She Space International - an Educational Project to Advance and Empower Female Students in STEM Focusing on Space Science.
Abstract
Previous research investigating the underrepresentation of women in science and technology fields has identified various causes. These include a lack of inspiring female role models, limited exposure of girls to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects, gender-biased stereotypes, and preferences for different learning styles between genders.
The goal of She Space International is to empower female students to engage with various scientific fields, and the field of space science especially. The project emphasizes the quality and development of the research process, rather than outcomes. She Space International is a first-of-its-kind international educational program for the advancement of STEM among 14-16 year-old high school girls. The She Space program began in 2018 at the Earth and Planetary Image Facility at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel in memory of Devorah Blumberg. In 2019, the program was expanded internationally to include research institutions from 4 countries: Israel, Germany, Brazil, and the USA. During the project, teams of students from each country, guided and mentored by faculty and students from a research group at each institution, embarked on a joint study through which participating students were exposed to cutting-edge academic research and utilized imaging and communications collected or provided by the satellites and space agencies of their respective home countries. In our presentation, we will present the She Space International project and its outcome. In addition, we will discuss the impact that She Space International had on our participants' comfort with science and their perceptions of their science abilities.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMED34A..07A
- Keywords:
-
- 0855 Diversity;
- EDUCATION;
- 1974 Social networks;
- INFORMATICS;
- 6630 Workforce;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES;
- 6620 Science policy;
- PUBLIC ISSUES