DEAI in Science and Technology Centers in the US

Informal science institutions have been championed as leaders in diversifying STEM fields; however, science museums are still viewed as places of inequity and exclusion by marginalized communities (National Research Council, 2009; Feinstein & Meshoulam, 2014). A 2020 study conducted to understand how museums across the United States were approaching diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) efforts found a lack of knowledge of what was being done, what could be done, and how to start DEAI work to be a major barrier. This two-stage study is designed to fill this knowledge gap for science museums within the United States. The first stage is guided by the research question: How are science and technology centers envisioning and engaging in DEAI work and what are the associated challenges they encounter? To investigate this question, I interviewed museum leaders (CEOs and Directors of Education; n=35) using a semi-structured interview protocol. Findings from this stage were analyzed using Garibay & Olson’s (2020) organizational DEAI framework and compared between types of institutions, staff and operating budget size, and geographic location. The findings from stage one were used to design a survey for museum professionals, volunteers, and boards of directors to answer the question: How do DEAI imaginings and efforts differ between various organizational levels (e.g., CEOs vs floor facilitators vs volunteers)? All institutions from the Association of Science and Technology Center (ASTC) were invited to share the survey with their staff, volunteers, and boards of directors. The survey included open-ended questions regarding participant views of DEAI as well as a summary of the leadership’s visions of DEAI for the participants to comment on. The findings from this stage were analyzed using Garibay & Olson’s (2020) organizational DEAI framework. The goal of this work is to present a landscape view of current DEAI practices within the science museum field and discuss how this work differs between the institutional sizes of museums and the organizational levels to inform best practices of DEAI moving forward.