The goal of this NSF-funded RAPID research project was to advance understanding of how children’s science podcasts can provide families with information to help ease children’s worries during a pandemic by increasing children’s understanding of pandemic-related science concepts and supporting pandemic-related family conversations. Our research was guided by the following questions:
1. How and to what extent do Brains On!’s coronavirus-based episodes help children and their families understand and talk about science-related pandemic topics?
2. What kinds of conversations are
"Making and Tinkering" links science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning (STEM) to the do-it-yourself "maker" movement, where people of all ages "create and share things in both the digital and physical world" (Resnick & Rosenbaum, 2013). This paper examines designing what Resnick and Rosenbaum (2013) call "contexts for tinkerability" within the social design experiment of El Pueblo Mágico (EPM) -- a design approach organized around a cultural historical view of learning and development. We argue that this theoretical perspective reorganizes normative approaches to STEM education
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Lisa SchwartzDaniela DigiacomoKris Gutierrez
Using their imagination and creativity, inventors have made significant contributions to our world throughout the course of human history. In recent times, a growing community has responded to the need for more intensive research on Invention Education and within the last several years has begun organizing itself around collaborative action that will accelerate the uptake and practice of Invention Education. The purpose of this document is to provide a comprehensive community-driven framework and set of principles for Invention Education that can support its growth within formal and informal
The Researching Invention Education white paper compiles contributions from a community of individuals and organizations working in Invention Education (IvE) in the United States. IvE is a term that refers to the practice of teaching students how to problem-solve and think like inventors in order to become positive change-makers in the world. The paper was written by researchers interested in IvE who attended the 2018 InventEd convening hosted by The Lemelson Foundation. The group worked together for a year to publish their findings that were then uncovered at the 2019 InventEd convening in
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Audra SkukauskaiteStephanie CouchLeslie Flynn
Maker Education scholarship is accumulating increasingly complex understandings of the kinds of learning associated with maker practices along with principles and pedagogies that support such learning. However, even as large investments are being made to spread maker education, there is little understanding of how organizations that are intended targets of such investments learn to develop new maker related educational programs. Using the framework of Expansive Learning, focusing on organizational learning processes resulting in new and unfolding forms of activity, this paper begins to fill
In this paper, we examine the relationship between participants’ childhood science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related experiences, their STEM identity (i.e., seeing oneself as a STEM person), and their college career intentions. Whereas some evidence supports the importance of childhood (i.e., K‐4) informal STEM education experiences, like participating in science camps, existing research does not adequately address their relationship to STEM career intention later in life. Grounding our work in identity research, we tested the predictive power of STEM identity on career
Poster presentation from the 2020 Association of Science and Technology Centers Annual Conference.
This poster presented preliminary findings from a configurative literature synthesis on how the literature posted on the InformalScience.org website, in peer-reviewed journals, and in the ProQuest archive of Theses and Dissertations report about how informal learning institutions are advancing the use of STEM knowledge and scientific reasoning in the ways that can help individuals and communities address the societal challenges of our time?
Knowing how specific publics understand and experience science is crucial for both researchers and practitioners. As learning and meaning-making develop over time, depending on a combination of factors, creative possibilities to analyze those processes are needed to improve evaluation of science communication practices. We examine how first grade children's drawings expressed their perceptions of the Sun and explore their views of a major astronomical body within their social, cultural and personal worlds. We then examine how the observation of the Sun through a telescope led to changes in
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sara AnjosAlexandre AibéoAnabela Carvalho
In this paper, we contend that what to teach about scientific reasoning has been bedeviled by a lack of clarity about the construct. Drawing on the insights emerging from a cognitive history of science, we argue for a conception of scientific reasoning based on six 'styles of scientific reasoning.' Each 'style' requires its own specific ontological and procedural entities, and invokes its own epistemic values and constructs. Consequently, learning science requires the development of not just content knowledge but, in addition, procedural knowledge, and epistemic knowledge. Previous attempts to
A year into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world continues to struggle with the many ways our lives have changed and the uncertainty that remains about the future. Vaccines are being widely administered, but how and when life will return to “normal” remains unknown. During this time, caregivers continue to seek out information to address the questions, worries, and information needs their children have about this unique moment in their lives. Our NSF-funded RAPID research project has helped to uncover some of these questions, worries, and needs by talking to caregivers of listeners of the children
What does it mean for a museum, science center, or other informal science organization to commit to being a more racially equitable institution by treating equity as seriously as something like budgeting--part of every project, and necessary to the functioning of the organization? This project document shares the organizational change processes, tools, and approaches we developed during the RACE Forward project - an action research project designed to empower cross-organizational groups to spark sustainable change in practices, policies, and dispositions across the organization.
This case
Computing fields are foundational to most STEM disciplines and the only STEM discipline to show a consistent decline in women's representation since 1990, making it an important field for STEM educators to study. The explanation for the underrepresentation of women and girls in computing is twofold: a sense that they do not fit within the stereotypes associated with computing and a lack of access to computer games and technologies beginning at an early age (Richard, 2016).
Informal coding education programs are uniquely situated to counter these hurdles because they can offer additional