This paper by Mujtaba and Reiss explores tendencies in girls’ and boys’ motivations, attitudes, and perceptions toward studying physics after age 16. Findings suggest that girls who want to continue studying physics understand the material and social benefits it affords. They are also more competitive than other students. However, in general, they have less confidence in their abilities than boys.
Through a critical ethnography, Birmingham and Calabrese Barton examined why and how a group of six middle school girls took civic action, defined as “educated action in science,” after studying green energy in an afterschool science program. The paper follows the students’ process in planning and implementing a carnival to engage their community in energy conservation and efficiency issues.
The Exhibit Designs for Girls' Engagement (EDGE) PI poster provides the background for the research, the research questions, the steps we are taking to answer those questions, our audience and deliverables, and the challenges we've faced in the first year.
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ExploratoriumToni DancstepVeronica Garcia-Luis
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. Madison Area Technical College, in collaboration with the Institute for Chemical Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American Chemical Society (ACS) and area science centers and museums will create a national program to disseminate the Fusion Science Theater (FST) model which directly engages children in playful, participatory, and inquiry-based science learning of chemistry and physics topics.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It highlights the work accomplished through the ARIEL project, which developed a cyberlearning exhibit using augmented and virtual reality.
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The Franklin InstituteKaren ElinichSusan Yoon
Project STEAM aims to inspire art-interested girls to enter STEM careers through a series of activities, including summer academies that explore the biology and physics of color, science café-style presentations that feature the overlap between art and science, and the development of “kits” that can be used in informal and formal venues (Girl Scouts, science centers, and K-12 classrooms). Project research explores two questions: 1) How does an art-focused approach (STEAM) to teaching science support engagement in scientific practices such as experimentation, observation, and communication of
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University of Alaska, FairbanksLaura Conner
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting. The project seeks to understand the effects of interactive and immersive environments on the learning of science concepts in informal settings, specifically the role of embodied interactions and whether cueing students to physically enact critical ideas in physics will support middle school students' learning, engagement, and identification with science. This is done using an environment called MEteor, a simulation of planetary astronomy where students use their body to make predictions about how an asteroid will move through space.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting. The Prairie Science project is about facilitating learning STEM concepts by integrating a historical perspective (Conner Prairie Museum) and a science center-based perspective (Science Museum of Minnesota).
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a media project that created a documentary film about the Pulsar Search Collaboratory, as well as developing programming to be used both in the classroom and in diverse settings throughout the community.
What keeps an individual interested and motivates long-term engagement in a practice? This Azevedo article presents a grounded theory of long-term, self-motivated participation based on data gathered through an ethnography of hobbyists’ participation in model rocketry. The author emphasizes that long-term engagement depends on the connection of the activity to the participant’s “larger life.”
Front-line educators are arguably critical to the visitor experience at museums and science centers across the country. However, little research exists to inform staff facilitation strategies or professional development efforts. In this article, we describe the results of a qualitative study of 63 staff family interactions in a science center, focusing particularly on the role of adult family members. We observed three distinct phases of interaction, during which adult family members acted as gatekeepers to deeper staff engagement. The results suggest that in order to successfully facilitate
ResearchLink: Spotlight on Solar Technologies was a Collaborative Research Connecting Researchers and Public Audiences (CRPA) Project led by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and Portland State University, funded by the NSF AISL program from 2012-2014. This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC.
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Portland State University and Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryLauren (Russell) MorenoCarl Wamser