The 2022 PI meeting will be a thematic working meeting focused on field building and experience sharing. Projects will be asked to come prepared to share their ongoing/formative experiences about their incomplete work. During the meeting projects will engage in sharing and reflection around the meeting themes listed below, with the goal of gathering input, getting unstuck, collecting insights, and receiving advice. Projects will be asked to reflect on and identify best practices and share how they will incorporate this guidance to strengthen their current project work. Throughout the meeting STELAR will capture these lessons, with the goal of producing a set of guidelines, lessons learned, and "dos and don’ts" from the community.

Day 1: Research Methods & Technology Integration

• Emerging Theoretical Concepts, Instruments, and Tools: This session will explore common and emerging approaches to conceptualizing key learner outcomes, as well as the process of instrument adaptation for a different project context and to address issues around Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Access (DIEA).
  • Emerging Theoretical Concepts and Tools: This session will explore common vs emerging approaches to conceptualizing key learner outcomes. What are the theoretical foundations for these outcomes? What are promising methods for eliciting evidence of these outcomes—contrasting effective vs efficient? What are some of the emerging intervention/assessment tools/techniques across projects?
  • Instrument Adaptation: While instruments developed in awards have often been innovative and field-advancing, PIs must often adapt these innovations to a different context with other characteristics, disciplines, and/or other career-objectives. This session will explore how successful adaptations have been modified, and the types of challenges that had to be addressed when using instruments developed by other projects including issues around Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Access (DIEA) when adapting instruments.
• Technology Integration and Evidence of Learning: This session addresses the challenges and opportunities of integrating novel technology into disciplinary learning and varied learning contexts. What new visibility into learning and learning processes have you gained via integrating technology? What can the field learn from your experience to either avoid or adopt in their own work? What iterations or changes had to be made over the past year to support effective integration of technology in student and/or teacher learning? Did DEIA concerns change your approach to technological integration and/or research methods? What are the potential equity challenges and benefits that arise from using technology to document learning in new ways?

Day 2: Impact Generation

• Partnerships: This session will explore the nature of effective partnerships. How have you approached partnership development in your project? What contributions have been made by your partnerships, such as with organizations, local stakeholder involvement, development of trust, shared language, and mutual ownership? How can projects develop diverse and multilevel partnerships, and what challenges and opportunities have research teams faced in this regard? Were there difficulties, challenges, surprises, rewards, lessons, or possibly unique advancements in relationships? Consider for discussion, the fields, occupations, and jobs that partnerships have afforded learners, including specific supportive pathways, internships, mentoring, and other opportunities for access to careers and further education.
• Sparks and Levers: Career Interest, Identity, Engagement and Persistence
  ITEST projects must address career interest/awareness and related affective constructs; however, framing the role of interest/affect in learning can be challenging. This session focuses on frameworks/theories and related mechanisms that ‘spark’ interest and career awareness as a way to increase students’ motivation to pursue STEM/ICT careers.  Questions posed during this session include: What do we take as evidence that our explanatory frameworks and related mechanisms are effective in ‘moving the needle’ on interest? How might the sparking and development of interest vary across different communities, learning environments, or developmental stages? In what ways is developing STEM identity connected to sparking interest or awareness? What does interest look like in relation to technology use and STEM learning?
• Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Access (DIEA): This session will discuss the successes and challenges to advancing Diversity, Inclusion, Equity, and Access (DIEA) in your project. Have you been able to recruit the underserved and underrepresented participants as you originally proposed? What have been your successes and challenges? How do you outreach and reach out when you face attrition? What are the surprises in both recruiting and your conjectured interventional designs that have worked or failed with the learner/teacher population? 

Day 3: Moving Forward

• Scale-up - Experiences, successes, and challenges: What distinguishes innovations that are “ready” for scaling up? How do earlier-stage projects prepare the evidence base necessary for justifying a scale-up award? Is there a gap between the kinds of evidence many DTI projects gather and what is needed for SEI? What are common pitfalls in scale-up? What would have been helpful to know before trying running an SEI project?
• Emerging Domains: This session will discuss three domains, Environmental science/climate science, Quantum computing, and Blockchain, that warrant special discussion in response to recent societal needs and emerging areas of equitable STEM-related careers. For each of the domains, one or two speakers will give remarks on the core issues and foundational knowledge that K12 education can incorporate for the preparation of future equitable STEM workforce. Q&A will follow each talk to engage the PI community.