ISE Professional Development (2012)
The ISE Professional Development Convening was a small workshop of ISE-funded principal investigators and their project evaluators who were brought together to share and evolve how we think about and do our work as ISE professionals. Attendees included principal investigators, project evaluators, NSF program officers, two outside experts, and other project staff from around the country who represented a range of informal science education sectors, including science centers and museums, theater, broadcast media, afterschool programs, and libraries. The structure and content of the convening was designed to focus on the intersection of theory and practice, and draw heavily from ISE stakeholders' own experience and reflections on their work in this realm.
The intent of the convening was to deepen the ISE field's thinking about the unique challenges and unexplored opportunities that professional development projects in ISE settings provide. Invitees to this gathering were selected to represent the wide variety of approaches to professional development work in the NSF ISE portfolio, and NSF and CAISE learned along with PIs and evaluators through presentations and discussions that helped all participants understand the ISE program’s investments in PD at that point in time.The ideas and outputs from the workshop, as well as the materials and thinking that informed it were shared with the ISE field writ large via CAISE communication channels and informed strands of the March 2012 ISE PI Meeting.