Discovery Place in Charlotte, NC is planning and coordinating a visit by Chinese delegates to designated United States Science Museums toward identifying cooperative endeavors related to public understanding of science. Planning also will be done for a separate delegation of informal educators from Japan. Discovery Place will work with the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) to assist in planning and arranging portions of each delegation's visit in order to help science center professionals from all three countries meet and learn more about each other's institutions, programs and priorities. Through this networking, U.S. institutions will be encouraged to participate in exchanges and cooperative projects. The meetings also will help all sides identify potential partners and develop the relationships necessary to pursue joint activities such as staff exchanges, cooperative development of exhibits and programs and design of workshops. Specific planning activities to be undertaken by Discovery Place include: Identifying appropriate museum and media production sites for the Chinese delegation to visit; Coordinating the purposes of the visit with these sites; Working with The Institute of Pacific Asia (IPA is the NSF grantee that is handling the administrative aspects of the Chinese and Japanese visits) to develop a specific agenda for each site visit; Coordinating with ASTC to arrange such activities as: Presentations by members of the Chinese and Japanese delegation in ASTC conference sessions, Participation by members of the Chinese and Japanese delegations in ASTC conference events and sessions, and Assisting IPA in developing an agenda for a one-day US/China delegation meeting immediately following the conference. This project provides rare opportunities for informal science educators and policy makers to explore a wide range of program options for the United States, China and Japan to inform the public and build support for science.
The Developmental Studies Center is supporting the active involvement of parents in their children's mathematical development, helping parents understand more about how their children learn mathematically and socially, and increasing the likelihood that children will discuss mathematics with an adult who is significant in their lives. The first phase of this project develops, pilot tests, and evaluates a Homeside Math resource book for each grade level, K-2, with activities teachers can send home to foster positive interaction about mathematics between parents and their children. These activities are related to exemplary school curricula, particularly those developed with NSF support. The next phase develops a limited number of additional activities to add to the Homeside Math collection to be published as Community Math. Community Math is a resource book for youth workers with activities that foster mathematical discussions between children ages 5-8 and a significant adult and can be used in a variety of community organization settings and sent home for family use. Workshops are developed for parents, teachers, and youth workers to strengthen their knowledge of child-centered instructional strategies, meaningful activities, and how children develop mathematically and socially. And facilitator workshops are developed for parents, teachers, and youth workers to enable them to lead workshops for parents.
The Wildlife Conservation Society is developing and implementing a five-year science program for 420 parents and 210 teachers of children in grades K-8. Linked directly with school curricula and the new National Science Education Standards, the program will bridge the gap between parents and schools, and position the Zoo as a partner and intermediary to help parents and teachers improve the quality and quantity of science education. The program consists of four interrelated components: 1) A series of workshops that will prepare the 420 parents and 210 teachers to work in teams for better and more widely available science education; 2) A series of education projects that will enable workshop participants to teach thousands of other parents and educators about the importance of science literacy, the need for active parental engagement in children's education, and the crucial role that informal science institutions play in augmenting formal science instruction; 3) A series of four Science Advocacy Fairs at the Zoo that are expected to raise the visitor's consciousness on a large scale about the above issues; and 4) A symposium for educators from schools and informal science centers in the region to disseminate successful methods for involving parents in science education.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science proposed to develop an outreach science and mathematics program with a parent involvement and teacher enhancement professional development component. The goals of the project are as follows: (1) to involve parents in their children's education; (2) to promote a positive attitude on behalf of parents and students toward science and mathematics; (3) to increase teachers' level of comfort in teaching science; and (4) to enhance teacher's confidence in the hands-on approach as an effective method for teaching science. The objectives for the parent component of this project are: acquaint parents with the national and state science education goals and standards; introduce parents to activities that can be done at home with children; and provide families with materials and activity sheets that can be used at home. The objectives for the teacher component of this project are: (1) to provide teachers with opportunities for increased communication with parents about science literacy for children; (2) provide professional development for teachers on the use of hands-on science activities in the classroom; and (3) to providing bilingual activity guides and kits containing materials to encourage science learning. The methods for implementing this project will be varied according to the needs of the target audiences. Parents and children will be engaged through parent workshops and multi-aged children's activities conducted at the museum by experienced science educators. The professional development for teachers' component of this project will include an extensive summer workshop, on-going training/ planning sessions during the school calendar year and session on the uses of the bilingual teaching manuals. The cost sharing for this NSF award is 46.7% of the total project cost.
