This report introduces a framework to support learning in library and museum makerspaces. The framework demonstrates how we can create the conditions for ambitious learning experiences to unfold within the making experience.
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Children's Museum of PittsburghInstitute of Museum and Library ServicesPeter Wardrip
This White Paper is based on proceedings from the National Living Laboratory Workshop: High School Research Experiences in Living Laboratory - a convening of professionals who wished to share resources and explore opportunities to involve high school students in the Living Laboratory model.
There are many lenses through which we can measure the value of a museum experience.
There is the satisfaction factor: Did visitors have a good time? Were they engaged? Do they want to return?
There are learning outcomes: Did visitors learn something new? How much did they learn? How did their experience compare to other types of learning experiences?
And there is also meaning-making: Did respondents have a meaningful experience? A memorable one? A connective experience that made them want more?
While all three of these lenses (and many others) are important, meaning-making is
Museums are on the up. More than fifty per cent of the UK population now visits one every year; with attendances across many western countries having grown as much as ten per cent in the last decade. During half that period, a variety of funding agencies and individuals have poured no less than five billion dollars into America’s museum infrastructure, with entirely new museums (such as the Eli Broad in LA and Smithsonian’s African American Museum) or hefty extensions of established ones (like that at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) being built as a consequence. While on the other side
Co-led by the University of Washington and Science Gallery Dublin, this project aims to drive and transform the next generation of broadening participation efforts targeting teen-aged youth from communities historically underrepresented in STEM fields. This project investigates how out-of-school time (OST) programs that integrate epistemic practices of the arts, sciences, computer science, and other disciplines, in the context of consequential activities (such as creating radio segments, designing museum exhibitions, or building online games), can more broadly appeal to and engage youth who do not already identify as STEM learners. STEM-related skills and capacities (such as computational thinking, design, data visualizations, and digital storytelling) are key to productive and creative participation in many future civic and workplace activities, and are driving the 30 fastest-growing occupations in the US. But many new jobs will entail a hybrid blend of skills, such as programming and design skills that many students who have disengaged with academic STEM pathways may already have and would be eager to develop further. There is not currently a strong foundation of research-based evidence to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation transdisciplinary programs - in which STEM skills are embedded as tools for meaningful participation - or how such approaches relate to long-term outcomes. Hypothesizing that OST programs which effectively engage youth during their high-leverage teenage years can significantly impact youths' longer-term STEM learning trajectories, this project will involve: 1) Five 3-year studies documenting learning in different technology-rich contexts: Making Afterschool, Media Production, Museum Exhibition Design, Digital Arts Programs, and Pop-Up/Street Science Programs; 2) A 4-year longitudinal study, involving 100 youth from the above programs; 3) The creation of a number of practical measurement tools that can be used to monitor how programs are leveraging the intersections of the arts and sciences to support student engagement and learning; and 4) A Professional Development program conducted at informal science education conferences in the EU and US to engage the informal STEM field with emerging findings. This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The goal of this joint funding effort is to make transformational steps toward improving the knowledge base and practices of informal STEM experiences to better understand, strengthen, and coordinate STEM engagement and learning. Within NSF, Science Learning+ is part of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that seeks to enhance learning in informal environments.
Transdisciplinary, equity-oriented OST programs can provide supportive social contexts in which STEM concepts and practices are taken up as the means for meaningful participation in valued activities, building students' STEM skills in ways that can propel their future academic, career, and lifelong learning choices. This project will build the knowledge base about these emerging 21st century transdisciplinary approaches to broadening participation investigating: 1) The epistemic intersections across a range of disciplines (art, science, computation, design) that operate to broaden appeal and meaningful participation for underrepresented youth; 2) How transdisciplinary activities undertaken in the context of consequential learning (e.g., producing a radio segment, designing an exhibition for the general public) can illuminate the relevance of STEM to young people's lives, concerns, and futures; and 3) How participation in such programs can propel students' longer-term life choices and STEM learning trajectories. The project is a collaboration of the University of Washington, Science Gallery Dublin, Indiana University, Youth Radio in Oakland California, Guerilla Science in New York and London, and the London School of Economics.
