This is the first volume of the annual proceedings for the Games+Learning+Society (GLS). The GLS conference is a premier event for those from both academia and industry interested in videogames and learning. The GLS conference is one of the few destinations where the people who create high-quality digital learning media can gather for a serious think about what is happening in the field and how the field can serve the public interest. The conference offers an opportunity for in-depth conversation and social networking across diverse disciplines including game studies, education research
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Constance SteinkuehlerCrystle MartinAmanda Ochsner
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) is a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded resource center, working in cooperation with the NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program to build and advance the informal STEM education field. CAISE continues the work it began in 2007--serving professional audiences in informal STEM learning, which includes those working in science centers and museums, zoos and aquariums, parks, botanical gardens and nature centers, events and festivals, libraries, making and tinkering spaces, media (TV, radio, film, social), cyberlearning and gaming, and youth, community, and out-of-school time programs.
What We Do:
CAISE seeks to characterize, highlight, and connect quality, evidence-based informal STEM learning work supported by a diversity of federal, local, and private funders by providing access to over 8,000 (and growing) resources that include project descriptions, research literature, evaluation reports and other documentation on the InformalScience.org website. In addition, CAISE convenes inquiry groups, workshops and principal investigator meetings designed to facilitate discussion and identify the needs and opportunities for informal STEM learning.
In this award, CAISE is also tasked with advancing and better integrating the professional fields of informal STEM learning and science communication by (1) broadening participation in these fields, (2) deepening links between research and practice, and (3) building capacity in evaluation and measurement. These activities are being undertaken by cross-sector task forces of established and emerging who will be responsible for conducting field-level analyses, engaging stakeholders, and creating roadmaps for future efforts. CAISE is also building on existing communication channels for dissemination to the larger field, and through the InformalScience.org website. An External Review Board and Inverness Research are providing oversight of CAISE's program activities and evaluation of the center.
Who We Are:
CAISE operates as a network of core staff housed at the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) in Washington, D.C. and co-principal investigators and other collaborators at academic institutions and informal STEM education (ISE) organizations across the U.S. Other key collaborators are the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Center for Public Engagement with Science, the National Informal STEM Education Network, and Arizona State University.
Science Club Summer Camp (SC2) is a practicum-based teacher professional development program for elementary school teachers, aligned to the recently released Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). It seeks to address well-described gaps in the scientific training of elementary teachers that threaten the effective implementation of NGSS and interrupt development of early youth science skills. We offer that the best way to prepare a future STEM and biomedical workforce is to help improve NGSS-aligned instruction at the K-5 level.
SC2 uses an integrated approach to train Chicago Public School teachers and youth in the nature of science. An interdisciplinary team of scientists, master science teachers, NGSS experts, and youth development staff will collaborate to incorporate the NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Crosscutting Concepts, and science and engineering practices into both out-of-school time learning at a summer camp and academic year instruction. Program participants will also learn about NGSS connections to health and biomedicine through interactions with practicing scientists, visits to research labs, and inquiry into health phenomena.
Over the course of the program, we will train 64 teachers and more than 2000 youth in authentic science and health practices. A multi-faceted evaluation plan will assess the impact of our program on teacher beliefs, knowledge, and understanding of the NGSS, and the degree to which their training results in changes to their instructional practice. Additionally, we will help teachers design critical NGSS-aligned assessment tools as measures of student learning. These instruments will provide early evidence on the connections between NGSS-aligned instruction and deeper student learning.
In addition to addressing the acute need for NGSS-aligned teacher professional development strategies, and high quality summer learning opportunities for disadvantages youth, it is our expectation that this “dual use” approach will serve as a model for future teacher professional development programs that seek to bridge learning in formal and informal environments and strengthen academic-community partnerships.
Recruiting more research scientists from rural Appalachia is essential for reducing the critical public health disparities found in this region. As a designated medically underserved area, the people of Appalachia endure limited access to healthcare and accompanying public health education, and exhibit higher disease incidences and shorter lifespans than the conventional U.S. population (Pollard & Jacobsen, 2013). These health concerns, coupled with the fact that rural Appalachian adults are less likely to trust people from outside their communities, highlights the need for rural Appalachian youth to enter the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research workforce. However, doing so requires not only the specific desire to pursue a science, technology, engineering, math, or medical science (STEMM) related degree, it also requires the more general desire to pursue post-secondary education at all. This is clearly not occurring in Tennessee’s rural Appalachian regions where nearly 75% of adults realize educational achievements only up to the high school level. Although a great deal of research and intervention has been done to increase students’ interest in STEMM disciplines, very little research has considered the unique barriers to higher education experienced by rural Appalachian youth. A critical gap in past interventions research is the failure to address these key pieces of the puzzle: combatting real and perceived barriers to higher education and STEMM pursuits in order to increase self-efficacy for, belief in the value of, and interest in pursuing an undergraduate degree. Such barriers are especially salient for rural Appalachian youth.
