The purpose of the Museum of Science and Industry’s new Teacher Professional Development Series (TPDS) is to improve student performance in science by enhancing their teachers’ science content knowledge, instructional strategies, and museum skills. By combining solid content, hands-on classroom activities, inquiry-based instruction, and tools for a successful Museum visit, the Museum seeks to assist 4th-8th grade teachers who want to help students explore basic science concepts in new and engaging ways.
The major goals for the overall Teacher Professional Development Series are as follows: (1
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The SCIENCES project aims to create a STEM ecosystem in Fuller Park, a chronically, severely under-resourced urban community in Chicago.
This presentation from the 2016 NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Principal Investigators' Meeting presents an overview of the AISL Online Project Monitoring System (OPMS), including a report-out of findings from the data collected from projects funded between FY2006-FY2014.
This special issue of Science Education & Civic Engagement contains articles on work occurring in a variety of informal STEM education settings, and is dedicated to the memory of former CAISE co-Principal Investigator and adviser Alan Friedman. It was provided in hard copy form to 2016 NSF AISL PI meeting participants.
These slides about the NSF commitment to informal STEM education were presented during the keynote at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2.
These slides provide an overview of current NSF funding opportunities, including Dear Colleague Letters and foundation-wide mechanisms. The presentation occurred as a technical assistance session at the 2016 NSF AISL PI Meeting.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. DEVISE was conceived to address the need for improved evaluation quality and capacity across the field of citizen science.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Head Start on Engineering is a pathways project focused on developing the foundations of a long-term, community-based research program to (a) understand how preschool children (4 years old) and their families develop engineering-related interests in early childhood and (b) develop community partnerships and programs that support engineering interest pathways for these families.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways in which environmental education (EE) programs are contributing to environmental quality (EQ) improvement. The research applied the Pressure-State-Response (PSR) environmental indicator framework to the reported outcomes of 103 EE programs in order to 1) determine the extent to which existing EE programs are reporting EQ improvement outcomes; and 2) examine the extent to which these programs are impacting indicators in the three areas of the PSR framework. The study consisted of three research phases: evaluation synthesis, semi-structured
“Investigating the Long-term Effects of Informal Science Learning at Zoos and Aquariums” aimed to identify the opportunities for and barriers to researching the long-term effects of informal science learning experiences at zoos and aquariums, and to construct a proposal for a five- to ten-year study as the first attempt to measure those effects. This report summarizes the findings and recommendations of the one-year project, which concluded in November 2015.
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Sarah ThomasNicole ArdoinMurray Saunders
To support learning across settings, educators need to develop ways to elicit student interests and prior experiences. McClain and Zimmerman describe how, during outdoor walks at a nature center, families talked about prior experiences with nature, which were mostly from non-school settings. They used the prior experiences to remind, prompt, explain to, and orient one another during shared meaning-making activity.