Recent decades have seen an increasing emphasis on linking the content and aims of science teaching to what the average citizen requires in order to participate effectively in contemporary society, one that is heavily dependent on science and technology. However, despite attempts to define what a scientific education for citizenship should ideally involve, a comprehensive set of key aspects has yet to be clearly established. With this in mind, the present study sought to determine empirically the extent of any consensus in Spain regarding the principal aspects of scientific competence that
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Angel Blanco-LopezEnrique Espana-RamosFrancisco Jose Gonzalez-GarciaAntonio Joaquin Franco-Mariscal
In the 1920s, John Dewey and Walter Lippmann both wrote important books examining whether the public was capable of playing a constructive role in policy, particularly when specialized knowledge was involved. This essay uses the Lippmann–Dewey debate to identify new challenges for science education and to explore the relationship between science education and science communication. It argues that science education can help foster democracy in ways that embody Habermas' ideal of the public sphere, but only if we as a field pay more attention to (1) the non-scientific frames and narratives that
In some senses, both science education and science communication share common goals. Both seek to educate, entertain and engage the public with and about science. Somewhat surprisingly, given their common goals, they have evolved as disparate academic fields where each pays little attention to the other.1 The purpose of this special issue, therefore, is an attempt some form of rapprochement—to contribute to building a better awareness of what each has to contribute to the other and the value of the scholarship conducted in both fields.
Brooklyn Botanical Garden, Brooklyn NY
Audience Research for a New Garden, 2016
The Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A), to conduct a study of visitors to the Discovery Garden. The goal of this study was to assess the successes and challenges of the exhibition and accompanying interactive elements to support the BBG in improving the Discovery Garden.
How did we approach this study?
RK&A used three methodologies to address the study objectives, based on specific outcomes developed by BBG for the Discovery Garden. Data were collected through
Keystone Connect Network is a proposed regional broadband network whose purpose is to increase educational opportunities and generate business growth. The backbone of this plan is the Pennsylvania Research and Education Network's (PennREN), a next generation high-speed internet network, managed by KINBER, which educational institutions can use to train their students and create new learning opportunities; and business can create new products and connect with their customers.
Abstract
In 2011, Donna DiBartolomeo and Zachary Clark enrolled in the Arts in Education Program at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Harvard Graduate School of Education is home to Project Zero, an educational research group comprising multiple, independently funded projects examining creativity, ethics, understanding, and other aspects of learning and its processes. Under the guidance of Principal Investigator Howard Gardner and Project Manager Katie Davis, the authors were tasked with developing a methodology capable of observing finegrained, objective detail in complete works of
The informal STEM education (ISE) field is a landscape that includes a variety of institutions beyond schools, including museums, science centers, zoos, youth and adult organizations, documentary film producers—and public libraries (J. H. Falk, Randol, and Dierking 2012). Libraries across the country have been reimagining their community role and leveraging their resources and public trust to strengthen communnity-based learning and foster critical thinking, problem solving, and engagement in STEM.
This paper argues that for citizens to be engaged with science they need to be able to share analytical techniques as well as the results of analyses. The category of "brand" which condenses the instrumental with the symbolic is both powerful in its uses and familiar to laypeople. The paper shows briefly how the categories of penicillin, biotechnology and applied science can be analysed in this way. It suggests that historians apply such an approach to the historiography of such new categories as synthetic biology and that this might be useful to curators of such topics in museums.
This fact sheet from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provides statistics and talking points related to incorporating STEM into public library programming.
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Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)
Northern Michigan University's Center for Native American Studies and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion will lead this Design and Development Launch Pilot about culturally inclusive K-16 STEM education for American Indian and Native Alaskan (AIAN) students. This project was created in response to the NSF Inclusion across the Nation of Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (NSF INCLUDES) program solicitation (NSF 16-544). The INCLUDES program is a comprehensive national initiative designed to enhance U.S. leadership in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) discoveries and innovations focused on NSF's commitment to diversity, inclusion, and broadening participation in these fields. The INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilots represent bold, innovative ways for solving a broadening participation challenge in STEM.
The full participation of all of America's STEM talent is critical to the advancement of science and engineering for national security, health and prosperity. Our nation is advancing knowledge and practices to address the undergraduate STEM achievement and the graduation gap between NAAIs and non-native Americans. This project, the NSF INCLUDES: Indigenous Women Working Within the Sciences (IWWS), has the potential to advance knowledge, instructional pedagogy and practices to improve the performance of NAAI high school students and undergraduate students in STEM.
