Involving Native American Communities NASA-OSU program aims to open minds to earth and space science by adding cultural elements to curriculum
N
ative American communities, storytelling and earth and space curriculum are coming together in one ambitious project made possible through a $3.3 million NASA cooperative agreement with Oklahoma State University’s College of Education and Human Sciences. Funding from NASA’s Science Activation program is uniting three of Oklahoma’s Native American communities with OSU professors to develop a new curriculum on earth and space science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) lessons. Dr. Kat Gardner-Vandy, assistant professor of aviation and space, is the principal investigator of the program. While many such programs exist, Gardner-Vandy believes this is one of the first formal earth-sky programs to highlight Oklahoma’s diverse Native American culture that will result in a curriculum that meets state standards. “Our goal is to work with individual nations and collaborate with them,” said Gardner-Vandy, who is a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “In Native American culture, it’s important to include elders, the community as a whole, culture and language into education efforts.”
The program, titled “STEM Pathways for Native Americans: Bridging Native Knowledge of Earth and Sky with Traditional STEM Programming through the ‘Native Earth-Native Sky’ Program,” will incorporate Native American stories related to earth and space science into middle school STEM curriculum. The curriculum will first be tested in a summer camp format and then become available online as an open educational resource. “In a traditional curriculum, there is often a very Westernized way of looking at science,” GardnerVandy said. “It might include the scientific method and an experiment, but it won’t incorporate storytelling and language. Our Native EarthNative Sky curriculum will incorporate all these things. It will look like STEM, language arts and social studies together.”
Dr. Kat Gardner-Vandy
12 O S U R E S E A R C H M AT T E R S
STORY BRITTANY BOWMAN AND CHRISTY LANG | PHOTOS MITCH HARRISON AND PHIL SHOCKLEY
