The New York Hall of Science (NYHOS), in partnership with the University of Michigan (UM), the Miami Museum of Science (MMOS), the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), and a broad group of Science and Museum Advisors, requests $1,349,349 over five years for a combined Phase I and Phase II NIH SEPA grant to develop, test and travel a new hands-on science exhibition on the subjects of natural selection and human health. With the working title "Evolution and Health," the 1000-square-foot interactive traveling exhibition will engage middle and high-school students, educators and the general public in inquiry-based learning on the role of evolution and natural selection in explanations of health, illness, prevention, and treatment. In addition, teacher development programs and online activities focusing on health issues seen from an evolutionary perspective will be developed by the NYHOS Education staff and disseminated along with the exhibition on its national tour. The project will address the relationship between health and natural selection; while there are many museum exhibitions on health, this will be only one of two to take an evolutionary perspective, and the only one to explore the relationship between health and natural selection. Ultimately, "Evolution and Health" will become a national model for conveying an evolutionary understanding of health, which will be increasingly central to research and public understanding in the coming years. "Evolution and Health" will increase visitors' comprehension of their own health issues by fostering a better understanding of evolution and natural selection. The project will seek to determine whether employing the perspective of natural selection can lead to a deeper understanding of human health.
There are a growing number of informal science education (ISE) programs in Native communities that engage youth in science education and that are grounded in Native ways of knowing. There is also a growing body of research focusing on the relationship between culture, traditional knowledge, and science education. However, there is little research documenting how these programs are being developed and the ways in which culture and Western science are incorporated into the activities. This study outlines effective practices for using Native ways of knowing to strengthen ISE programs. These
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth MackHelen AugareLinda Different Cloud-JonesDavid DominiqueHelene Quiver GaddieRose HoneyAngayuqaq KawagleyMelissa Little Plume-WeatherwaxLisa Lone FightGene MeierPete TachiniJames Rattling LeafElvin Returns from ScoutBonnie Sachatello-SawyarHi'ilani ShibataShelly ValdezRachel Wippert
The Exploratorium comes together with the Education Development Center, Inverness Research, TERC, the University of Colorado - Boulder, and the University of Washington to form a Research+Practice (R+P) Collaboratory. The Collaboratory seeks to address and reframe the gap between research and practice in K-12 STEM education. This gap persists despite decades of work by many leading organizations, associations, and individuals. Attempts to close the gap have generally focused on creating resources and mechanisms that first explain or illustrate "what research says" and then invite educators to access and integrate findings into practice. Recently, however, attention has turned to the ways in which the medical sciences are addressing the gap between research and clinical practice through the developing field of "translational research." In medicine, the strategy has been to shift the focus from adoption to adaptation of research into practice. Implicit in the notion of adaptation is a bi-directional process of cultural exchange in which both researchers and practitioners come to understand how the knowledge products of each field can strengthen the professional activities in the other. Along these lines, the R+P Collaboratory is working with leading professional associations and STEM improvement efforts to leverage their existing knowledge and experience and to build sustainable strategies for closing the gap. The R+P Collaboratory is developing an online 'Go-To' Resource Center website that houses the resources collected, created, and curated by the Collaboratory. The Resource Center also has significant 'Take-Out' features, with all materials meta-tagged so that they can be automatically uploaded, reformatted, and integrated into the existing communication and professional development mechanisms (e.g., newsletters, digests, conferences, and websites) of a dozen leading professional associations within a Professional Association Partner Network. In light of new and emerging standards in the STEM disciplines, the Collaboratory is focusing its work on four salient and timely bodies of research: (a) STEM Practices, (b) Formative Assessment, (c) Cyberlearning, and (d) Learning as a Cross-Setting Phenomenon. Special emphasis is being placed on research and practice that focuses on the learning of children and youth from communities historically underrepresented in STEM fields.