This project team will work to: (1) pilot activities and coursework to train K-16 STEM educators about American Indian inclusive methods and materials, (2) to provide AIAN high school students with STEM college preparatory experience using inclusive STEM practices, and (3) to provide a cohort of female AIAN high school students additional university experiences and mentors as these students transition to postsecondary education. Activities include a five-day summer educators institute for 40 K-16 STEM educators, an additional weekend workshop for 20 K-16 STEM educators, a summer STEM academy for 96 AIAN high school students, a STEM weekend workshop for female AIAN high school students, and a mentoring program for AIAN high school students.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
April LindalaJessica CruzMartin Reinhardt
Designing for Diversity will establish a national Networked Improvement Community (NIC) of maker spaces and fab labs serving Black and Latino high school students and specializing in computational making programs. The project will be led by the New York Hall of Science, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and a national leadership team representing universities, cultural organizations, corporations, foundations and leaders in the Maker Movement. Using a NIC methodology, the partners will identify the most promising mechanisms for ensuring that participation in computational making programs has a significant impact on participants' choices to pursue STEM focused internships, post-secondary education, and career paths. The project will extend the NIC methodology into the informal learning community, which is in need of research methods that are both rigorous and accommodating of the institutional complexities of building and sustaining high-quality informal learning environments, and it will contribute to the literature on the impact of maker spaces and fab labs in underserved communities on the diversification of the STEM pipeline. The project will also pave the way for the development of a more fully-developed network of computational making programs across the country and a more comprehensive research initiative that will influence best practices in maker spaces and fab labs and foster perceptions of the value and impact of maker experiences on young people's readiness for future educational experiences and careers.
The project builds on research indicating that computational making - programs that combine the making of artifacts with computational tools and techniques - is a powerful strategy for engaging underrepresented students in STEM learning. However, participation in such programs will not necessarily lead students to take concrete steps toward computationally-rich STEM careers in which they are currently under-represented. A range of research suggests that computational making programs need to explicitly design for and address the socio-emotional dimensions of these learning experiences in order for them to become stepping stones into these careers. Designing for Diversity will work with a network of maker programs serving high needs Black and Latino high school students to address these learning factors. During this pilot, the leadership team will accomplish three tasks: (1) establish a common framework, shared measurement objectives and guidelines that will be used to identify, recruit and support participant maker programs and their local partners; (2) develop and coordinate the NIC's capacity for scaling and disseminating its work by connecting the research efforts to broader national initiatives; and (3) recruit, train, and collect baseline data on the Designing for Diversity NIC.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Margaret HoneyKatherine McMillanPaul LeMahieuAndres Henriquez
The Mississippi Alliance for Women in Computing (MAWC) project will identify factors that influence and motivate female students and female African American students in Mississippi to enroll and persist in an undergraduate engineering- or science-based computing major. There is a particular need for programming that is inclusive of women and women of color who are from the southern region of the United States. These students typically have less access to extracurricular activities that encourage computing, and are less likely to visualize themselves in a computing major or career. This proposed research is to help girls to know that computer science exists and what jobs in computer science are available with a degree in computer science. A rich environment exists in Mississippi for an alliance focused on building co-curricular and mentorship opportunities. A scalable pipeline model, expandable to a Southern Alliance for Women in Computing (SAWC), will be developed with three major objectives: to attract women and women of color to computing, to improve retention rates of women in undergraduate computing majors, and to help postsecondary women make the transition to the computing workforce. Activities to support these objectives include: scaling the National Center for Women and Information Technology Aspirations in Computing award program in Mississippi, expanding scholarships for Aspirations winners, expanding student-led computing outreach programs, establishing a Mississippi Black Girls Code chapter, informing and collaborating with the Computer Science for Mississippi initiative, creating a summer bridge and living-learning community for women in computing majors, and increasing professional development opportunities for women in computing through conferences, lunch and learn meetings, job shadowing, and internships.
The project will analyze whether the co-curricular activities of MAWC lead to computing self-efficacy and ultimately female students selecting to pursue and persist in computing majors and careers. In order to understand student participation and efficacy changes, data collection for this research will be through demographic and background surveys administered to women entering an undergraduate engineering- or science-based computing major at a university in Mississippi and student surveys and evaluations in MAWC-sponsored programs. Using discriminate analysis methods, specific research questions to be addressed are: 1) Which pre-collegiate experiences influenced them to enroll, 2) Which stakeholders influenced these girls in their decision-making process, and 3) What programs are effective in impacting their persistence in the major. Predictor variables for each respective research question are: pre-collegiate experiences, stakeholders, and programs. Outcome variables are: (a) a female undergraduate student with no involvement with MAWC programming, (b) MAWC activity participant, or (c) a MAWC participant having graduated with a bachelor?s degree in a STEM major. Results will complement published longitudinal research on the gendered and raced dimensions of computing literacy acquisition in Mississippi as well as research on effective CS role model programming.