The Kaulele Kapa Exhibit was created to explore the effectiveness of a Hawaiian culture-based framework and approach in increasing learner engagement and depth of knowledge in STEM among Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NHPI) learners. The exhibit utilized hands-on and interactive activities, coupled with scientific and cultural information, to create relevant learning experiences for these communities. To determine the effectiveness, exhibit attendees were invited to complete a survey that asked about how the exhibit influenced their interest and understanding of STEM and Hawaiian culture
But many young people face signifcant economic, cultural, historical, and/or social obstacles that distance them from STEM as a meaningful or viable option— these range from under-resourced schools, race- and gender-based discrimination, to the dominant cultural norms of STEM professions or the historical uses of STEM to oppress or disadvantage socio-economically marginalized communities (Philip and Azevedo 2017). As a result, participation in STEM-organized hobby groups, academic programs, and professions remains low among many racial, ethnic, and gender groups (Dawson 2017). One solution to
Out-of-school settings promise to broaden participation in science to groups that are often left out of school-based opportunities. Increasing such involvement is premised on the notion that science is intricately tied to “the social, material, and personal well-being” of individuals, groups, and nations—indicators and aspirations that are deeply linked with understandings of equity, justice, and democracy. In this essay, the authors argue that dehistoricized and depoliticized meanings of equity, and the accompanying assumptions and goals of equity-oriented research and practice, threaten to
This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot is to expand the Navajo Nation Math Circle model to other sites, and to develop and launch a network of math circles based on the NNMC model. The Navajo Nation Math Circle model is a novel approach to broadening the participation of indigenous peoples in mathematics that, ultimately, seeks to improve American Indian students' attitudes towards mathematics, persistence with challenging problems, and grades in math courses. Navajo Nation Math Circles bring teachers, students, and mathematicians together to work collaboratively on challenging, but meaningful and fun, math problems. Through this NSF INCLUDES project, additional math circles across the Navajo Nation will be launched and a mirror site in Washington State serving additional tribes (such as Puyallup, Muckleshoot, Tulalip, and Stillaguamish) will be established.
Originating approximately a century ago in Eastern Europe as a means to engage students in mathematical thinking, math circles bring teachers, students, and math professionals together to work collaboratively on challenging, but relevant and interesting, math problems. Navajo Nation Math Circles, established math circles in various Navajo Nation communities, are the foundation of this INCLUDES project. One goal of this effort is to launch a network with the capacity to support the replication and adaption of math circles in multiple sites as an innovative strategy for encouraging indigenous math engagement through culturally enriched open-ended group math explorations. In addition, the Navajo Nation Math Circle model will be expanded to new math circles in the Navajo Nation, as well as in Washington State to serve additional tribes. Cells in the network will implement key elements of the Navajo Nation Math Circle model, adapting them to their particular contexts. Such elements include facilitation of open-ended group math explorations, incorporating indigenous knowledge systems; a Mathematical Visitor Program sending mathematicians to schools to work with students and their teachers; inclusion of mathematics in public festivals to increase community mathematical awareness; a two-week summer math camp for students; and teacher development opportunities ranging from workshops to immersion experiences to a mentoring program pairing teachers with mathematicians.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
David AucklyHenry FowlerJayadev Athreya
Students can present their classroom work in a number of ways. One popular approach is an open house at the school. Such events often feature booths where parents and students can participate in various learning activities. Because these open houses usually only cater to the students and families associated with that particular school, the impact is limited to those people, and the wider local community is not engaged in students’ learning. Additionally, in rural areas, these types of events are sometimes difficult for families to attend during weekdays or weeknights, due to distance and work
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Robin CooperKim ZeidlerDiane JohnsonJennifer Wilson
Since 2009 Vetenskap & Allmänhet (Public & Science, VA) coordinates an annual mass experiment as part of ForskarFredag — the Swedish events on the European Researchers' Night. Through the experiments, thousands of Swedish students from preschool to upper secondary school have contributed to the development of scientific knowledge on, for example, the acoustic environment in classrooms, children's and adolescents' perception of hazardous environments and the development of autumn leaves in deciduous trees. The aim is to stimulate scientific literacy and an interest in science while generating
From intimate science cafes to massive science festivals, the public science events sector encompasses an enormous diversity of activity involving a wide range of practitioners and target audiences. As unique as each instance of an event can be, public science events are all live, in-person programs designed to engage the public with science in a social context. This activity is already taking place on a grand scale in both the US and UK, and initial evaluations of some of these event forms have begun to demonstrate distinct beneficial impacts. Despite some significant leaps forward, there are several issues that this Science Learning+ project seeks to address: (1) insufficient connectivity and communications between many event organizers; (2) little overall tracking of event activity; (3) few comparative evaluations across different event forms; and (4) lack of shared terminology, key facts, and a coherent narrative for the role live events play in the science learning ecosystem. A landscape study, organized into a single document and simple website, is the main deliverable. This will summarize existing activity and findings related to events, and provide an overview of potentially fruitful areas for future investigation.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. The project created a bilingual exhibit and surrounding activities to explore the concept of sustainability.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryMarilyn Johnson
This conference poster from 2014 AISL PI meeting details the accomplishments of the Science Festival Alliance, a professional network of individuals and institutions designed to increase the capacity to develop and implement large scale community science festivals.
