The Roads Taken Conference Report provides information and results from the virtual conference held in October and November 2016.
Representatives from ten long-standing youth programs, experts in out-of-school time (OST) youth programming, and researchers participated in the Roads Taken virtual conference in October and November 2016, funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1644479). Participants collaboratively developed a Program Profile template with dual purposes: a tool for practitioners and a tool for researchers. As the first phase the three-part plan, Program Profiles will
Many people believe that both public policy and personal action would improve with better access to “reliable knowledge about the natural world” (that thing that we often call science). Many of those people participate in science education and science communication. And yet, both as areas of practice and as objects of academic inquiry, science education and science communication have until recently remained remarkably distinct. Why, and what resources do the articles in this special issue of JRST give us for bringing together both the fields of practice and the fields of inquiry?
The fields of science education and science communication share the overarching goal of helping non-experts and non-members of the professional science community develop knowledge of the content and processes of scientific research. However, the specific audiences, methods, and aims employed in the two fields have evolved quite differently and as a result, the two fields rarely share findings and theory. Despite this lack of crosstalk, one theoretical construct—framing—has shown substantial analytic power for researchers in both fields. Specifically, both fields have productively made use of
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.
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.
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.
PEEP and the Big Wide World/El Mundo Divertido de PEEP is a bilingual, NSF- funded public media project that uses animation, live-action videos, games, mobile apps, hands-on science activities to motivate preschool-age children to investigate the world around them. Online, PEEP extends children’s science and math learning with a mobile-friendly website that offers games, videos, and hands-on activities, as well as a collection of 15 apps. PEEP is also reaching children in preschool classrooms and family/home childcare settings via the PEEP Science Curriculum, which provides resources for a
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)
Tomorrow’s inventors and scientists are today’s curious young children—as long as those children are given ample chances to explore and are guided by adults equipped to support them. STEM Starts Early is the culmination of a deep inquiry supported by the National Science Foundation that aims to better understand the challenges to and opportunities in STEM learning as documented in a review of early childhood education research, policy, and practice and encourages collaboration between pivotal sectors to implement and sustain needed changes. The report features research by the FrameWorks
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elisabeth McClureLisa GuernseyDouglas ClementsSusan Nall BalesJennifer NicholsNat Kendall-TaylorMichael Levine
Early childhood education is at the forefront of the minds of parents, teachers, policymakers as well as the general public. A strong early childhood foundation is critical for lifelong learning. The National Science Foundation has made a number of early childhood grants in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) over the years and the knowledge generated from this work has benefitted researchers. Early childhood teachers and administrators, however, have little awareness of this knowledge since there is little research that is translated and disseminated into practice, according to the National Research Council. In addition, policies for both STEM and early childhood education has shifted in the last decade.
The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the New America Foundation are working together to highlight early childhood STEM education initiatives. Specifically, the PIs will convene stakeholders in STEM and early childhood education to discuss better integration of STEM in the early grades. PIs will begin with a phase of background research to surface critical issues in teaching and learning in early childhood education and STEM. The papers will be used as anchor topics to organize a forum with a broad range of stakeholders including policymakers as well as early childhood researchers and practitioners. A number of reports will be produced including commissioned papers, vision papers, and a forum synthesis report. The synthesis report will be widely disseminated by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the New America Foundation.
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed project.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael LevineLori TakeuchiElisabeth McClure