Science researchers and practitioners are often challenged by how best to assess the effectiveness of science activities on young children whose language skills are still emerging. Yet, research has demonstrated the critical importance of early learning on individual potential. Building on evidence that movement is tightly intertwined with thinking, this project will investigate how thought and movement link as embodied learning to accelerate science understanding. Research will be conducted in the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) with the aim to gather evidence for embodied interactions during science learning and articulate design principles about how museum exhibits can most effectively encourage cognitive and physical engagement with science. Such guidelines are largely absent in the field of informal STEM learning, and so this project seeks transformational change in how learning is understood and recognizes that changes in knowledge can be developed and revealed through body-based movements as well as verbally. Such a view is critically important given that many early learners communicate understanding through nonverbal channels before verbal. Research will be conducted with a diverse population of children and will explore the application of embodied learning to communities that are underrepresented in STEM. This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The goal of this joint funding effort is to make transformational steps toward improving the knowledge base and practices of informal STEM experiences. Within NSF, Science Learning+ is part of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that seeks to enhance learning in informal environments and to broaden access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences. During a 3-year period, researcher-practitioner teams across six museum sites will collaboratively investigate the links between movement and learning outcomes at selected science exhibits designed for young learners. Research activities will involve iteration and refinement of new instruments and protocols, through analysis of observed and automated capture of interaction data, and synthesis and interpretation of data. A design-based research methodology will be applied to address three key questions: 1) What elements of sensory and action experiences are key to informing the design of exhibits that aim to exploit embodied interactions for learning; 2) What is the role of bodily enactment /gestures in assessing children's understanding of science concepts; and 3) What cultural differences in kinds of embodied engagement emerge across diverse museum settings? Video and audio data of 400 children's exhibit interactions will be collected. Pre/post semi-structured interviews will be conducted with a subset of these participants and will focus on children's understanding of relevant science concepts as well as personal reflections on their physical and emotional experience engaging with the exhibit. This project would raise awareness of embodied approaches to learning as well as build stronger collaborations between informal STEM educators and cognitive researchers. Utilization of informal and formal dissemination networks will support wide diffusion of project outcomes. This is critically important given strong evidence pointing to the impact of preschool education in underserved populations, and ongoing national efforts by the US and UK to improve the quality of STEM learning in preschool contexts.
Project partners supported by NSF funding include The Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, The Children's Museum of Indianapolis, andSciencenter (Ithaca).
Partners supported by the Wellcome Trust include University of Edinburgh, University College London, Glasgow Science Centre, Science Museum London, and Learning through Landscapes.
This 4-year project addresses fundamental equity issues in informal Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) learning. Access to, and opportunities within informal STEM learning (ISL) remain limited for youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds in both the United States and the United Kingdom. However, there is evidence that ISL experiences can expand opportunities for youth learning and development in STEM, for instance, increase positive attitudes towards educational aspirations and future careers/pursuits, improve grades and test scores in school settings, and decrease disciplinary action and dropout rates. Through research and development, this project brings together researchers and practitioners to focus on the experiences, practices and tools that will support equitable youth pathways into STEM. Working across conceptual frameworks and ISL settings (e.g. science centers, community groups, zoos) and universities in four urban contexts in two different nations, the partnership will produce a coherent knowledge base that strengthens and expands research plus practice partnerships, builds capacity towards transformative research and development, and develops new models and tools in support of equitable pathways into STEM at a global level. This project is funded through Science Learning+, which is an international partnership between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Wellcome Trust with the UK Economic and Social Research Council. The goal of this joint funding effort is to make transformational steps toward improving the knowledge base and practices of informal STEM experiences. Within NSF, Science Learning+ is part of the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program that seeks to enhance learning in informal environments and to broaden access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences. This Equity Pathways project responds to three challenges at the intersections of ISL research and practice in the United States and the United Kingdom: 1) lack of shared understanding of how youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds perceive and experience ISL opportunities across national contexts, and the practices and tools needed to support empowered movement through ISL; 2) limited shared understanding and evidence of core high-leverage practices that support such youth in progressing within and across ISL, and 3) limited understanding of how ISL might be equitable and transformative for such youth seeking to develop their own pathways into STEM. The major goal of this Partnership is for practitioners and researchers, working with youth through design-based implementation research, survey and critical ethnography, to develop new understandings of how and under what conditions they participate in ISL over time and across settings, and how they may connect these experiences towards pathways into STEM. The project will result in: 1) New understandings of ISL pathways that are equitable and transformative for youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds; 2) A set of high leverage practices and tools that support equitable and transformative informal science learning pathways (and the agency youth need to make their way through them); and 3) Strengthened and increased professional capacity to broaden participation among youth from historically underrepresented backgrounds in STEM through informal science learning. The project will be carried out by research + practice partnerships in 4 cities: London & Bristol, UK and Lansing, MI & Portland, OR, US, involving university researchers (University College London, Michigan State University, Oregon State University/Institute for Learning Innovation) practitioners in science museums (@Bristol Science Centre, Brent Lodge Park Animal Centre, Impressions 5, Oregon Museum of Science & Industry) and community-based centers (STEMettes, Knowle West Media Centre, Boys & Girls Clubs of Lansing, and Girls, Inc. of the Pacific Northwest).
