Experiences-including museum experiences- that are packaged as stories are more likely to be remembered by both children and adults. For museum visitors, the simple act of narrating what they've done even no more than ten minutes ago can make their experience more meaningful and memorable. How connections are made between a museum experience and lasting learning, are driving the collaboration between practice and research at the Chicago Children's Museum and Loyola University Chicago.
This guide offers insight into community engagement practices and activity development from our making and equity project, Making Connections. It includes documentation and recommendations for work that is designed to engage community partners as equal partners, and is written most of all for other practitioners.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. This Pilot and Feasibility study will investigate strategies for enhancing the mathematics in museum-based making and tinkering activities and lay the foundation for a full research study on broadening family participation in mathematics through making. This proposal builds directly on the NSF-funded Math in the Making convening. During this convening, questions about how to authentically highlight and enhance the mathematics in making and tinkering experiences, and how different math-enhancement approaches might influence learner experiences and outcomes, emerged as critical issues for researchers, educators, and mathematicians alike. The project aims to provide a practical lens to help researchers and educators connect topics across STEM with making and tinkering experiences. The project also seeks to advance theoretical understandings of museum-based learning by exploring ways that activity design and facilitation strategies influence how visitors understand the nature and goals of the experience and, in turn, how these visitor experiences shape learning outcomes. The project is designed to explore the most promising of these math-enhancement strategies in more depth, to propose as a next project and develop a theoretical framework for understanding and describing how these strategies influence how families understand and engage with the mathematics in maker experiences. Through several culturally-responsive approaches developed in collaboration with community-based organizations, the project will research how mathematics in maker experiences influences participant engagement and learning. The project will culminate in the design of a research study. Reports and resources developed by the project will be broadly disseminated to researchers, mathematicians, and educators. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
The Designing Our Tomorrow project will develop a framework for creating exhibit-based engineering design challenges and expand an existing model of facilitation for use in engineering exhibits. The project seeks to broaden participation in engineering and build capacity within the informal science education (ISE) field while raising public awareness of the importance of sustainable engineering design practices. The project focuses on girls aged 9-14 and their families and is co-developed with culturally responsive strategies to ensure the inclusion and influence of families from Latino communities. The project will conduct research resulting in theory-based measures of engineering proficiencies within an exhibit context and an exhibit facilitation model for the topic area of engineering. Based on the research, the project will develop an engineering design challenge framework for developing design challenges within an exhibit context. As the context for research, the project will develop a bilingual English/Spanish 2,000-square foot traveling exhibition designed to engage youth and families in engineering design challenges that advance their engineering proficiencies from beginner to more informed, supported by professional development modules and a host-site training workshop introducing strategies for facilitating family engineering experiences within a traveling exhibition. The project is a collaboration of Oregon Museum of Science and Industry with the Biomimicry Institute, Adelante Mujeres, and the Fleet Science Center.
Designing Our Tomorrow builds on a theory-based engineering teaching framework and several previous NSF-funded informal education projects to engage families in compelling design challenges presented through the lens of sustainable design exemplified by biomimicry. Through culturally-responsive co-development and research strategies to include members of Latino communities and provide challenges that highlight the altruistic, creative, personally relevant, and collaborative aspects of engineering, the Designing Our Tomorrow exhibition showcases engineering as an appealing career option for women and helps families support each other's engineering proficiencies. To better understand and promote engineering learning in an ISE setting, the project will conduct two research studies to inform and iteratively develop effective strategies. In the first study, measurement development will build on prior research and practice to design credible and reliable measures of engineering proficiency, awareness, and collaboration, as well as protocols for use in exhibit development and the study of facilitation at engineering exhibits, and future research. The second study will explore the effects of facilitation on the experience outcomes.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This Innovations in Development project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. The Design Squad Maker project, a collaboration of WGBH Public Television (WGBH) and the New York Hall of Science (NySci), will research and develop engineering design projects that provide evidence for how to integrate informal learning spaces with digital public media assets. The project will be designed to provide accessible, motivating pathways for children aged 8-11 in pursuing and completing ambitious, fully realized engineering design projects. The project will build on WGBH's existing Design Squad model for using media to engage kids in informal engineering activities and NySCI's expertise in facilitating children's unique design processes in museum settings. By developing and studying new strategies for supporting children's use of the design process, Design Squad Maker will address critical issues in engineering education and informal learning that remain relatively unexplored. Project research will contribute to the emerging literature on "connected learning" by building new knowledge about how children's design activities can be sustained and supported over time and across multiple contexts, such as science museums and homes. Drawing on existing research in the learning sciences and engineering education, the project seeks to advance knowledge about the role of museums, maker spaces, and digital technology in sustaining children's learning in engineering. The project will use a design-based research approach, a research and development process whereby educational designers collaborate with learning scientists. Museum practitioners will collaborate with research staff and media developers to design, test, and improve digital resources, facilitation strategies, and parent engagement strategies to support children through an entire design process. The research and development process will result in digital resources and approaches in a flexible toolkit, which will be used when assessing the project's scale-up potential at 10 museum/maker spaces. The project will conduct a summative evaluation, assessing the project's intended impacts with children, parents, and staff at museums/maker spaces across the country. The toolkit will be nationally disseminated through national partners that include the Association of Science-Technology Centers, Maker Education, the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement, and engineering education organizations. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
This report, from the "Tinkering EU: Building Science Capital for All" project, provides a theoretical rationale for understanding the relationship between Tinkering as a pedagogical approach, students’ individual science capital, and inclusive STEM teaching approaches. By exploring the relationship between these three areas, it invites professionals to reflect on the ways in which Tinkering can be used a teaching tool for building science capital.
