Summer science programs held in university research facilities provide ideal opportunities for pre-college students to master new skills and renew, refresh, and enrich their interest in science. These types of programs have a positive impact on a student's understanding of the nature of science and scientific inquiry and can open a youngster's eyes to the many possible career opportunities in science. This paper describes a study of high school students enrolled in the Summer Science Academy program at the University of Rochester that investigates the program's impact on students' knowledge of
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kerry KnoxJan MoynihanDina Markowitz
Two important content areas associated with informal environmental science programs are ecology/natural science topics and awareness of environmental problems/issues. This study attempted to evaluate which of these content areas may provide a more optimum learning experience. A quantitative analysis was conducted on two field trips to a science center that represented an ecological oriented program and an environmental issue presentation. Two variables that were chosen as indicators of program success—knowledge retention and attitude change—are outcomes that have been found prevalent in
This article explores the ways that mothers and children from primarily middle-income European American backgrounds reason about events in which biological and nonbiological objects change in size. In Study 1, mother–child conversations were examined to investigate the events mothers described as growth, as well as the ways mothers explained events occurring in different domains. Findings indicate that although mothers primarily discussed events in domain-specific ways, they exhibited some domain blurring in their talk to children. In Study 2, 3-year-old children (M=3 years, 2 months) and 5
The Jackprot is a didactic slot machine simulation that illustrates how mutation rate coupled with natural selection can interact to generate highly specialized proteins. Conceptualized by Guillermo Paz-y-Miño C., Avelina Espinosa, and Chunyan Y. Bai (New England Center for the Public Understanding of Science, Roger Williams University and the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth), the Jackprot uses simplified slot-machine probability principles to demonstrate how mutation rate coupled with natural selection suffice to explain the origin and evolution of highly specialized proteins. The
The purpose of this article is to describe a community-based science project that was coproduced with urban teenagers and to elaborate on my understanding of what it means to create a practicing culture of science learning. This understanding will be positioned in relation to various educationally relevant discourses and research on urban science education, concluding with an exploration of these questions: In what ways did an urban planning and community gardening project help to create a learning environment in which science was relevant? To whom was science relevant and toward what ends? It
The purpose of this longitudinal case study is to describe the educational trajectories of a sample of 152 young women from urban, low-income, single-parent families who participated in the Women in Natural Sciences (WINS) program during high school. Utilizing data drawn from program records, surveys, and interviews, this study also attempts to determine how the program affected the participants' educational and career choices to provide insight into the role informal science education programs play in increasing the participation of women and minorities in science, math, engineering, and
In this paper I focus on the transition from everyday to scientific ways of reasoning, and on the intertwined roles of meaning-making dialogue and science content as they contribute to scientific literacy. I refer to views of science, and how scientific understanding is advanced dialogically, by Hurd (Science Education, 1998, 82, 402-416), Brown (The Journal of Learning Sciences, 1992, 2(2), 141-178), Bruner (Acts of Meaning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), Roth (In J. Brophy (Ed.), Social Constructivist Teaching: Affordances and Constraints (Advances in Research on Teaching
Free-choice learning and, derivatively, free-choice environmental learning emerges as a powerful vehicle for supporting diversity in learning styles (Falk & Dierking, 2002). In this article, I argue that free-choice environmental learning holds great potential for enabling us to understand what is at stake in environmental learning and thus help us build a sustainable future. I examine the different informal learning contexts for children, home (family and play), museums, zoos, nature parks and wilderness, among many others, and offer an explanation for how learning occurs in these settings
In this article we describe an instance of free-choice learning in the context of an eelgrass mapping and stewardship project (the Project) that covers over 500 kilometers of coastline in British Columbia, Canada, and involves 20 volunteer groups. In this ethnographic case study we sought to (a) explicate the relationship between individual and collective learning in this free-choice setting and (b) understand how a network of Project participants could both constitute a free-choice learning setting and support such a setting. We articulate a dialectic relationship between individual and
Informal participation in science is being recognized as an important way of developing science learning both for children and adults. Mobile learning has particular properties that have potential in informal science settings, particularly outside traditional educational settings. Mobile technologies provide new opportunities for learners to engage with science on the move. This paper reviews the impact of participation in informal science settings on some members of the public using the experiences of the iSpot project as a case study. iSpot aims to create and inspire a new generation of
There has been little work done on the early experiences of children looking at plant exhibits in botanical gardens. This project, a parallel study to one carried out in zoos, sought to establish what the groups talked about and whether there were differences in content when adults were present and between single sex and mixed groups. The conversations were collected during primary school visits to the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, England, whilst the groups looked at plant specimens. Transcripts of the conversations were analysed using a systemic network. The results show that children talked
This study, conducted over a four-year period at Chester Zoo in the UK, sought to evaluate the impact on visitor behavior and interpretation use that a transition from second- to third-generation zoo exhibit might affect. Visitors spent more time in the newer exhibit (even when allowing for relative floor area) and visitor time budgets suggest a high degree of visitor interaction with different exhibit elements. Specific interpretive elements were analyzed in detail, using quasi-quantitative methods in addition to more standard timing and tracking measures. From this, a proportional
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Andrew MossMaggie EssonDavid Francis