To support learning across settings, educators need to develop ways to elicit student interests and prior experiences. McClain and Zimmerman describe how, during outdoor walks at a nature center, families talked about prior experiences with nature, which were mostly from non-school settings. They used the prior experiences to remind, prompt, explain to, and orient one another during shared meaning-making activity.
Flying Higher will develop a permanent hands-on exhibit that conveys the fundamentals of flight, technology, materials science, and NASA’s role in aeronautics for learners ages 3-12 years and their parents/caregivers and teachers. The exhibit, public programs, school and teacher programs, and teacher professional development will develop a pipeline of skilled workers to support community workforce needs and communicate NASA’s contributions to the nation and world. An innovative partnership with Claflin University (an historically black college) and Columbia College (a women’s liberal arts college) will provide undergraduate coursework in informal science education to support pre-service learning opportunities and paid employment for students seeking careers in education and/or STEM fields. The projects goals are:
1) To educate multi-generational family audiences about the principles and the future of aeronautics; provide hands-on, accessible, and immersive opportunities to explore state-of-the-art NASA technology; and demonstrate the cultural impact of flight in our global community.
2) To provide educational standards-based programming to teachers and students in grades K–8 on NASA-driven research topics, giving the students opportunities to explore these topics and gain exposure to science careers at NASA; and to offer teachers support in presenting STEM topics.
3) To create and implement a professional development program to engage pre-service teachers in presenting museum-based programs focused on aeronautics and engineering. This program will provide undergraduate degree credits, service learning, and paid employment to students that supports STEM instruction in the classroom, explores the benefits of informal science education, and encourages post-graduate opportunities in STEM fields.
Our Sky is a series of Out-of-School Time and museum educational programs that inspire an appreciation and understanding of Earth and Space Science (ESS) in a diverse population of children ages 3-10 and their parents, caregivers and educators. All resources are developed through a partnership between Boston Children’s Museum and Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The vision for Our Sky is that children ages 3-10 and their adult caregivers will gain an appreciation for celestial objects and phenomena as a foundation for understanding of Earth and Space Science. All resources and activities will be designed to realize this vision, and to:
Serve a diverse range of audiences, with an emphasis on urban and low-income children and families;
Increase appreciation among diverse adults and children of the sky as an accessible science learning resource;
Share NASA resources with, and help develop foundational STEM skills in children;
Encourage adults to engage in and guide ESS learning experiences with children;
Inspire practical application of STEM skills by children and adults as they explore celestial objects together; and
Expand the capacity of museum staff and afterschool educators to engage families in learning STEM skills through ESS exploration.
Our Sky activities will result in:
A series of museum-based programs that incorporate NASA resources and ESS activities across a range of content areas; and
A series of new ESS-focused activities for the award-winning “Beyond the Chalkboard” afterschool curriculum that include NASA resources and will reach hundreds of thousands of children around the world.
In partnership with Future Makers and several Maryland public libraries, the Maryland State Department of Education’s Division of Library Development and Services (DLDS) will teach children ages 4 to 7 the basic principles of programming through the use of Primo, an open-source robotics platform. With Primo, children use blocks to create algorithms that guide a robot through a maze. This will establish a foundation for learning more advanced programming skills later on, set early learners on the path to fluency in computer science, and establish a stronger mindset in computational thinking through play and experimentation. As Primo does not rely on a computer screen, the program will be replicable in a variety of environments; the curriculum will also be inclusive to young children with varying degrees of ability.
The New Children's Museum will launch the LAByrinth project to engage the community in the creation of a permanent art installation. The museum will convene a cross-disciplinary team to design and build the LAByrinth, a climbing structure that will serve 140,000 people annually. The museum will develop relationships with underserved families and current and future museum users, and also create an ongoing community-based exhibition development process to create sustainable mechanisms for continued community involvement. The project will introduce a new socially-engaged process for creating exhibitions, which will serve as a sustainable creative catalyst for San Diego families.
Brookfield Zoo will expand its "Zoo Adventure Passport" (ZAP!) program for urban families with children ages 3-12 to serve additional families and increase informal science learning opportunities in the two Chicago suburbs of Cicero/Berwyn and Melrose Park. The program will serve as a gateway to new family experiences, teaching families and children about their local and world environments, and providing an opportunity for family enrichment in a community-centered learning environment. The zoo will use presentations and activities to enhance science learning, offer field trips that reconnect urban families with wildlife and nature, and provide STEM content through multigenerational science learning. Through this project, the zoo will increase family participation by 25%; improve student performance in school; increase family interest in and enthusiasm about science, nature, and the environment, and increase family participation in their children's education.
Collaboration efforts between educator preparation programs and children's science museums are important in assisting elementary pre-service teachers connect the theory they have learned in their classrooms with the actual practice of teaching. Elementary pre-service teachers must not only learn the science content, but how to effectively deliver that science content to a group of students. One university provided their elementary pre-service teachers with the opportunity to prepare and deliver science lessons to students in a children's science museum in south Texas.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Jennifer Coronado
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This is a Science Learning+ planning project that will develop a research plan for investigating how applying the principles of embodied cognition to the design of informal learning environments can support young children's (ages 2-6) engagement with, and understanding of, science topics and concepts. While it has been fairly well established that cognition is intertwined with the body's interaction in the physical world, the precise means of applying these ideas to the design of effective learning environments is still emerging. Experimenting with various embodied cognition activities and physical learning configurations to understand what conditions are optimal for informal learning environments for early learners is a major objective of this project. During the planning grant period, the project will identity additional practitioner/research collaborations and will develop research plans for a suite of studies to be enacted by multiple teams of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists across the US and UK and that will be submitted as a Phase 2 research. The primary activities of this planning period include organizing a series of workshops that bring together informal learning educators and embodied cognition researchers to engage in deep discussion and design experimentation that will inform the development and refinement of research questions, protocols, and measurement tools. These discussions will be informed by observations of young children as they interact with the River of Grass, an exhibit prototype in which principles of embodied cognition are embedded in its design. The planning period will be led by a collaborative team of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists from the US and UK. This group will also oversee plans for the development of a new model for informal STEM research in which a constellation of practitioner/research teams across multiple organizations investigates topics of importance to informal learning practice and research that have the potential to result in a robust body of research that informs the design of informal learning spaces.
This study considers the relationship between preschoolers’ early exposure to informal science experiences and their interest in science, with particular attention paid to gender differences. A longitudinal study of children ages 4 to 7 found that early science interest was a strong predictor of later parent-provided opportunities to engage in science learning.
Rather than enacting imaginative approaches, some teachers tend to engage in safe but unexciting transmission of science knowledge. This study examined a professional development programme wherein primary school teachers learned the skills and approaches of Dramatic Science. The findings indicate that the programme met its aim of helping teachers become more confident and creative in supporting children’s science learning.
This chapter discusses variation in the organization of children’s involvement in cultural activities. In particular, we examine three widespread cultural traditions that organize children’s learning and participation in cultural activities: intent community participation, assembly-line instruction, and guided repetition. We argue that investigating the organization of children’s participation in routine activities offers a way to address the dynamic nature of repertoires of cultural practices—the formats of (inter)action with which individuals have experience and may take up, resist, and
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Barbara RogoffLeslie MooreBehnosh NajafiAmy DexterMarciela Correa-ChavezJocelyn Solis
This chapter discusses learning through the manipulation of three-dimensional objects. The opportunity to touch and interact with objects is helpful for young children as they attempt to understand abstract concepts and processes. How might parents guide children in coming to understand the complex and abstract symbolic nature of representational objects?