Voices from the Field: STEM and STEAM

Source: California Afterschool Network

By Sam Piha

Carol Tang, Ph.D, is an expert on science in afterschool and she is also the Senior Vice President for Learning and Public Engagement at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. We interviewed Carol regarding STEM and STEAM in afterschool and her responses are below.

Q: Do you think that the movement from STEM to STEAM was a positive one for afterschool providers? What value or advantages did this shift create?

A: The move to broaden the concept of STEM to include arts was really important for afterschool providers and educators in informal organizations. For example, the federal government’s Institute of Museum and Library Services began to fund STEM initiatives in history museums, art museums, and cultural museums beyond science centers, zoos/aquariums, and natural history museums. I think that this helped everyone take STEM out of a silo where it may have seemed inaccessible. 

But what worried me was that STEM and STEAM became acronyms that felt like a checklist of required elements. And I don’t think it should be a strict recipe—my hope is that these concepts are just ways to engage the natural curiosity and foster mastery in young people. I always hope that afterschool providers are inspired by the fact that there are math and science teaching moments everywhere—even during sports, snack time, playground games—and not just during homework help time. When I was the Director of the Coalition for Science Afterschool, we decided to use “science” rather than STEM simply because we were hoping to demystify and personalize the concept and we felt that any acronym made it feel prescribed rather than inclusive.

Q: In your observation of youth programs, what do you think they most often get wrong in the design of STEAM activities? 

A: As always, my personal opinion is that when afterschool experiences prioritize school standards and academic outcomes, we are not doing what we do best for young people. I think when youth programs do not feel confident about leading STEAM activities or where they put cognitive goals first, they rely on activities where there is a clear “answer” or where the result is predictable. This is understandable because no practitioner wants to have an activity that doesn’t fit into the available time slot, are hard to set up/clean up, and where participants don’t get the answers to the questions they raise. This is true for both science AND art projects so it’s not unique to STEAM. 

So, the best STEAM projects might be the ones where youth are exploring their own interests and they may not get the expected results. Or they may want to work at their own pace or in groups or individually. And maybe most importantly, the best projects might be ones where there are more questions at the end than there are easy answers.

We may have to accept in art, science, and STEAM projects that participants may not be satisfied with their results, that they think they “failed,” or they are not finished at the end of the day. I don’t think it’s easy to design high-quality STEAM activities but if one accepts these outcomes as still leading to a growth mindset (so important for STEM!) and that it fosters intrinsic curiosity, that allows us to re-define what “high-quality” means.

Q: In your observation of youth programs, what do you think they most often get right in the design of STEAM activities? 

A: What I’ve enjoyed the most in observing afterschool professionals implementing STEAM is that the providers themselves learn to appreciate what science can be. So many of us had bad experiences at some time with math or science in school ourselves and we bring that fear and frustration unintentionally to our work. So, I absolutely love it when the adults in a program realize that STEAM can be fun and engaging and relevant, not just for youth, but for themselves personally.  

I know it sounds cliche but once you realize how much chemistry there is in baking cookies or how much math is used to knit a beanie (and so many engineering examples all around us!), I think we can all relate to STEM a bit more. So, I think the best part of STEAM is how much it engages educators with a growth mindset about science and math. Once STEAM becomes a habit or part of our everyday practice, it doesn’t feel like a chore to incorporate it into our afterschool programming.

Q: Advocates for STEAM claim that activities are more accessible for girls and kids of color. Do you agree?

A: So many studies show that using STEAM approaches or any other integrated and applied approaches to STEM is much more effective for reaching young people who aren’t already interested in science. In fact, this is documented in our national science standards, NGSS, where a whole appendix is dedicated to this topic. I think it’s not just the addition of arts which brings in kids who claim they are “bad at math,” but it’s the fact that young people can see that STEM can be relevant to their own lives and mental well-being.

In this sense, I think STEM and STEAM in afterschool is so critically important. Learning in out-of-school settings can be more meaningful than learning it in a classroom because afterschool is more aligned to the “real world.” You can succeed in STEAM without rote answers and where failures can be more “educational” than predicted results.

This more accurately reflects what scientific research really is. Scientists will say that what excites them most is what we DON’T know about the world around us! In school, we learn about what we already discovered. In afterschool and in science, we experience and discover new things about the world and about ourselves.

Source: www.pexels.com

Q: STEAM seems to favor collaboration and having young people work on teams. How is this reflected in the adult world of science being conducted?



