A survey we carried out in upper secondary schools showed that the majority of the students consider physics as an important resource, yet as essentially connected to technology in strict terms, and not contributing “culture”, being too difficult a subject. Its appreciation tends to fade as their education progresses through the grades. The search for physics communication methods to increase interest and motivation among students prompted the Department of Physics at the University of Milan to establish the Laboratory of ScienzATeatro (SAT) in 2004. Up to May 2010, SAT staged three shows and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marina CarpinetiMichela CavinatoMarco GilibertiNicola LudwigLaura Perini
Dialogical models in science communication produce effective and satisfactory experiences, also when hard sciences (like astrophysics or cosmology) are concerned. But those efforts to reach the public can be of modest impact since the public is no longer (or not sufficiently) interested in science. The reason of this lack of interest is not that science is an alien topic, but that contemporary science and technology have ceased to offer a convincing model for the human progress.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Stefano Sandrelli
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
John Ziman with his old-fashioned ways, was a real British gentleman of the colonies. Born and raised in New Zealand, Ziman belonged to that large group of men and women that went back to their fathers’ land in the last century from the Commonwealth countries. In many cases, they were individuals with an outstanding intellect and, therefore, a real tresure trove for Great Britain, which drew from those remote places not only gems, tea, perfumes and raw materials, but also enlightened minds and reliable personalities.
What pushed His Excellency Enrico Fermi, acclaimed Academician of Italy entitled to a state car and driver, to leave Italy all of a sudden in December 1938 in order to reach New York, after a short stop in Stockholm for the ceremony that celebrated him as a Nobel laureate for physics, and to accept a job as a simple physics lecturer at the Columbia University?
I still remember very clearly my first encounter with peer review: I was a Ph. D. student in physics and I had written my first paper, submitted it to a journal and - after what seemed to me a very long time - received a reply with the request for few changes and corrections I was supposed to include in my paper before it could be considered for publication. These very simple steps: the writing up of some original research results in a paper, its submission to a journal and the process of the work being read and judged by someone reputed to be an expert in the field is what we call peer review
Enrico Fermi's work gave birth to a real cultural revolution in the Italian scientific scenario. His scientific studies concerned almost every field in physics and had far-reaching effects of which virtually everybody, above all in Italy, is still taking advantage. Two important "by-products" of Fermi's ideas and initiatives will be here taken into consideration: the new way of carrying out research and communicating science invented by Fermi and his group and his publications for the general public, which often stood for high examples of scientific popularisation. Then the focus will shift on
Beginning in autumn 2011, Education Development Center’s Center for Children and Technology (EDC|CCT) worked closely with Iridescent to evaluate the impact of its Family Science after-school program on its participants and partners.1 Between September 2011 and April 2015, Iridescent held six series of five-week programs in New York and Los Angeles at nine different school and museum sites. The program activities centered on “design challenges” that introduced families to the engineering design process and supported the development of curiosity, creativity, and persistence. These five-week
The Center for Children and Technology (CCT) at Education Development Center, Inc., an international nonprofit research and development organization (cct.edc.org), conducted the formative evaluation of the fourth year of the Be A Scientist! (BAS) project. This project, managed by Iridescent—a nonprofit afterschool science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program (www.iridescentlearning.org), has the goal of providing high-quality afterschool science and engineering courses to underserved families in New York City and Los Angeles. The project aims to enable participants to
'Be a Scientist!' is a full-scale development project that examines the impact of a scalable, STEM afterschool program which trains engineers to develop and teach inquiry-based Family Science Workshops (FSWs) in underserved communities. This project builds on three years of FSWs which demonstrate improvements in participants' science interest, knowledge, and self-efficacy and tests the model for scale, breadth, and depth. The project partners include the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, the Albert Nerken Engineering Department at the Cooper Union, the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History, and the New York Hall of Science. The content emphasis is physics and engineering and includes topics such as aerodynamics, animal locomotion, automotive engineering, biomechanics, computer architecture, optics, sensors, and transformers. The project targets underserved youth in grades 1-5 in Los Angeles and New York, their parents, and engineering professionals. The design is grounded in motivation theory and is intended to foster