This document is a list of culturally responsive research resources developed by the Researching the Value of Educator Actions for Learning (REVEAL) project.
Have you ever been to a professional development (PD) session where you sat and listened to someone speak for hours—and likely got a bit bored? As teachers, we know that best practice is to encourage hands-on learning, but we forget to implement this strategy when creating PD experiences. Exploration Place (EP), the Sedgwick County Science and Discovery Center in Wichita, Kansas, partnered with eight rural school districts in neighboring Sumner County, threw out the traditional sage-on-a-stage paradigm, and tried something new.
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Jan LuthKimberly McDowellLaurel Zhang
The Discovery Research K-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers, through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools (RMTs). Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.
STEM Practice-rich Investigations for NGSS Teaching (SPRINT) is an exploratory project that will research and develop resources and a model for professional learning needed to meet the demand of implementing the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The Exploratorium Teacher Institute will engage middle school science teachers in a one-year professional learning program to study how familiar routines and classroom tools, specifically hands-on science activities, can serve as starting points for teacher learning. The Teacher Institute will use existing hands-on activities as the basis for developing "practice-rich investigations" that provide teachers and students with opportunities for deep engagement with science and engineering practices. The results of this project will include: (1) empirical evidence from professional learning experiences that support teacher uptake of practice-rich investigations in workshops and their classrooms; (2) a portfolio of STEM practice-rich investigations developed from existing hands-on activities that are shown to enhance teacher understanding of NGSS; and (3) a design tool that supports teachers in modifying existing activities to align with NGSS.
SPRINT conjectures that to address the immediate challenge of supporting teachers to implement NGSS, professional learning models should engage teachers in the same active learning experiences they are expected to provide for their students and that building on teachers' existing strengths and understanding through an asset-based approach could lead to a more sustainable implementation. SPRINT will use design-based research methods to study (a) how creating NGSS-aligned, practice-rich investigations from teachers' existing resources provides them with experiences for three-dimensional science learning and (b) how engaging in these investigations and reflecting on classroom practice can support teachers in understanding and implementing NGSS learning experiences.
The Exploratorium Teacher Institute (TI) is a teacher professional development center that offers comprehensive, multiyear professional learning institutes; classroom coaching and mentoring; and teaching tools to middle and high school science teachers. The TI staff is composed of a team of PhD scientists and veteran secondary science educators who work in concert to provide teachers with resources and experiences that develop the content knowledge and pedagogical skills necessary for teaching authentic science content through student-centered activities (McDermott and DeWater 2000). All of
National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC
Summative Evaluation for Educational Program, 2016
The National Air and Space Museum (NASM) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation of Science in Pre-K, an onsite and online teacher professional development program that NASM developed for the District of Columbia Public Charter Schools’ (DCPS). The program supports preschool teachers in teaching science through exploration and problem solving. This evaluation is a continuation of a planning and evaluation project initiated in 2013. In 2013, RK&A