“Tinkering EU: Building Science Capital for All” aims to develop activities and resources that support a learner-centred culture, improve science education and develop 21st century skills - all of which are fundamental for active citizenship, employability, and social inclusion. To do this, it adopts ‘Tinkering’, an innovative pedagogy developed in the USA, which is used by museums, and has proven able to create a lifelong engagement with science for everyone. Tinkering works particularly well for people who argue that “they are not good at science” or are disaffected from any formal teaching and learning process. It can be a powerful tool to tackle disadvantage. The project integrates Tinkering into the school curriculum to develop the science capital of disadvantaged youth through the use of museums. It addresses students from 8 to 14 years old (primary and junior high schools).
Coordinator: National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci
Partners:
University of Cambridge – UK
NEMO Science Museum – The Netherlands
Science Gallery Dublin – Ireland
CosmoCaixa – Spain
Science Center Network – Austria
NOESIS – Greece
This CAISE report is designed to track and characterize sector growth, change and impact, important publications, hot topics/trends, new players, funding, and other related areas in Informal STEM Education (ISE) in 2017. The goal is to provide information and links for use by ISE professionals, science communicators, and interested stakeholders who want to discover new strategies and potential collaborators for project and proposal development. Designed as a slide presentation and divided into sectors, it can be used modularly or as a complete report. Each sector reports on research, events
The Maker movement has grown considerably over the past decade, both in the USA and internationally. Several varieties of "making" have been developed, but there are still many important questions to ask and research to conduct about how different programmatic structures may relate to the potential impact Maker programs can have on individuals and communities. As part of a larger, long-range initiative in their local community, the New York Hall of Science proposes to leverage the philosophy and activities of the Maker movement to take important first steps toward realizing their eventual goal of developing family and community-wide commitment to and improvement of STEM education. The project would build both foundational and practical knowledge about how parents with little or no prior knowledge of or experience with Making choose to engage with, contribute to, and learn from Maker programming designed for families with children from low-income households and backgrounds that are under-represented in the STEM professions. The intent is to build their understanding of the value of Making as a pathway toward deeper STEM learning. The project is characterized as "high-risk with potentially high-payoff." It applies a community psychology approach (rather than individual psychology) to the study of Making, and it focuses on parents as potential learners and leaders. While some work has been done in the field with respect to the role of parents in Maker environments, this is a new approach to the study of Making and its potential influence on the broader culture of STEM learning in a community. This project is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants.
Two informal learning environments will be developed and studied at the New York Hall of Science: Learning Together, a table-top, minimally staff-facilitated setting in the Hall's science library, and Family Making, a high-tech and staff-facilitated experience in the Hall's maker facility. The study poses two research questions: (1) How, and to what extent, do the Learning Together and Family Making programs attract and sustain parental engagement, parental facilitation of children's activity, and parents' own explorations of Making? (2) From a community psychology perspective, what social structures, resources, social processes, and surrounding institutional conditions support or impede these parental pathways into exploring and understanding Making as a pathway toward STEM learning? The study will involve sustained collaborations between the Hall's Maker Space staff and research team, and will seek to generate guidance about how to design Maker programming that attracts and retains low-income, under-served family groups and new knowledge about how external structures and practices shape this audiences' perceptions of and interest in Making as a mode of STEM learning.
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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TEAM MEMBERS:
Children's Museum of PittsburghInstitute of Museum and Library ServicesPeter Wardrip
This is an extended discussion of the question that appeared in the Viewpoints department of the May/June 2015 issue of Dimensions magazine. It presents perspectives from science center and museum professionals about the role of 3D printing in their institutions.
In this chapter, we explore making as a learning process in the context of a museum-based maker space designed for family participation. In particular, we focus on young children, and their adult learning partners, as an important demographic to consider and for which to design making environments and experiences. Importantly, we take a close look at the evolving role of museum educators in supporting young children's meaningful participation in making as an informal learning process. Through the presentation of a single case of a child's making in the museum, we identify key factors that