A: One stereotype of a scientist is a “mad scientist” who works alone in the dark bringing evil to the world! In fact, most science today is done collaboratively either in person or virtually. These days, we are often collaborating with someone who may live thousands of miles away and we connect through virtual meetings, texts, shared documents. So having STEAM activities that are collaborative and project-based is more similar to what professional scientists and engineers do. 

Another similarity is that on many professional work settings, teams are composed of people with different skills and talents. Collectively, they can look at challenges and solutions from different perspectives. Some folks may be computer modelers while others are in the field observing wildlife and yet others are performing chemical extractions in a laboratory. That also can mirror what happens in out-of-school time projects where youth have to discover what they are good at, how those skills complement each other and how they have to learn new skills and vocabulary to finish a project. 

And lastly, what makes afterschool STEAM projects more similar to real world science research is that no one knows what the final product will be or even that it would be a successful result. In school, kids know that the activities probably have an “answer” and there is pressure to get a good grade on that project. In afterschool and in real life, there is no guarantee of a successful completion—but the discovery, growth, resilience, persistence and the collaboration itself can be a reward and should be celebrated and enjoyed.

 

MORE ABOUT...

Carol Tang, Ph.D.

Carol Tang, Ph.D. is the Senior Vice President for Learning and Public Engagement at the American Museum of Natural History. Carol joined the Museum in 2024 and oversees the Exhibitions, Education, Science Visualization & Public Engagement, Research & Evaluation, and Global Business Development departments. She previously served as executive director of the Children’s Creativity Museum (CCM) in San Francisco, California. Under her decade- long leadership, CCM increased attendance, underwent strategic planning during the COVID-19 pandemic, and greatly expanded its community partnerships and service—earning recognition for advancing diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion from the American Alliance of Museums in 2023. Before leading CCM, Tang was the Senior Science Educator at the California Academy of Sciences (Cal Academy) and directed early childhood, youth, lifelong learning, and educator professional development offerings; she then oversaw the development of natural history exhibitions, planetarium and aquarium design, and public art installations when Cal Academy reopened in a new building in 2008. She has also directed the Coalition for Science After School, a national STEM education organization, and was a Program Officer leading Out-of-School Time grantmaking strategy at the S.D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation.

The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is one of the world’s preeminent scientific and cultural institutions. Since its founding in 1869, the Museum has advanced its global mission to discover, interpret, and disseminate information about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe through a wide-ranging program of scientific research, education, and exhibition. 

New Survey Reveals Uncertainty Among Afterschool Program Providers

Source: www.pexels.com

Temescal Associates recently surveyed afterschool leaders on their concerns regarding 2026. The Afterschool Alliance did a similar but much larger survey of afterschool leaders entitled, Uncertain Times for Afterschool Programs. The findings were very similar. Below is a guest blog by Nikki Yamashiro, Vice President, Research at the Afterschool Alliance on the survey’s findings.

Since 2020, the Afterschool Alliance has surveyed afterschool and summer program providers to capture the current state of the afterschool field in order to better understand providers’ offerings and operations, as well as identify the issues that are most pressing.  

What stands out in the most recent survey, conducted October 27 through December 22, 2025, is that concerns about program sustainability and students’ well-being are on the rise, largely reaching the levels of concern we haven’t seen since the early days of the pandemic. A few key points from the brief, “Uncertain times for afterschool programs: Concerns over sustainability, students’ well-being, and federal actions top of mind,” include: 

• Afterschool program providers’ worries about program sustainability are trending upward. Providers concerned about losing funding, permanently closing their program, or laying off or furloughing staff increased by double-digit percentage points from fall 2024, with worries rising for the second consecutive year. For example, 56% of providers were concerned about the loss of funding to their program in the fall of 2023, increasing to 63% in fall 2024, and reaching 77% in the fall of 2025. The intensity of providers’ level of concern has also grown—providers extremely or very concerned about the loss of funding grew from 32% in 2023 to 40% in 2024, and now, more than half of providers (55%) are extremely or very concerned about losing funding.

“When asked which resources would be most helpful to their program right now, the top answer selected by program providers reflects their growing concerns about funding.” – Afterschool Alliance

Source: A World Fit for Kids

• Providers, regardless of where they are located, are concerned about their funding and future.  Nearly 9 in 10 providers (88%) are concerned about their long-term funding and program’s future, including 67% who are extremely or very concerned. At least 5 in 6 providers across community-types and regions are concerned: this includes programs located in rural (89%), suburban (86%), and urban communities (90%), and in the Northeast (87%), Midwest (89%), South (90%), and West (85%).



