Research & Practice Task Force: Reflections from the December 2019 Convening

This blog was co-written with Michelle Choi. Kevin Crowley is Professor, Learning Sciences and Policy, University of Pittsburgh, and​ CAISE co-Principal Investigator.

In December 2019, the Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) Research & Practice Task Force organized an in-person convening at the American Alliance of Museums headquarters in Washington, D.C., to compile resources into a Research & Practice toolkit. The convening included nine invited guests working at the intersection of research and practice in Informal STEM Education and Science Communication, as well as NSF program officers, to query and inform our thinking and contribute to the development of the toolkit.

The convening was informed by and built on prior initiatives. Since 2012, CAISE has been tracking and disseminating the results of practice and research efforts across informal STEM education. This has included work to develop research agendas, workshops and professional development resources to build equitable partnerships between researchers and practitioners at every level, and innovative approaches to using research in reflective practice and community perspectives on partnering, among other strategies.

In response to emerging parallel efforts in science communication, CAISE initiated a Research & Practice Task Force in 2018. The task force is comprised of 10 experts from across the fields of informal STEM education and science communication who share the goal of identifying new ways to support and sustain generative relationships across fields, roles, and realms. The task force members include researchers, practitioners, and scientists. Several consider themselves boundary-crossers whose professional identities link perspectives from each of these roles in their daily work.

After a series of virtual discussions and information gathering, the task force had the opportunity to gather additional, formative input as participants and facilitators at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting in February 2019. Throughout the rest of the year, the task force met monthly in smaller audience-focused working groups to collect, curate, and develop resources for ISE and SciComm practitioners, researchers, and scientists. Not wanting to re-create the wheel, the task force focused on documenting, leveraging, and linking to an array of existing resources, with an eye toward exploring what could be valuable contributions to the field from CAISE. The task force decided to focus on supporting the development of strong proposals for new research-practice collaborations that could be submitted to the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) or other appropriate federal funding programs.