Our long-range goal is to increase the diversity of biomedical, clinical and behavioral research scientists by developing interventions that both reduce barriers to higher education and increase interest in pipeline STEMM majors among rural Appalachian high school students. Our objective in this application is to determine the extent to which a multifaceted intervention strategy combining interventions to address the barriers to and supports for higher education with interventions to increase interest in STEMM fields leads to increased intentions to pursue an undergraduate STEMM degree. Our hypothesis is that students who experience such interventions will show increases in important intrapersonal social-cognitive factors and in their intentions to pursue a postsecondary degree than students not exposed to such interventions. Based on the low numbers of students from this region who pursue post-secondary education and the research demonstrating the unique barriers faced by this and similar populations (Gibbons & Borders, 2010), we believe it is necessary to reduce perceived barriers to college-going in addition to helping students explore STEMM career options. In other words, it is not enough to simply offer immersive and hands-on research and exploratory career experiences to rural Appalachian youth; they need targeted interventions to help them understand college life, navigate financial planning for college, strategize ways to succeed in college, and interact with college-educated role models. Only this combination of general college-going and specific STEMM-field information can overcome the barriers faced by this population. Therefore, our specific aims are:
Specific Aim 1: Understand the role of barriers to and support for higher education in Appalachian high school students’ interest in pursuing STEMM-related undergraduate degrees. We will compare outcomes for students who participate in our interventions, designed to proactively reduce general college-going barriers while increasing support systems, to outcomes for students from closely matched schools who do not participate in these interventions to determine the extent to which such low-cost interventions, which can reach large numbers of students, are effective in increasing rural Appalachian youth’s intent to pursue STEMM-related undergraduate degrees.
Specific Aim 2: Develop sustainable interventions that decrease barriers to and increase support for higher education and that increase STEMM-related self-efficacy and interest. Throughout our project, we will integrate training for teachers and school counselors, nurture lasting community partnerships, and develop a website with comprehensive training modules to allow the schools to continue implementing the major features of the interventions long after funding ends.
This research is innovative because it is among the first to recognize the unique needs of this region by directly addressing barriers to and supports for higher education and integrating such barriers-focused interventions with more typical STEMM-focused interventions. Our model provides opportunities to assess college-going and STEMM-specific self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and barriers/supports, giving us a true understanding of how to best serve this group. Ultimately, this project will allow future researchers to understand the complex balance of services needed to increase the number of rural Appalachians entering the biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research science workforce.
Science from the Start (SFTS) was a two-year early childhood program funded by IMLS, with matching funds from the Sciencenter. The goal of SFTS was to empower teachers, parents, and caregivers to do more science with their students and children. Although the SFTS program continues today,this final summary report describes the results of the initial two-year pilot project only.
‘Who’s Asking: Native Science, Western Science, and Science Education’ explores two key questions for science education, communication and engagement; first, what is science and second, what do different ways of understanding science mean for science and for science engagement practices? Medin and Bang have combined perspectives from the social studies of science, philosophy of science and science education to argue that science could be more inclusive if reframed as a diverse endeavour. Medin and Bang provide a useful, extensive and wide-ranging discussion of how science works, the nature of
The article draws on the case study of the European In-service training course ‘School and Science Museum: Cooperation for Improving Teaching, Learning and Discovering’ aiming to offer insights into the training of educators in museums. It discusses training and contributes suggestions in the context of the contemporary museum context as well as approaches to visitors' learning.
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
In the past 25 years school-university partnerships have undergone a transition from ad hoc to strategic partnerships. Over the previous two-and-a-half-years we have worked in partnership with teachers and pupils from the Denbigh Teaching School Alliance in Milton Keynes, UK. Our aims have been to encourage the Open University and local schools in Milton Keynes to value, recognise and support school-university engagement with research, and to create a culture of reflective practice. Through our work we have noted a lack of suitable planning tools that work for researchers, teachers and pupils
This paper discusses the value and place of evaluation amidst increasing demands for impact. We note that most informal learning institutions do not have the funds, staff or expertise to conduct impact assessments requiring, as they do, the implementation of rigorous research methodologies. However, many museums and science centres do have the experience and capacity to design and conduct site-specific evaluation protocols that result in valuable and useful insights to inform ongoing and future practice. To illustrate our argument, we discuss the evaluation findings from a museum-led teacher
This paper discusses the value and place of evaluation amidst increasing demands for impact. We note that most informal learning institutions do not have the funds, staff or expertise to conduct impact assessments requiring, as they do, the implementation of rigorous research methodologies. However, many museums and science centres do have the experience and capacity to design and conduct site-specific evaluation protocols that result in valuable and useful insights to inform ongoing and future practice. To illustrate our argument, we discuss the evaluation findings from a museum-led teacher
The 2nd annual conference of the ad hoc group Science Communication was dedicated to research on risk and uncertainty as important challenges for the present practice of science communication. The review firstly offers a short portrait of the ad hoc group Science Communicaiton as a newly established network of communication scholars and secondly reconstructs the course of the highliy spirited debate during the conference in Jena.