The Informal Science Education Program of the National Science foundation will provide $320,000 in partial support of "Research in Learning in Museums Project." This will be the NSF contribution to a four federal agency effort to collaboratively support a major research project on learning in museums. As the result of an RFP developed by representatives of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the National Science Foundation (NSF), an award was made to the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh. It was agreed by the four agencies that the IMLS would be the coordinating agency of this award since they represent all museum regardless of subject, content, or type of audience.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Rebecca Danvers
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Under the direction of Kevin Crowley, the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh will investigate gender bias in parental explanations in informal learning settings. This project, Responding to the Gender Gap in Informal Science Education, will build on previous research at children's museums where the conversations of 338 families with children eight years and younger at sixteen different interactive exhibits were recorded and analyzed. They found that parents were almost three times more likely to use explanations when interacting with boys than girls. In this project they will conduct additional research to isolate the causes and outcomes associated with gender bias in these parental explanations and then they will develop, evaluate, and disseminate a range of low-cost methods to modify science exhibits to support parental explanation to both girls and boys. The latter will take the form of an Explanation Toolbox (XBox) which will be a set of resources to help museums construct and evaluate their own modifications to support non-biased parental explanations, with special attention paid to including explanations for the young girls, in addition to the usual conversations about manipulating the exhibits and about the visual, auditory, and tactile information produced by the exhibit. Results of the research and the toolbox will be broadly disseminated via the World Wide Web and published research reports.
The New York City Board of Education Community School District #18 requests $862,790 to design a Parent Involvement in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Program. The program is designed to stimulate parents to become informed, active proponents for high quality and more universally available science, mathematics, and technology education for their children. The SMART Parents project team would design and disseminate strategies to enable parents to support their children's science, mathematics, and technology education. Innovative materials and strategies will be developed that will actively engage over 6,000 parents/families over the thirty-eight (38) months duration of the project. Almost 20,000 families will become involved in the leadership-training component of this project. The initiative will assist parents in supporting their children's education in science, mathematics, and technology education. Ultimately, the project will enhance parents' knowledge and understanding of Informal Science Education.
This project, Project PARTNERS (Parents: Allies Reinforcing Technology and Neighborhood Educators Reinforcing Science) supports parents and their children in learning the mathematics and science taught in the schools. The Bronx Educational Alliance (BEA), in collaboration with Lehman College, School District Nine, the Bronx High School Superintendency, and the Bronx Federation of High School Parent Association Presidents, provides a four-month Parent Academy twice a year. Thirty-six parents (20 elementary, 6 middle and 10 high school), from 18 Bronx schools in three K-12 corridors with which the BEA Resource/Outreach Center for Parents currently works, participate in each Academy, reaching 360 over five years. Project PARTNERS goals are to: 1) increase student achievement in 18 Corridor Schools through meaningful parental support; 2) provide parent training in Math, Science and Technology and enable parents to understand the New Standards; 3) develop skills to reinforce their children's learning at home; and 4) model how to effectively learn in science-rich informal educational institutions. Parents meet on Saturdays twice a month for six hours. On one Saturday they team with a teacher and child to visit a science rich institution. On the other Saturday they learn to use computer software programs which support MST, and math concepts through games and manipulatives. Incentives for parents include learning computer skills and stipends of $300 upon completion. The BEA Academies coordinate with the BUSI and District's Family Math and Family Science workshops.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Herminio MartinezMarietta Saravia-Shore
Learning to Work with the Public in the Context of Local Systemic Change is a five-year Teacher Enhancement initiative to build a knowledge base and develop the necessary tools and resources for teachers and administrators to engage with their parents and public in pursuit of quality mathematics, and to prepare teacher leaders and administrators to successfully lead these efforts in their schools. The project has three major components: (1) focused and sustained work with teachers, administrators, school boards, parents and the public in strategically located current and potential NSF-supported Local Systemic Change communities; (2) the development and implementation of mathematics sessions and materials designed for parents/public and informed by the project's research/findings, and the preparation of teacher leaders and administrators to conduct these sessions within their own communities; and (3) dissemination conferences and other outreach activities. More specifically, the project will (a) engage in studies that identify the elements critical for successful intervention with parents and the