The Magnet Lab has a strong commitment to education. Through the Center for Integrating Research & Learning, the lab supports educational programming at all academic levels: K-12, technical, undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral. Please explore the links listed to the left to find out more about the depth of our educational resources for the community, for teachers and for students as well as our unique research offerings. Our programs are designed to excite and educate students, teachers and the general public about science, technology and the world around them. All of our programs are developed in close collaboration with research scientists and educators. Housed at and partly funded by the MagLab, the Center is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the excellent resources, connections, world-class facilities and cutting-edge science the lab has to offer. We also receive generous support from the National Science Foundation and the State of Florida. The Center maintains a rigorous research agenda designed to investigate how Center programs and materials affect teachers and students. Our Mission Statement is to expand scientific literacy and to encourage interest in and the pursuit of scientific studies among educators and students of all ages through connections between the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory and the National Science Foundation, the community of Tallahassee, the State of Florida and the nation.
Goodman Research Group, Inc. (GRG) served as the external evaluator of the three-year NSF-funded Science Festival Alliance (SFA), a collaborative started by the University of California San Diego, the MIT Museum (Cambridge, MA), the University of California San Francisco, and The Franklin Institute (Philadelphia, PA). The focus of the SFA over its first three years was helping establish and sustain science festivals in each of these four cities. The Alliance’s long-term goal is to facilitate the creation of a growing network of festivals and a community of science festival practitioners. To
Marshall Barnes was chosen by Larry Bock, founder of the USA Science and Engineering Festival as a late addition to the USASEF after viewing Marshall's impressive SuperScience for High School Physics activities for National Lab Day and his emphasis on advanced concept science and technologies. Marshall was given free booth space to set-up an exhibit that featured what is now being called "STEAM" or Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math and was fairly interactive. Marshall's booth emphasized his actual research that the visitors could take part in or analyze themselves. He had a VCR, TV, CD player, MacBookPro laptop and his own invention - the Visual Reduction Window. There were four elements to the exhibit. There was a TV monitor that showed a scene from a movie that you could view with 3D glasses for TV that Marshall invented that work even with one eye closed. At different times that same monitor would feature footage from an experiment that Marshall conducted to produce one of Nikola Tesla's ideas that Tesla never accomplished - a wall of light. This same footage could be analyzed by the visitors - frame by frame, on the Mac computer to see exactly how the principle of resonance produced the wall of light from the build-up of reflections off a physical wall created by strobe lights. Visitors could also listen to hyperdimensional music that Marshall produced that takes any kind of music to a new listening experience. Based on the concept that music is a coded language with cues and instructions that are cognitively recognizable when translated, Marshall invented techniques and technologies that allow such translations and brought examples for visitors to listen to. They included an upcoming radio show theme and the soundtrack to a documentary on the reality behind Fox TV's FRINGE. The music featured song elements that move around between the speakers and make you feel like the music is alive. The most dramatic of all was the Visual Reduction Window, again invented by Marshall, that made kids look transparent and at times, almost completely invisible. Based on his famous research into invisibility, which is documented at the Santa Maria Experiment exhibit in the Santa Maria Education Visitor's Center in Columbus, Ohio, the effect of real life transparency is stunning and Marshall, the world's leading expert on invisibility research was able to describe the physics behind what he was doing and its applications in the real world. His approach to invisibility is superior to those methods pursued by Duke University and others, trying to do the same with metamaterials, and is based on a completely different model of invisibility that he calls, Visual Density Reduction or VDR. Using VDR techniques, Marshall can make attack helicopters, small gun boats, tanks and many other things invisible, which is why he doesn't reveal the current level of his research, due to National Security reasons. Overall, the exhibit was a wild success and serves as a model for a traveling exhibit for informal science at malls, fairs, science centers, and other festivals.