In March 2007, RMC Research Corporation completed work on a study of children's responses to a selection of DragonflyTV (DFTV) video segments as one part of the Summative Evaluation of the DragonflyTV GPS: Going Places in Science TV series1. This report presents findings from the Children's Viewing Study, which includes two distinct goals. The first goal addresses the qualities and characteristics of science television which contribute to effective educational television experiences for children. This study offered the first in an iterative process aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Alice Apley, Ph.D.Wendy J. GrahamJenny ScalaTwin Cities Public Television
As teachers respond to the demands of educational reform and strive to meet increasing pressures of educational benchmarks and standards, there is less and less time to utilize innovative teaching techniques. Education reform expectations, coupled with increasing class size and shrinking budgets has significantly impacted the way that science education is delivered in schools. 4-H Wildlife Stewards, a Master Science Educator's Program was developed in response to these emerging concerns in science education. The program is based on the premise that trained volunteer Master Science Educators
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mary ArnoldMichael DaltonMaggie LivesayRobin Galloway
This report summarizes a summative evaluation of Amazing Feats of Aging, an exhibition developed by staff at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland, Oregon. Patricia McNamara, an independent evaluator, designed this study to document the exhibition's impact on visitors at two locations: its permanent installation at OMSI itself and at the installation of the exhibit's traveling version at the Lafayette Museum of Natural History (LMNH) in Lafayette, Louisiana. Data collection strategies included visitor interviews, self-administered questionnaires and unobtrusive
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Patricia McNamaraOregon Museum of Science and Industry
Planet Earth Television (PET) created Scientistic!, a television series that focuses on a young girl's scientific investigations of the world around her. The pilot episode, Sticks and Stones, explored bones and how they heal. A website and iPad app were also developed to supplement the program. REA evaluated the impact of the television program, website, and app on youth's knowledge about and interest in science and specific topics related to bone health and healing. REA recruited youth (grades 1-7) to participate either at home with their families or in a classroom with their teachers. REA
Informal science education creates opportunities for the general public to learn about complex health and science topics. Tissue engineering is a fast-growing field of medical science that combines advanced chemistries to create synthetic scaffolds, stem cells, and growth factors that individually or in combination can support the bodies own healing powers to remedy a range of maladies. Health literacy about this topic is increasingly important as our population ages and as treatments become more technologically advanced. We are using a science center planetarium as a projection space to
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Anna WilsonLaura GonzalezJohn Pollock
Drawing upon critically oriented studies of science literacy and environmental justice, we posit a framework for activism in science education. To make our case, we share a set of narratives on how the River City Youth Club acquired a new green roof. Using these narratives we argue that the ways in which youth describe their accomplishments with respect to the roof reflects a range of subject positions that they carve out and take up over time. These subject positions reveal how activism is a generative process linked to “knowing” and “being” in ways that juxtapose everyday practices with
This article investigates the development of agency in science among low-income urban youth aged 10 to 14 as they participated in a voluntary year-round program on green energy technologies conducted at a local community club in a midwestern city. Focusing on how youth engaged a summer unit on understanding and modeling the relationship between energy use and the health of the urban environment, we use ethnographic data to discuss how the youth asserted themselves as community science experts in ways that took up and broke down the contradictory roles of being a producer and a critic of
Field trips to science museums can provide students with educational experiences, particularly when museum programs emphasize scientific inquiry skill building over content knowledge acquisition. We describe the creation and study of 2 programs designed to significantly enhance students' inquiry skills at any interactive science museum exhibit without the need for advanced preparation by teachers or chaperones. The programs, called Inquiry Games, utilized educational principles from the learning sciences and from visitor studies of museum field trips. A randomized experimental design compared
A team of researchers and practitioners developed a museum program to coach families in the skills of scientific inquiry at interactive exhibits. The program was inspired by the increasing focus on scientific inquiry in schools and the growing number of open-ended exhibit designs in science museums. The development process involved major decisions in two arenas: which inquiry skills to teach, and what pedagogical strategies to use to teach them. After many rounds of refinement based on evaluation with families, the final program, called Inquiry Games, improved visitors' inquiry behavior in
This Barron and Bell article provides a foundational overview for how “cross-setting learning” can equitably engage all youth across formal and informal educational contexts. The paper offers: 1) a review of research; 2) descriptions of supports and challenges to cross-setting learning, including learner interest and identity; and 3) suggestions for research and assessments that capture learning for underrepresented youth.
This Stocklmayer, Rennie, and Gilbert article outlines current challenges in preparing youth to go into science careers and to be scientifically literate citizens. The authors suggest creating partnerships between informal and formal education to address these challenges in school.
The overall objective of this planning project was to examine the potential effectiveness of the Signing Science Pictionary (SSP) in increasing the ability of parents and their deaf and hard of hearing children to engage in informal science learning. To achieve this objective, research and development included four goals. 1) Design several SSP-based activities to help family members engage in informal science learning. 2) Examine the potential effectiveness of the SSP in increasing family member’s signed science vocabulary. 3) Find out about the potential effectiveness of the SSP in