This dissertation focuses on an integral aspect of public opinion formation — individual selectivity of information. Principally, I seek answers about why individuals opt for certain media. Broadly, my research is guided by the following question: How do communication contexts and individual traits contribute to and motivate individuals’ selectivity? Though there have been many studies on the phenomenon of selective exposure in political science and political communication, my research is conducted in the context of a scientific issue. There is relatively little clear empirical data
Scientific debates in modern societies often blur the lines between the science that is being debated and the political, moral, and legal implications that come with its societal applications. This manuscript traces the origins of this phenomenon to professional norms within the scientific discipline and to the nature and complexities of modern science and offers an expanded model of science communication that takes into account the political contexts in which science communication takes place. In a second step, it explores what we know from empirical work in political communication, public
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Dietram Scheufele
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Rodriguez documents how one teacher navigated challenges as he incorporated transformative science teaching, that is, instruction that gives students opportunities to engage with science that reflects their lives and how they learn. This brief will benefit informal science educators who support teachers in engaging in transformative science teaching practices.
How does taking photos affect people’s memories of objects in a museum? Henkel compared people’s recall after taking photos and after simply observing museum paintings and objects. People remembered more when they observed than when they took a photo. However, if the photo zoomed in on a specific feature, people remembered the whole object better.
How does taking photos affect people’s memories of objects in a museum? Henkel compared people’s recall after taking photos and after simply observing museum paintings and objects. People remembered more when they observed than when they took a photo. However, if the photo zoomed in on a specific feature, people remembered the whole object better.
Conversation and controversy surround the increasing focus on high-stakes standardized testing, whose effects may include less class time for science, narrower curricula, and shifts in instructional styles. In this paper, Judson finds that teachers in states with science accountability standards report at a significantly higher rate than teachers in other states that they spend four or more hours per week on science.
Through a study of 14 preschool classrooms serving low-income children from diverse ethnic backgrounds, the authors illustrate how carefully incorporating play-based learning into curricula can improve both literacy and social competence skills. The results illuminate how to more deeply engage learners with informal science education.
As Maker and Tinkering programs expand, educators are in need of new ways of noticing and capturing learning. In particular, because maker programs are so facilitation-heavy, and physically active, there is a need for ways for educators to monitor learning in situ. In this paper, Bevan, Gutwill, Petrich and Wilkinson explore how jointly negotiated research led to new insights about what counts as learning in the context of STEM-rich tinkering in ways that can support formative, embedded, and naturalistic assessments.
The fact that inquiry-based science teaching has been defined in various ways makes claims about its effectiveness with students difficult to synthesize. In this meta-analysis, the authors generate a two-dimensional framework to analyze studies of the effectiveness of inquiry-based science instruction in improving student learning outcomes.
Large-scale assessments like PISA are highly influential in policymaking, but they don’t tell us anything about the nature of student learning underpinning the scores. In this study, an additional instrument was administered to students in Finland, Germany, and Switzerland. Finnish students, who score higher on PISA, also scored higher on the second assessment. Findings suggest that Finnish students may have developed more complex knowledge bases in science.
Rather than focusing on how different they are, this literature review details shared characteristics of science museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums in order to contribute to an ecological view of learning. This article identifies four shared characteristics of these informal science environments: motives and goals, staging of popular science, physical layout, and social exchange and participation. The learning outcomes encompass not only knowledge acquisition but also changes in interests and beliefs.
Through this review of research on public engagement with science, Feinstein, Allen, and Jenkins advocate supporting students as “competent outsiders”—untrained in formal sciences, yet using science in ways relevant to their lives. Both formal and informal settings can be well suited for work in which students translate scientific content and practices into meaningful actions.