In mid-2007, the Sciencenter's executive director, Charlie Trautmann, traveled to Europe to survey a wide variety of science museums, centers, and other informal educational organizations and learn how they communicate the subjects of sustainability and global warming to the public. His report includes a new tool, called the "Museum Sustainability Index," which museums can use to assess their own progress in both becoming more sustainable organizations and communicating the science of sustainability to the public.
This review conducted by the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) explores the current discussion and research findings on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) in out-of-school time and reflects on the ways the INSPIRE program model (see Appendix A) incorporates research-based practice in implementing STEM education experiences in out-of-school time. The purpose of the literature review and analysis project is to inform the INSPIRE program managers during the planning and implementation stage of INSPIRE.
Based on the premise that one component of NASA's pre-college education program is intended to support and enact school reform, the Committee for the Evaluation and Review of NASA's Pre-College Education Program requested an analysis of how the NASA Explorer School (NES) Model aligns with other national models of school-wide improvement and reform. The purpose and focus of this paper is to summarize key elements of major school improvement and reform models as well as specific content reform models from the literature, and to analyze the extent to which there is alignment between these models
The media are the most pervasive disseminators of informal science education in this country. Watching commercial and non-commercial television will provide you with information on alligators or zygotes, bio-fuels or stem cells, polar bears or hurricanes. Radio, too, provides discussions of genetics and global warming and birds and stars. Often radio and television will cover science issues with a contextual overlay of politics or morality, so viewers and listeners can sense how they and their community relate to it. But for excitement, going to the theater to see an IMAX movie will take you
Technological literacy is essential to ensure lifelong engagement in rapidly changing societies. Three factors that affect learning in later adulthood are age-related declines in processing new information, changes in motivation and reprioritization of emotional wellbeing over new learning, and the ways in which beliefs and stereotypes influence motivation and learning.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Casey LindbergEdwin CarstensenLaura Cartsensen
In 2006, the National Research Council initiated a study on Learning Science in Informal Environments. The purpose of the study is to synthesize a range of relevant literatures and recommend strategic directions for future research in the area. In the course of working on this study the Committee has found one of its challenges to be the identification and assessment of evaluation studies of informal science programs, in particular those which have probed science learning outcomes. To that end they commissioned the Institute for Learning Innovation to produce a paper that would help them
This paper lays out a theory of (re-)generative learning to explain how families and communities socialize young learners into thinking like scientists and mathematicians. Cultural communities and their families orient their young in varied ways toward the language, behaviors, and self-theories about the future presupposed in the learning of science and mathematics. Certain socialization processes and norms correspond closely with those that scientists and artists use in laboratories, studios, and rehearsals. Certain norms of politeness and patterns of language differ significantly from habits
The Out-of-School Time Resource Center (OSTRC) conducted literature searches of the UPENN library databases including PsycInfo, ERIC and Professional Development Collection for articles pertaining to promising practices in professional development and evaluating professional development. In addition to searching the library database, we conducted Google searches. We used various search terms and key words including the following: professional development and out-of-school time; professional development and program quality; promising practices and out of school time; professional development
Research in the out-of-school time (OST) field confirms that there is a strong connection between professional development (PD) for staff and positive outcomes for youth. According to Heather Weiss, Founder and Director of the Harvard Family Research Project (HFRP), professional development for those who work with children and youth is fraught with challenges and ripe with opportunity and specifically, the opportunity to increase staff quality, which experts agree is critical to positive experiences for children and youth (Weiss, 2005/2006). However, as Thomas Guskey (1998) states, "For many
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University of PennsylvaniaNancy Peter
As mobile devices are increasingly merging into our daily lives, exhibition services are also facing innovation based on the newly available technologies. Our project addresses these new circumstances. We developed a mobile exhibition guide for the exhibition called "Mrs Brown's Big Day Out: Hamilton Women in the 1950s". That is organized by the Waikato Museum. The proposed system re-uses the TIP (Tourist Information Provider) system's framework and provides information via mobile devices to visitors on Victoria Street, which is an outdoor part of the exhibition. The information about a sight
Museums are blogging. At this writing, over 50 museum-administered blogs exist worldwide, while still more write about museums. Some blogs even focus their content specifically on the topic of museum blogging. However, museum blogging is still largely untouched in accessible professional or museological literature, save for articles on how museums can begin blogging and strategies they can employ to boost the visibility of their blog online. While useful, these articles fall under museum practice and rarely acknowledge museum theory. From a museological perspective, it is important to
Interviews conducted during the summer of 2006 with people in and around the international museum community suggest that the interests natural history museums share in common with each other and with other kinds of organizations and communities are creating an array of new links across institutional, social and cultural boundaries. These links are active, complex, networked relationships directed toward common purposes. Museums that are taking advantage of this emerging environment are becoming “hyperconnected hubs” across which knowledge is exchanged and action initiated. In forging a