Building on self-determination theory, this study presents a model of intrinsic motivation and engagement as “active ingredients” in garden-based education. The model was used to create reliable and valid measures of key constructs, and to guide the empirical exploration of motivational processes in garden-based learning. Teacher- and student-reports of garden engagement, administered to 310 middle school students, demonstrated multidimensional structures, good measurement properties, convergent validity, and the expected correlations with self-perceptions in the garden, garden learning
The objective of this project is to extend the concept of crowdsourcing in citizen science to the interaction design of the organization as well as to data collection. Distributed technologies offer new opportunities for conducting scientific research on a larger scale than ever before by enabling distributed collaboration. Virtual organizations that use distributed technologies in scientific organizations have primarily focused on how dedicated, professional scientists collaborate and communicate. More recently a rapidly increasing number of citizen science virtual organizations are being formed. Citizen scientists participate in scientific endeavors and typically lack formal credentials, do not hold professional positions in scientific institutions, and bring diversity of knowledge and expertise to projects and challenges. They participate in scientific endeavors related to their personal scientific interests and create new challenges for the design of virtual organizations. In terms of intellectual merit, the project will make three specific contributions: a new interaction design for collecting biodiversity data within a nature park, a model for crowdsourcing the design of an social computing approach to citizen science, and an analysis of the impact of crowdsourcing the design on motivating participation in collecting biodiversity data. Interactive tabletop computers will be placed in two nature parks so that the design of the citizen science environment can be embedded in a park experience and engage the public in understanding more about their parks, in data collection, and develop a personal commitment to environmental sustainability issues. In terms of broader impacts, the project provides three types of impact: research training by including graduate students, broad public dissemination to enhance scientific understanding of biodiversity, and benefits to society through association with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) and Encyclopedia of Life (EOL).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mary Lou MaherTom YehJennifer Preece
Adolescents face many conflicting messages and influences related to high-risk behavior. Choices confronting middle school students often have the potential for adverse effects on their overall health and well being. Montshire Museum proposes to develop an educational outreach program to allow students an opportunity to learn about key health issues in a context that is based on high-quality research and offers hands-on inquiry and self-directed investigations. The proposed educational outreach program will serve students in grades 5-8 in rural Vermont and New Hampshire schools. The project team will create four health education modules, each one related to current NIH-supported research by faculty at Dartmouth Medical School (DMS). DMS researchers will collaborate with Montshire Museum's science educators in developing the modules, connecting with students and teachers, and providing support for all aspects of the project. For each module, the project team will support hands-on classroom investigations and independent research using materials, objects and exhibits developed specifically for the program. In addition, professional development institutes for middle school health and science educators will provide science content and instructional strategies needed to successfully implement health science lessons that are aligned with national and state standards for health and science education. The curriculum materials developed for school-based programming also create opportunities for broader public outreach. Montshire's educators will adapt them for special family activities and presentations within the museum setting. The educational curriculum will be designed to provide all participants with information that will assist in making personal health decisions in the subject areas; raise participants' awareness of the ways that culture and media affect their choices; and expose participants to the interesting and relevant research taking place locally, while increasing their understanding of the diversity of health science careers and research processes. A thorough process of formative and summative evaluation will enable the project team to take an iterative approach to curriculum development and to provide the best possible learning experience for participants.
Recent biomedical research has transformed scientific understanding of human biology. But many of these advances haven’t filtered into public awareness, hindering our ability to make good health-related decisions. A new educational program ‒ Biology of Human ‒ will help the public, particularly young people, better understand advances in biomedical research. This innovative, learning research-based science education program is strategically designed to increase awareness of and understanding about new biomedical research developments pertaining to human biology. Biology of Human will provide a sophisticated science education outreach package for students aged 11 to 15 and adults, including parents and educators. The project's goal is to leverage the latest biomedical information and innovations, a dynamic suite of educational and dissemination strategies, and research-driven approach grounded in sociology to broadly educate youth and adults about human biology. A team led by the University of Nebraska State Museum, the Department of Sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the NIH/NCRR-funded Nebraska Center for Virology (a Center of Biomedical Research Excellence) will work with science writers, kids, and educators to complete three specific aims: 1) stimulate interest in and understanding of biomedical research's importance to diverse individuals' health, communities, and environments; 2) establish partnerships among science educators, biomedical researchers, science journalists, and others to create dynamic educational resources focused on biomedical research developments and human biology; and 3) increase youths' interest in biomedical science. Biology of Human will provide adults and youth with several simultaneous, complementary options for learning about how biomedical research has helped us understand human biology including essays, books and blogs; entertaining and scientifically accurate mobile and tablet apps; activities and graphic stories; and a Web site that complements and supports the project's professional development programs. More than 175,000 youth and adults are expected to be directly impacted through this effort.
On June 4, 2012, a dozen social sector leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ways in which growing numbers of communities are aligning resources and pulling together to create significant change on a community problem—an approach called collective impact.
The Dimensions of Success observation tool, or DoS, pinpoints twelve indicators of STEM program quality in out-of-school time. It was developed and studied with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) by the Program in Education, Afterschool and Resiliency (PEAR), along with partners at Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Project Liftoff. In 2014, a technical report was released, describing the tool and its psychometric properties (http://www.pearweb.org/research/pdfs/DoSTechReport_092314_final.pdf). The DoS observation tool focuses on understanding the quality of a STEM activity in an out-of-school time learning environment and includes an explanation of each dimension and its key indicators, as well as a 4-level rubric with descriptions of increasing quality. Today, over 700 people have been trained to use the DoS tool, and over 12 state networks have adopted DoS to measure the quality of their afterschool STEM programming.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Program in Education, AfterschoolDr. Ashima ShahDrew Gitomer
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
AccessComputing is a NSF-funded Broadening Participation in Computing alliance with the goal of increasing the participation and success of people with disabilities in computing fields. AccessComputing is in its 10th year of funding. It supports students with disabilities from across the country in reaching critical junctures toward college and careers by providing advice, resources, mentoring opportunities, professional contacts, and funding for tutoring, internships, and computing conferences. For educators and employers, it offers institutes and workshops to build awareness of universal design and accommodation strategies, and to aid in recruiting and supporting students with disabilities through the development of inclusive programs and education on promising practices.
National Engineers Week Foundation (EWeek) hired Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) in 2011 to conduct an independent evaluation of the Future City program (http://futurecity.org). Future City has been operating since 1992. According to EWeek, the Future City program is “a national, project-based learning experience where students in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade imagine, design, and build cities of the future. Students work as a team with an educator and engineer mentor to plan cities using SimCityTM 4 Deluxe software; research and write solutions to an engineering problem; build tabletop scale models
STARBASE Minnesota strives to increase the knowledge, skills, and interest of inner-city elementary school youth in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for greater academic and lifelong success. This study examines the potential long-term impacts of participation, including interest and engagement in STEM, academic achievement, high school graduation, and college enrollment.