This article offers findings from a learning sciences-informed evaluation of a nanoscience and nanotechnology exhibition called Nano-Aventura (NanoAdventure), based on four interactive-collaborative games and two narrated videos. This traveling exhibition was developed in Brazil by the Museu Exploratório de Ciências for children and teenagers (ages 9 to 14), but it was also open to the general public. We report findings from a mixed-methods study incorporating questionnaires completed by visiting school children (n=814) and the general public (n=338) and interviews with school visitors (n=23)
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Museu Exploratorio de CienciasSandra MurrielloMarcelo Knobel
Gender differences in the pursuit of technology careers are a current issue of concern. We report on two studies that use surveys, drawings and interviews to examine sixth- and eighth-grade students' perceptions of knowledgeable computer users and their self-perception as a computer-type person. In Study 1, participants were asked to generate representations of computer users in pictures or words. The results indicate that the majority of representations were of male users and they frequently wore glasses. Students of both genders were more likely to draw males. Eighth-grade students'
This article reports on an investigation of African American families' perceptions and experiences in an after-school family-school involvement program at two inner-city schools. Centered in the sphere of sociocultural theory and situated cognition, this study focuses on family-child relationships to improve children's literacy using oral histories and technology. It also explores a model for preparing preservice teachers to work with families. Families indicated that prior to program implementation, they had received bureaucratic invitations of school involvement and empathized with other
This article reviews how the relationship between computer games and learning has been conceptualized in policy and academic literature, and proposes a methodology for exploring learning with games that focuses on how games are enacted in social interactions. Drawing on Sutton-Smith's description of the rhetorics of play, it argues that the educational value of games has often been defined in terms of remedying the failures of the education system. This, however, ascribes to games a specific ontology in a popular culture that is defined in terms of its opposition to school culture. By
Both in common parlance and within the academy, the word “learning” has broad and varied meanings. On the street, we apply the same term to a child who, as a result of bitter experience, will no longer tease an older, tougher peer, and to those who achieve the highest Latinate degrees after many years of study at the University. In the field of psychology, “learning” was the major topic in America for fifty years, before it was replaced and almost consigned to oblivion, courtesy of the “cognitive revolution” of the 1960s (Gardner 1985). Now, with study becoming a lifelong enterprise, and with
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Margaret WelgelCarrie JamesHoward Gardner
Afterschool and community science programs have become widely recognized as important sanctuaries for science learning for low-income urban youth and as offering them with "missing opportunities." Yet, more needs to be known about how youth, themselves, perceive such opportunities. What motivates youth to seek out such opportunities in the nonschool hours? How do youth describe the doing and talking of science in such programs? Given such descriptions, how do youth perceive the role of these programs in their lives? This paper relies on stories from three youth drawn from a multisited
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Jrene RahmMarie-Paule Martel-RenyJohn Moore
What meaning visitors make from their interactions with science center exhibits— and how they do so — is an issue of enduring interest in the field of learning in informal contexts. In order to explore what resources schoolchildren bring to bear in making meaning, this study used video clips taken during school trips to prompt reflection in stimulated recall interviews. The results indicated that students utilized their existing science understandings to interpret and explain their interactions with exhibits. Such findings provide evidence for the educative value of the experience as well as
In this paper we present a way to study science learning on a discursive level in a teaching activity designed for a museum of natural history. We used here an analysis of practical epistemologies. The method, which allows a description of students' meaning making in socially shared practices, has been used previously to analyze learning in various school practices. The data presented in this study proceeded from a videotaped activity of the educational program for student teachers at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. The activity utilizes a variety of dioramas with preserved
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Swedish Museum of Natural HistoryJesus PiquerasKarim HamzaSusanna Edvall
Over the next 10 years, we anticipate that personal, portable, wirelessly-networked technologies will become ubiquitous in the lives of learners — indeed, in many countries, this is already a reality. We see that ready-to-hand access creates the potential for a new phase in the evolution of technology-enhanced learning (TEL), characterized by "seamless learning spaces" and marked by continuity of the learning experience across different scenarios (or environments), and emerging from the availability of one device or more per student ("one-to-one"). One-to-one TEL has the potential to "cross
This article is intended to spark a discussion between two research communities—scholars who study learning and scholars who study educational organizations. A secondary purpose is to encourage researchers to look beyond schools to examine learning in other types of educational organizations. The authors outline a framework to guide research on the relationship between learning and the social contexts afforded by formal organizations. The framework combines elements of cultural historical activity theory, a sociocultural theory of learning, and institutional theory, which is a constructivist
The present paper thoroughly examines how one can effectively bridge in-school and out-of-school learning. The first part discusses the difficulty in defining out-of-school learning. It proposes to distinguish three types of learning: formal, informal, and non-formal. The second part raises the question of whether out-of-school learning should be dealt with in the in-school system, in view of the fact that we experience informal learning anyway as well as considering the disadvantages and difficulties teachers are confronted with when planning and carrying out scientific fieldtrips. The voices
What are the effects of globalization and how are these manifested in local communities and in the learning of science there? These questions are unpacked within one local community in the United States, a place called “Uptown” where I examine the educational opportunities and pathways in science that are available for low-income Black American girls. The data comes from eight years of work both as an after-school science education program director and researcher in Uptown. The results suggest that globalization is taking hold, both in the social and economic circumstances of the community and