PROJECT BACKGROUND

Culturally Sustaining STEAM (NSF DRL # 2115488) is a collaborative design-based research project, involving members from research, evaluation, and programs, which explores promising practices for supporting culturally sustaining, community-centered, asset-based STEAM family programming in rural communities (Paris, 2012). This approach centers communities and aims to acknowledge and shift power from researchers to practitioners. As part of our research-practice partnership (RPP), we have been reflecting on how to apply this programming approach internally to our project team to break down silos between researchers and practitioners, deepen the collaboration, and leverage each of our assets by bringing in multiple perspectives to strengthen the data analysis process through co-meaning making.

To measure the impact of the program on participating families, we have been conducting interviews with families at multiple points during and after their participation in the program. To strengthen our partnership and effectively move our larger goals forward, we have been exploring the process of co-meaning making by collaboratively analyzing family interviews, which has been inspired by the work being conducted at the New York Hall of Science (Aucapina et al. 2024).

SESSION GOAL & FORMAT

In this interactive session a collaborative team representing research, evaluation, and practice will share their co-meaning-making process around research data. We’ll discuss our process, each team member’s experience in participating in the process, the strengths of bringing in multiple perspectives, the conditions supporting this change, and emerging challenges. Attendees will work in small groups and engage in a hands-on experience of co-meaning making using actual interview data. This will be followed by a large group reflection on the process, strengths, challenges, and how they do or might apply this approach in their own work.