Young adulthood, typically defined as between the ages of 18 and 25, is a critical period of growth during which young people acquire the education and training that serve as the basis for their later occupations and income (Arnett, 2000). The successful transition from adolescence to early adulthood requires youth to have the skills and resources to graduate high school and then go to college or enter the workforce (Fuligni & Hardway, 2004; Lippman, Atienza, Rivers, & Keith, 2008). To accomplish these tasks in advanced urban societies, young adults need a wide range of social, cognitive
The lion's share of my current research program is devoted to the study of learning in the blooming, buzzing confusion of inner-city classrooms. My high-level goal is to transform grade-school classrooms from work sites where students perform assigned tasks under the management of teachers into communities of learning ( Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1989; Brown & Campione, 1990) and interpretation ( Fish, 1980), where students are given significant opportunity to take charge of their own learning. In my current work, I conduct what Collins (in press) refers to as design experiments, modeled on the
The dramatic decline in youth interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) during adolescence, both in the USA and internationally, has been a phenomenon of societal concern for several decades. The Synergies project was launched to help deal with this issue. In this paper, we report findings from the first two years of our longitudinal survey research. We sought to understand the nature of the STEM-related interests of 10-/11-year-old youth living in a single urban community and the factors that seem to influence whether these various dimensions of interest increase
With the suite of environmental challenges faced by today’s society growing ever more imminent, the potential role of science and natural history museums as social institutions to promote environmental stewardship is being realized. A recent collaborative effort between the
EcoTarium in Worcester, MA and six other institutions across the country, the NSF funded City Science exhibit serves to introduce the public to new research on human-ecology interactions in urban settings. The project also supports the inclusion of Public Participation in Science Research (PPSR) elements in museum exhibits
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Marissa GallantShana HawrylchakJacqueline DeLisa
Calabrese Barton, Tan, and Rivet provide valuable insights on supporting girls (and young people generally) as they negotiate the practices of formal science learning, establish learning identities, and engage with science. Analysis of rich ethnographic data shows how middle school girls created hybrid spaces between school and home that enabled them to draw on funds of knowledge in order to participate fully in school science.
Positive youth development and youth organizing are strengths-based approaches to the lives, needs, and contributions of young people (Damon & Gregory, 2003). These approaches privilege the voices of youth as they engage with issues in their communities and challenge institutions to respond. Few studies, however, have explored the role of positive youth development and youth organizing initiatives among immigrant youth of color. The challenging terrain of modern urban life requires these youth to navigate the political, economic, and legal demands confronted by their families; to understand
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Anthony de JesusSofia OviedoScarlett Feliz
This briefing paper reports findings from the Youth Access & Equity in Informal Science Learning (ISL) project,
a UK-US researcher-practitioner partnership funded by the Science Learning+ scheme. Our project focuses on young people aged 11-14 primarily from under-served and non-dominant communities and includes researchers and practitioners from a range of ISL settings: designed spaces (e.g. museums, zoos), community-based (e.g. after school clubs) and everyday science spaces (e.g. science media).
How do informal learning organizations work with schools as part of a broader educational ecology? We examined this question through a comparative case study of two collaborative efforts whereby informal arts education organizations, a children's museum and a community-based organization, worked with an urban school district to redefine the provision of educational services for children and youth. Grounded conceptually in organizational theory, our study identified factors that enable and constrain collaboration across the formal-informal divide. We argue that examining the dynamics of cross
Elementary school children are capable of reproducing sophisticated science process skills such as observing, designing experiments, collecting data, and evaluating evidence. An understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge requires more than teaching and learning the performance of these skills. It also requires an appreciation of how these actions lead to knowledge generation and shape its durable and tentative nature. Our understanding of activities that support the teaching and learning of the nature of scientific knowledge is still growing. This study compares how scientific
What are students' mental models of the environment? In what ways, if any, do students' mental models vary by grade level or community setting? These two questions guided the research reported in this article. The Environments Task was administered to students from 25 different teacher-classrooms. The student responses were first inductively analyzed in order to identify students' mental models of the environment. The second phase of analysis involved the statistical testing of the identified mental models. From this analysis four mental models emerged: Model 1, the environment as a place
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniel ShepardsonBryan WeeMichelle PriddyJon Harbor
Stereoscopic technology (3D) is rapidly becoming ubiquitous across research, entertainment and informal educational settings. Children of today may grow up never knowing a time when movies, television and video games were not available stereoscopically. Despite this rapid expansion, the field’s understanding of the impact of stereoscopic visualizations on learning is rather limited. Much of the excitement of stereoscopic technology could be due to a novelty effect, which will wear off over time. This study controlled for the novelty factor using a variety of techniques. On the floor of an
The middle grades are a crucial time for girls in making decisions about how or if they want to follow science trajectories. In this article, the authors report on how urban middle schoolgirls enact meaningful strategies of engagement in science class in their efforts to merge their social worlds with the worlds of school science and on the unsanctioned resources and identities they take up to do so. The authors argue that such merging science practices are generative both in terms of how they develop over time and in how they impact the science learning community of practice. They discuss the