participants' intrinsic motivation and self-direction while the comprehensive design takes into account the cultural, social, and intellectual needs of diverse families. The science activities are provided in a series of Family Science Workshops which take place in afterschool programs in eight partner schools in Los Angeles and at the New York Hall of Science in New York City. The FSWs are taught by undergraduate and graduate engineering students with support from practicing engineers who serve as mentors. The primary project deliverable is a five-year longitudinal evaluation designed to assess (1) the impact of intensive training for engineering professionals who deliver family science activities in community settings and (2) families' interest in and understanding of science. Additional project deliverables include a 16-week training program for engineering professionals, 20 physics-based workshops and lesson plans, Family Science Workshops (40 in LA and 5 in NY), a Parent Leadership Program and social networking site, and 5 science training videos. This project will reach nearly one thousand students, parents, and student engineers. The multi-method evaluation will be conducted by the Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center. The evaluation questions are as follows: Are activities such as recruitment, training, and FSWs aligned with the project's goals? What is the impact on families' interest in and understanding of science? What is the impact on engineers' communication skills and perspectives about their work? Is the project scalable and able to produce effective technology tools and develop long-term partnerships with schools? Stage 1 begins with the creation of a logic model by stakeholders and the collection of baseline data on families' STEM experiences and knowledge. Stage 2 includes the collection of formative evaluation data over four years on recruitment, training, co-teaching by informal educators, curriculum development, FSWs, and Parent Leadership Program implementation. Finally, a summative evaluation addresses how well the project met the goals associated with improving families' understanding of science, family involvement, social networking, longitudinal impact, and scalability. A comprehensive dissemination plan extends the project's broader impacts in the museum, engineering, evaluation, and education professional communities through publications, conference presentations, as well as web 2.0 tools such as blogs, YouTube, an online social networking forum for parents, and websites. 'Be a Scientist!' advances the field through the development and evaluation of a model for sustained STEM learning experiences that helps informal science education organizations broaden participation, foster collaborations between universities and informal science education organizations, increase STEM-based social capital in underserved communities, identify factors that develop sustained interest in STEM, and empower parents to co-invest and sustain a STEM program in their communities.
Effective communication of science to the public by scientists is a desired and sought after attribute. This project which is working with graduate and undergraduate students in Physics will determine what interventions are best in assessing communication and attitudinal capacities in this cadre. Further, the project will determine what strategies are best at remediation. Finally, the successes will be generalized with regard to interventions and remediation to other Physics programs across the country and perhaps to other disciplines in the STEM fields. There are a variety of factors that contribute to effective communications with public audiences. Some of those factors include audience characteristics and teacher/mentor capabilities. This project will ascertain the issues in the latter teacher/mentor capacities. They will assess the mentor's baseline skills regarding communication, teaching and emergent attitudes. These are considered separately as each contributes uniquely to the effectiveness of communication. In the communications skills section, the objective will be to determine initially if the mentors are using any one of the following models: deficit, meaning the mentor is the expert and the participants are not informed; dialogue, where there is more back and forth between mentor and participant; and finally participatory interactions, where there is full integration of participant and mentor ideas. Once the baseline is established, the investigators will introduce mechanisms for remedial intervention with the student mentors to determine if and what types of changes can be made to improve communication directed toward public understanding of STEM concepts and ideas. Finally, the researchers will seek to determine if these interventions have affects beyond the immediate challenges such as career discussions, participation in classes and/or written products.
This study sought to understand what motivates students at the high school and early college level to choose physics. It explored students’ expectations of their study of physics and their priorities for future careers. The researchers intended to contribute strategies to increase the number of females who complete university physics degrees. They also hoped to show that a wider range of perspectives needs to be represented among physics practitioners.
This paper describes the potential benefits of incorporating art into physics education. Drawing and sculpture provide a way of understanding abstract concepts. The process may also allow educators to “humanize” physics and thus make it more accessible to historically marginalized groups.