This report from the National Research Council explores how learning changes the physical structure of the brain, how existing knowledge affects what people notice and how they learn, the amazing learning potential of infants, and the relationship between classroom learning and learning in everyday settings such as community and the workplace. It identifies learning needs and opportunities for teachers and provides a realistic look at the role of technology in education.
There is a growing call for greater public involvement in establishing science and technology policy, in line with democratic ideals. A variety of public participation procedures exist that aim to consult and involve the public, ranging from the public hearing to the consensus conference. Unfortunately, a general lack of empirical consideration of the quality of these methods arises from confusion as to the appropriate benchmarks for evaluation. Given that the quality of the output of any participation exercise is difficult to determine, the authors suggest the need to consider which aspects
This report draws together the results from two major pieces of research–an overview of science communication activities in Britain today, and a detailed understanding of public attitudes to science. By combining the information from both studies, this report aims to inform future science communication strategies for both policy and practice. The research reported here sets a baseline for public attitudes to science, engineering and technology. The survey has been designed to be repeated at regular intervals to monitor any changes in these attitudes. By identifying a number of factors, which
American educators and policymakers have often claimed that the arts can have powerful effects in education and that these effects may reverberate far beyond the arts. Arts education has been argued to have social, motivational, and academic repercussions. But are such claims rooted in empirical evidence, or are they unsupported advocacy? The studies in this issue review systematically what is known about the power of the arts to promote learning in non-arts domains. Thus, we focus here only on the claims that have been made about the effects of arts education on cognitive, academic outcomes
In the American educational climate of today, "basic" academic skills are valued while the arts are considered a frill. Many major urban school districts have cut back on arts education in order to strengthen academic subjects. Even though most of our schools have some arts education, and even though most of our citizens say they want their children to be exposed to the arts in school, only one in four students in American schools sings, plays an instrument, or performs plays in class each week. When budgets are tight, the arts are almost always the first programs to be cut. This study
The authors examine SAT data from the College Board in order to examine the correlation between the number of years of art education and SAT scores. By studying twelve years of data, they find that studying art is associated with higher SAT scores, and that students who take four years of art courses have higher scores than those who take some art but less than four years' worth.
The authors seek to investigate whether studying the arts makes people more creative, and by extension, whether studying the arts builds creative thinking skills that can be deployed outside the arts. They do so through a series of meta-analyses examining existing literature, and find that the presence of an association between studying the arts and creative thinking depends on experimental design and the form of creativity measured.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Erik MogaKristin BurgerLois HetlandEllen Winner
In this paper we contrast the possibilities of the World Wide Web to transform communities of educational researchers with actual patterns of use of The Museum Learning Collaborative Web site. We highlight patterns of user interaction that have emerged and discuss the problems and opportunities of creating shared research resources in emerging fields such as museum learning research. Our findings have direct implications for three stakeholders: program funders, ourselves as project researchers, and the larger museum research community.
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Kevin CrowleyGaea LeinhardtChien-fu Chang
This article introduces a new interaction model called Instrumental Interaction that extends and generalizes the principles of direct manipulation. It covers existing interaction styles, including traditional WIMP interfaces, as well as new interaction styles such as two-handed input and augmented reality. It defines a design space for new interaction techniques and a set of properties for comparing them.