This dissertation examined changes in urban youth’s attitude towards science as well as their perception of the informal science education setting and third space opportunity provided by the BioBus, a mobile science lab. Findings from this study suggested that urban youth’s attitude towards science changed both positively and negatively in statistically significant ways after a BioBus visit and that the experience itself was highly enjoyable. Furthermore, implications for how to construct a third space within the urban science classroom and the merits of utilizing the theoretical framework
Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition is a traveling exhibit based on the popular television show. When housed at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, it included a traditional, interactive free flow exhibition space followed by a live facilitated show. This paper describes results from an experimental study about the effects of the Live Show on the learning of and attitudes towards science. A pre-test was given to 333 children entering the exhibit. A post-test was given to 80 children after they walked through the free-flow portion of the exhibit and to 191 children after they watched
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Museum of Science and IndustryAaron Price
This article is a case study describing how one science teacher makes everyday science in the community and classroom science intersect. This article is useful to help science educators relate information from home and neighborhoods to scientific content. The concept of transformative boundary objects is introduced in this article and can aid educators design projects that incorporate important science going on in their communities to foster long-term public engagement in science.
Data from 15 countries suggest that positive parental attitudes toward science are associated with higher student achievement in science. The findings also indicate that socioeconomic status has no effect on the relationship between parental attitudes and student achievement: Poorer students benefit just as much from positive parental attitudes as richer students.
In-class projects can be an effective way for students to learn subject material that relates to authentic problems people address outside of classrooms. Jurow investigated middle-schoolers’ participation in an in-school math project based on the premise of creating a research station in Antarctica. Students’ engagement with the project and meaning making with math content shifted as students navigated through the different and often competing figured worlds of the classroom and “Antarctica.”
How and why students develop productive science learning identities is a key issue for the education community (see Bell et al, 2009). Carlone, Scott, and Lowder describe the changes in the science identities of three students as they move from fourth to sixth grade. The authors discuss the processes — heavily mediated by race, class, and gender — by which the students position themselves, or are positioned by others, as being more or less competent learners in science.
Today’s standardized testing methods are too narrow for measuring 21st-century learning that occurs across time and diverse social contexts, from formal to informal and embodied to virtual. This paper uses the concept of “connected learning” to illustrate what 21st-century education involves; it then describes research methods for documenting this learning.
Mobile technology can be used to scaffold inquiry-based learning, enabling learners to work across settings and times, singly or in collaborative groups. It can expand learners’ opportunities to understand the nature of inquiry whilst they engage with the scientific content of a specific inquiry. This Sharples et al. paper reports on the use of the mobile computer-based inquiry toolkit nQuire. Teachers found the tool useful in helping students to make sense of data from varied settings.
In the last two years SISSA Medialab designed, tested and evaluated two projects aiming at empowering children (in one case) and teenagers (in the other) to act as science journalists in order to promote a personal, critical attitude towards science and technology. The two groups produced a paper magazine and a blog, respectively, in a participatory process, in which adults acted as facilitators and experts on demand, but the youths were the leaders and owners of the products. Special care was taken to ensure inclusiveness, by involving in the project children and teenagers from any social
The article focuses on children's makerspaces and the maker movement in Canada. Topics include the Nova Scotia government's idea to distribute 3D printers to libraries to create public makerspaces, which are collaborative meeting places that blend craft and high technology to foster do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions, the Maker Club in Kitchener, Ontario owned by entrepreneur Cam Turner and his son Owen, and the organization Scoperta, maker Jim Akeson's version of the organization Curiosity Hacked.
The World Biotech Tour (WBT) is a multi-year initiative that will bring biotechnology to life at select science centers and museums worldwide. The program, supported by the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and Biogen Foundation, is scheduled to run from 2015-2017, with the 2015 cohort in Belgium, Japan, and Portugal. The WBT will increase the impact and visibility of biotechnology among youth and the general public through hands-on and discussion-led learning opportunities. Applications are now open for the 2016 cohort! Learn more and submit an application at http://www.worldbiotechtour.org/become-a-stop
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Association of Science-Technology CentersCarlin Hsueh
How can professional learning for out‐of‐school staff be organized to promote equity in STEM learning? This is the question a group of out-of‐school educators and educational researchers gathered to discuss at the Exploratorium on January 30‐31, 2015. The meeting was sponsored by the Research+Practice Collaboratory, an NSF-‐funded project that develops and tests new models for integrating research and practice perspectives for the improvement of science and mathematics education. Four big ideas for supporting equity-oriented facilitation emerged from the group's discussions: (1) Seeing