public, (b) develop materials that can be used by lead teachers and other educational leaders to work with peer teachers and the broader public in their home communities, and (c) provide the professional development necessary to support implementation. The plan of work for the project is designed around the following questions: (1) What does it take to secure a public that is knowledgeable of issues in mathematics education and knowledgeable of what it means to teach important and relevant mathematics for understanding? (2) Will a knowledgeable public support and/or actively advocate for mathematics reform? If so, what is the nature of their advocacy? (3) What impact will a knowledgeable and/or proactive public have on the efforts of current and potential Local Systemic Change (LSC) projects to improve the quality of mathematics instruction in schools? (4) Are there critical times during mathematics restructuring efforts when parent engagement is essential? If so, what are those times and what is the nature of support needed? (5) What are the critical issues and caveats that need to be considered in designing and delivering successful mathematics education sessions for parents and the public? (6) What kinds of public engagement can best be accomplished by teacher leaders working within their own communities? What kinds of support do local leaders need in order to work successfully with parents and the public? (7) What kinds of public engagement can best be accomplished by national mathematics education leaders who come into a community on a limited basis? The work to be performed in the project is a carefully designed effort to develop a more practice-based understanding of the critical elements needed for productive public involvement in support of quality mathematics. Sites participating in the plan of work are Portland (OR), St. Vrain (CO), and San Francisco (CA). Resources and tools (e.g., deliverables) planned include professional development materials that can be used by teacher leaders and administrators as they work with peer teachers, as well as with parents and the public; rough-cut video tapes that are potentially useful in these professional development sessions; and a website. Cost sharing is derived from participating school districts and the Exxon and Intel Foundations.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Ruth ParkerJaneane GolliherDominic PeressiniLisa Adajian
The Exploratorium will conduct a controlled, two-year research project, titled "Finding Significance," to study how different exhibit presentation techniques affect visitors' abilities to make meaning -- or find significance -- and how such techniques impact learning. The techniques will be applied to a varied sample of five exhibits commonly found in science and children's museums. The exhibit design techniques include a) sharing scientist and exhibit developer stories, b) sharing visitor stories, and c) modeling inquiry. Although each technique shows promise at eliciting personal significance, they have yet to be rigorously tested and applied to the same set of exhibits to compare relative strengths and weaknesses. Five baseline exhibits, plus four variations of each, will be tested on groups of visitors, including adults, children and mixed groups of both.
Parent Partners in School Science (PPSS) is a partnership project between The Franklin Institute and the Philadelphia School District. This is a three and one-half year program which will provide a pivotal role for the informal science learning center to be a facilitator in parental support of K-4 school instruction in science. The PPSS program will involve teachers, families and children in grades K-2 the first year, grades 1-3 the next, and finally grades 2-4 in the third year. The incorporation of the national science standards and working with Home and School Associations (HSA) in the area schools, the program will impact over 3600 children, 5400 parents and 45 educators participating over the life of the project. There are several goals and elements in the program. This will certainly demonstrate how an informal science center supports learning and it is also hoped to become a model for effective parent-teacher and parent-child collaboration to support learning. There will be Exploration Cards developed, which are at-home schince challenges for families, Discovery Days that are museum-based days of science inquiry using the yearly theme, Parent/Teacher Workshops at the museum, and finally a Science Celebration which is a showcase of participants' year-long achievements via an exhibit to be displayed at The Franklin Institute for a month, then traveling the exhibit to participating schools. The project's structure, disseminination acitivites and products are designed for national application and as a model for use in both formal and informal education communities. It is hoped the program will offer new opportunities for science center methology and pratice to provide direct support for the school agenda in science.
The Exploratorium will develop exhibit designs that encourage visitors to become more cognitively engaged with exhibits -- to use exhibits as tools for self-directed exploration, rather than as authoritative demonstrations. To do this, the staff is drawing on new work in the fields of education, visitor research, human factors engineering, computer interface design and interactive exhibit development at other museums. The Exploratorium proposes to conduct evaluative research and exhibit development that maximizes possibilities for visitor-authored questions, activity and discovery, or active, prolonged engagement (APE). The project team plans to create 15 new exhibits and renovate an additional 15 exhibits in the physical sciences. The team will strategically position the exhibits to support active, prolonged engagement throughout the collection. Although the project focuses on physical science -- the most fundamental part of the Exploratorium exhibit collection -- the results will apply to exhibits in nearly all science disciplines.