Permission will be sought to conduct sessions with teachers and their students approximately once a month (virtually) for 50 minutes during the regular school schedule of 8 a.m. Teachers, through teacher-training workshops, and their respective students will all be exposed to the aforementioned components of the program. Reading/literacy and writing exercises will involve African history and culture, in respect to STEM interventions (see suggestions of Burbanks et al., 2020). Some of the components will be intermixed with African-inspired cultural performing arts, such as African-influenced music, songs, and dance. The program will be made up of these components: educational games, simulation activities, approved NASA K–12 SEMAA (Science, Engineering, Mathematics, and Aerospace Academy) science and engineering project-based activities, and introduction to 3D computer design, robotics, and coding. The chosen schools must have a large percentage of students of African descent. The selected schools will be tracked, and progress and outcomes will be closely monitored and evaluated. Two key public schools, one preschool and one elementary (primary), will be randomly selected from each of the participating eight countries. Countries will be selected from the Caribbean and Latin American regions. The Bahamas and eight other countries will be chosen to take part in this initiative. Every aspect of the educational intervention will be virtual in nature. Because we are attempting to reach several countries and schools, and due to COVID-19 restrictions in many countries around the world, we have decided to make our African-centered STREAM intervention initiative virtual. Our goal is to reach several countries in the Caribbean and Latin America, including the Bahamas, and their respective pre-K–6 schools, teachers, and students. In this way, disconnections can be avoided as there would be constant connections between the delivers of the African content, the recipients of the African-centered knowledge-the African children who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the African-based knowledge-and the rich African content being taught. Those of us collaborating on this initiative believe that the historical stories and cultural richness of Africa and African people, which are the core essence of African-centered/Africentric/Afrocentric teaching and learning, can be better told and delivered to African and Black children by those who are also of African ancestry (Burbanks et al., 2020). This newly designed intervention program will total two years in length and will be led by world-class educators-professors, teachers, and education research scientists primarily of African descent who are from the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, and the U.S. The problem becomes even more vexing for females Thus, many studies from around the world have examined and reported on the achievement gap between white and Black students or between white, Asian, Hispanic, and Black students (Campaign for Science & Engineering, 2014 Codiroli, 2015 Giraldo-Garcia & Bagaka, 2013 The Globalist, 2014 Haughton, 2013 Norman et al., 2001 Norman et al., 2006 Norman et al., 2009 Pinder, 2008 Pinder, 2010 Pinder, 2012 Pinder, 2013 Pinder, 2016 Pinder, 2020a Pinder, 2020b Royal Society of Chemistry, 2006 Strand, 2006). Across the globe, from the picturesque, laid-back, sunshiny beach paradise islands of the Caribbean-from the Bahamas in the Northern Caribbean, an archipelagic nation made up of 700 tiny islands, islets, and cays, to the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago in the eastern southernmost Caribbean, over to the busy hustle-and-bustle continental areas and countries of the United States (U.S.) and the continent of North America, to the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the continent of Europe, to the motherland and the continent of all continents, Africa, the troubling phenomenon of Black and African children’s underperformance and low achievement rates in K–12 and college STEM courses and disciplines has been well documented.
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