“Our funding has been getting cut every year. Each year we are making more and more sacrifices to our quality of programming.” – Afterschool Program Leader, SF 

• Concerns for students—in particular about food insecurity, learning loss, and screen time—are high. While students’ mental and emotional health remains the most prominent concern among program providers, worries about students experiencing food insecurity, learning loss, and unproductive screen time harming their well-being saw significant gains from the previous fall 2024 provider survey. 93% of providers are concerned about their students’ mental and emotional health, with 75% extremely or very concerned, similar to fall 2024 (93%), but providers reporting that they are extremely or very concerned about their students experiencing food insecurity grew from 51% to 64%, concerns over learning loss grew from 56% to 62%, and providers extremely or very concerned about unproductive screen time harming their students’ well-being increased from 63% to 71%.
 
• The disruptions and uncertainty at the federal level are having an effect on programs. More than 6 in 10 providers (62%) said that the children and families they served were impacted at least somewhat by the six-week federal government shutdown that lasted from October 1 through November 12, 2025. And most providers (86%) said that if proposed federal education budget cuts are implemented, they are concerned about the impact to their program. Additionally, nearly half of program providers (46%)  reported being impacted by the withholding of federal funds that took place during the summer of 2025.

“On April 3, the Trump Administration released the proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2027. While the budget proposal is a ‘skinny budget’ that does not include all funding details, it does suggest consolidation of federal education funds and elimination of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program, the only federal funding that exclusively supports local, school and community afterschool and summer learning programs.” – Erik Peterson, Afterschool Alliance

Source: Champions

• Programs impacted by federal government actions are more likely to be concerned about sustainability and their students’ well-being. Afterschool program providers who report that the children and families they served were significantly impacted by the government shutdown and those who said that they were affected by the withholding of education funds last summer are more likely than programs overall to express extreme levels of concern about their program sustainability by double-digit percentage point differences. Providers who were significantly affected by the government shutdown are also more likely to be concerned about their students’ well-being, in particular about food insecurity. For example, 83% of programs who were affected a lot by the government shutdown are extremely or very concerned about their students experiencing food insecurity, 19 percentage points higher than programs overall (64%).

“Sustainability of our 21st CCLC programs is a major concern.” – Afterschool Program Leader, Reno, Nevada



In spite of these concerns and challenges afterschool programs face, they continue to provide young people with opportunities for academic enrichment, time to be active and outdoors, and access to healthy snacks and meals, all while helping to build foundational skills such as the ability to work in teams, think critically, and be leaders. Additionally, providers remain optimistic overall about their future; 69% of providers say that they feel optimistic about the future of their afterschool program, an increase from 62% in fall 2024.

MORE ABOUT...

Nikki Yamashiro

Nikki Yamashiro is Vice President, Research at Afterschool Alliance. She joined the Afterschool Alliance in June 2012. In her current role, Nikki coordinates, manages, and advances the Afterschool Alliance’s research efforts, including developing the organization's research goals and agenda and effectively communicating findings on afterschool and summer programs to policy makers, afterschool providers, advocates, and the public. Current major research initiatives that are a part of Nikki's portfolio include America After 3PM, a longitudinal study of how children in America spend their hours after school, and Afterschool in the Time of COVID-19, a multi-wave tracking survey documenting the pandemic's impact on the afterschool field. Prior to joining the Afterschool Alliance, Nikki served in a variety of research capacities, including as Policy Advisor at Third Way, where she handled domestic policy issues such as juvenile justice, and as legislative assistant to former Rep. Hilda L. Solis, where she handled education and youth issues.

The Afterschool Alliance was established in 2000 by a small group of corporate and foundation philanthropies—including the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, JCPenney Company, Inc., the Open Society Institute/The After-School Corporation, the Entertainment Industry Foundation and the Creative Artists Agency Foundation—to expand afterschool and summer learning opportunities nationwide. Since our inception, public investment in afterschool programs has doubled. 

Today, the Alliance works with a broad range of organizations and supporters, including policymakers, government agencies, youth, parent and education groups, business and philanthropic leaders, afterschool coalitions and providers at the national, state, and local levels, and leaders representing health and wellness, college and career readiness, social and emotional learning, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning, and more—each with a stake in afterschool.