In this article I critically examine the historical context of science education in a natural history museum and its relevance to using museum resources to teach science today. I begin with a discussion of the historical display of race and its relevance to my practice of using the Museum’s resources to teach science. I continue with a critical review of the history of the education department in a natural history museum to demonstrate the historical constitution of current practices of the education department. Using sociocultural constructs around identity formation and transformation, I
The Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) involves thousands of people of all ages in the observation and study of weather, climate and water resources. In CoCoRaHS, citizens of all ages help measure and report rain, hail and snow from their own homes, schools and businesses. These data are then efficiently collected via the internet, archived in a national database, and made immediately available to participants, scientists and the general public showing the fascinating patterns of precipitation from each passing storm (see http://www.cocorahs.org). The measurement of precipitation and the patterns, variations and impacts that result, open the door to creative study of our environment. It is the "lowest common denominator" of hydroclimatic exploration. In this project, data from the CoCoRaHS citizen science network will be shared with and utilized by NOAA partners to help monitor drought, to help detect local severe storms, to alert local authorities to developing flash flood situations, to provide "ground truth" for NOAA and NASA remote sensing technologies, and to provide verification for both local and national weather and climate forecast products.
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of an interdisciplinary graduate training program in Cognitive, Computational, and Systems Neuroscience at Washington University in Saint Louis. Understanding how the brain works under normal circumstances and how it fails are among the most important problems in science. The purpose of this program is to train a new generation of systems-level neuroscientists who will combine experimental and computational approaches from the fields of psychology, neurobiology, and engineering to study brain function in unique ways. Students will participate in a five-course core curriculum that provides a broad base of knowledge in each of the core disciplines, and culminates in a pair of highly integrative and interactive courses that emphasize critical thinking and analysis skills, as well as practical skills for developing interdisciplinary research projects. This program also includes workshops aimed at developing the personal and professional skills that students need to become successful independent investigators and educators, as well as outreach programs aimed at communicating the goals and promise of integrative neuroscience to the general public. This training program will be tightly coupled to a new research focus involving neuro-imaging in nonhuman primates. By building upon existing strengths at Washington University, this research and training initiative will provide critical new insights into how the non-invasive measurements of brain function that are available in humans (e.g. from functional MRI) are related to the underlying activity patterns in neuronal circuits of the brain. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kurt ThoroughmanGregory DeAngelisRandy BucknerSteven PetersenDora Angelaki
The summer now gone has reported two episodes we would like to bring to the attention of the JCOM readers. Two minor pieces of news, unlikely to be in the limelight over the summer, when the media understandably focus on gossips and crime news. Even the experts – especially outside the Italian territory – would probably dismiss these events as minor, wouldn’t it be for the people involved. But let’s see the facts.
The past few decades have been marked by a rapid scientific and technological development. One of the most paradoxical, and perhaps more disturbing, features of this process is the growing divide between the increased importance science has acquired in economic and social life and a society persistently showing spreading signs of contempt, mistrust and, most of all, disinterest in research.
The knowledge society is a new social species that, despite many uncertainties and some (old and new) ambiguities, is emerging on the horizon of the 21st century. Placed at the convergence of two long-term processes (society of individuals and knowledge society), it is characterised by the social-economic process of knowledge circulation, which can be divided into four fundamental phases (generation, institutionalisation, spreading and socialisation). The current situation also sees the traditional (modern) structure of knowledge being outdated by the convergence of nanotechnologies
In 2007, global investments in R&D have increased by 7% on the previous year and have reached an absolute historical peak, exceeding for the first time the threshold of 1,100 billion dollars (calculated in the hypothesis of a purchasing power parity between the currencies). The world invests in scientific research and technological development 2.1% of the wealth it produces. At the same time, there has been an increase in the exchange of high added-knowledge value goods and high tech represents now the most dynamic sector of the world economy.
The idea of using communication research to develop natural resources histories has been documented in several studies, but I contend that these methods are largely underutilized. The point of this paper is to demonstrate how the use of one communication research method—lengthy personal face-to-face interviews analyzed with qualitative methods—can aid efforts to develop histories pertaining to the environment.
If one of aims of science today is to respond to the real needs of society, it must find a new way to communicate with people and to be acquainted with their opinions and knowledge. Many science museums in Europe are adopting new ways to actively engage the public in the debate on topical scientific issues. The Museum of Science and Technology "Leonardo da Vinci" in Milan (partner of the SEDEC project) has thus experimented some formats for dialogue with teachers and with the public in general. Our experience shows that museums can be places where science and the public on the one hand and
In the course of the last decade the European debate on the concept of citizenship has shown that a definition of this concept in strictly legal and jurisprudence terms is reductive. Indeed a behavioral element is present, which goes beyond the defence and request for defence of rights and duties, but actually stresses the importance of acting within a community (or within several communities). A citizenship belonging to a given space/time context which, to be authentic, requires know-how and know-how-to-be that can be gained in different training opportunities (formal, informal etc.) with
This paper relates to a special case of science-society mediation set up during the Science et Cité festival 2005. This national event took place in about twenty cities in Switzerland to promote a closer cooperation between science and society via art (theatre, music, dance, exhibitions, cinema, etc.), in order to reach the population at large. Results on the profile of the public, the role played by the cultural institutions involved, the motives of the visitors and the role of art in the science-society dialogue show that the goals aimed at by the festival's organisers were only partially
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Fabienne Crettaz von RotenOlivier Moeschler
We have analyzed the popularization activities undertaken by ten thousand CNRS researchers by means of their annual reports for the years 2004, 2005 and 2006. This is the first time that such an extensive statistical study on science popularization practices is carried out. Our main findings are : - the majority of researchers is not involved in popularization (51% has not done any popularization over the three-year period, two thirds have been involved in no more than one popularization action). - popularization practices are extremely diverse, both at the individual level (we have identified