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Migrant students tend to underperform in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) subjects and are less likely to pursue higher education in STEM when compared with their nonmigrant peers. Given the substantial increase in migration, this disparity has been a central concern in science education in many European countries. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of an innovative science outreach program that brings together migrant students and STEM professionals with the same linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The program consists of one‐off workshops that follow an inquiry‐based approach and include hands‐on activities and science communication in the students' heritage language. Using surveys with adapted scales and open‐ended questions, we applied a randomized block design with waitlist control groups and repeated measures. Eighty‐three Portuguese‐speaking migrant students aged 6–17 years participated in the workshops in Germany and the United Kingdom. Results indicate that both the students and STEM professionals evaluated the program positively and that students who participated in the workshops tended to demonstrate an increase in their attainment value for science and an increase in their self‐concept of ability for the heritage language 4 weeks after the intervention when compared with students in the control condition. These effects were particularly pronounced for students with low prior motivation to study science or speak the heritage language. Our results thus show that it is possible to foster migrant students' attainment value for science and increase their self‐concept of ability regarding the heritage language through a brief science outreach intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is conflicting empirical evidence regarding the role of awareness in second language learning. Possible explanations for the contradictory results include the modality in the exposure and assessment phases of previous experiments. Our study investigated the acquisition of a novel determiner system under incidental exposure conditions and examined the effect of modality in both exposure and assessment phases. Animacy served as a hidden regularity in the determiners, which were embedded in sentences and presented to Chinese speakers of English either in auditory or in visual mode. Learning was assessed by a two-alternative forced-choice test either auditorily or in writing. Implicit and explicit knowledge were measured using retrospective verbal reports and source judgements. Bayesian analysis provided moderate evidence for above chance level learning. Significant learning effects were observed regardless of whether participants based their accuracy judgements on explicit or implicit knowledge. Bayesian analysis showed moderate evidence for above chance learning effects for aware participants. Generalized linear mixed-effects modeling revealed a small-size significant benefit of the auditory exposure modality over the written modality but indicated no significant effect of the modality of assessment or awareness. Our research underscores the importance of considering the role of modality of exposure in incidental second language learning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Native Scientist (Native) project trains and engages international scientists to deliver school workshops that combine science with language education. It brings together scientists and children with a common heritage language, and aims to promote STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths), language, and role model interactions. The purpose of this study is to (i) describe Native's workshops and (ii) present results of a first evaluation on the impact of the workshops. Born from the desire of a group of foreign-born scientists in the United Kingdom (UK) to inspire underachieving, low socio-economic background immigrant children to do better in school and aim higher, the Native project was launched in June 2013 within the London-based Portuguese diaspora. It quickly expanded to other diasporas or cities in the UK and the rest of Europe. In 2014, the project was running in four different languages - French, German, Portuguese and Spanish and two countries – UK and France. Today, the Native project is being delivered in 10 different languages (Arabic, Estonian, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish) and six different European countries, namely UK, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Norway (1).While most people would agree that prioritizing STEM public engagement at an institutional or governmental level has several positive outcomes, including the fact that it encourages scientists to leave the ivory tower, experts in science communication have criticized that many outreach initiatives preach to the converted, engaging members of the public that are already engaged and having limited capacity to attract ethnic minorities or people from low socio-economic, low-educated backgrounds (2). Having this in mind, the Native project was designed to target immigrant pupils who speak a home language (also referred to as the heritage language) and a school language and have therefore the potential to become bilingual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]