endpoint and has produced limited insight as to the underlying psychological and behavioral mechanisms that lead to those outcomes. This project will develop a much-needed resource for ELLs in the four-to-seven age segment, in the form of interactive STEM-themed storybooks that promote parent-child co-reading activities. The interactive storybooks will feature graduated bilingual text and audio in five blended ratios of the native language (L1) and English (L2) to accommodate the diverse variabilities of intergenerational language fluency. Culturally relevant stories that feature relatable role models for both the adult and child readers and infused with STEM-related themes will be engineered to tackle stereotypes and encourage involvement from parents who are limited English proficient. Mechanisms that influence ELL students’ STEM outcomes -- such as empowerment of parents to be involved in nurturing their children’s STEM interest and encouraging incremental beliefs among ELL students about their own intelligence -- will be baked into the eBook content and intervention design. This project aims to create a corpus of interactive eBooks that are blended in the English-Spanish pair and evaluate the system’s feasibility in Phase I and then efficacy and sustainability in Phase II for increasing children’s perceived competence in and affinity for STEM subject matters and their families’ support for their learning and interest in STEM subject matters.English Language Learner students are particularly underserved with regards to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) resources, undermining their overall STEM achievement. The current proposal seeks to develop and test a digital eBook reading platform, called Blossom STEM, to deliver STEM-themed children’s literature in bilingual blends and encourage parent-child dialogue through question prompts. Blossom STEM will be piloted with students and families to assess its effects on perceived competence in and affinity for STEM subjects.