Success stories of citizen science projects widely demonstrate the value of this open science paradigm and encourage organizations to shift towards new ways of doing research. While benefits for researchers are clear, outcomes for individuals participating in these projects are not easy to assess. The wide spectrum of volunteers collaborating in citizen science projects greatly contributes to the difficulty in the evaluation of the projects' outcomes. Given the strong links between many citizen science projects and education, in this work we present an experience with hundreds of students
Public opinions toward emergent technologies may be highly dependent on the manner in which people are introduced to these technologies for the very first time. In this light, understanding how such first introductions are related to adolescents’ information seeking behaviors and their developing opinions may be particularly interesting because this target public can be considered to be not only future users of the technology but also future decision makers of its development. The present paper presents a case study of the introduction of ecogenomics among 246 adolescents who were asked to
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark BosRoy KloetCees KoolstraJaap Willems
Brazilian research has grown intensely in all areas of microbiology, with the increase in the amount of governmental resources for the sector and the strengthening of a greater number of research groups. However, very few academic studies deal with research about teaching and science communication in microbiology. There is no in-depth study of how this topic is currently being divulgated in communication journals, didactic books and the Internet, or about the interest and the difficulties faced by researchers in communicating microbiology to the general public. This paper investigates academic
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Daniela Franco Carvalho JacobucciGiuliano Buza Jacobucci
The connections among neuroscience, educational research, and teaching practice have historically been tenuous (Cameron and Chudler 2003; Devonshire and Dommett 2010). This is particularly true in public schools, where so many issues are competing for attention—state testing, school politics, financial constraints, lack of time, and demands from parents and the surrounding community. Teachers and administrators often struggle to make use of advances in educational research to impact teaching and learning (Hardiman and Denckla 2009; Devonshire and Dommett 2010). At the Franklin Institute, we
Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium has been a strong and active partner in education for over 40 years, educating 1.7 million visitors annually. The zoo has become a leader in both informal and formal education by pioneering many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) initiatives. In 1996 the zoo moved from being a partner with others to becoming a true collaborator with a diverse group of education institutions. The zoo discovered that a successful partnership requires multiple organizations to come together and share resources for a cause. In partnering with school
At the end of the dark ages, anatomy was taught as though everything that could be known was known. Scholars learned about what had been discovered rather than how to make discoveries. This was true even though the body (and the rest of biology) was very poorly understood. The renaissance eventually brought a revolution in how scholars (and graduate students) were trained and worked. This revolution never occurred in K–12 or university education such that we now teach young students in much the way that scholars were taught in the dark ages, we teach them what is already known rather than the
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert DunnJulie UrbanDarlene CavalierCaren Cooper
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
IUFM is a centre for the in-service training of teachers and the development of didactic research. IUFM contribution to the SEDEC project is essentially built on a reflexion on educational implications of the links between science and European citizenship. We are convinced that European citizenship may be developed in scientific activities in school, by the introduction of communication moments, where pupils have to express and defend their ideas, and also to understand and accept the others’ ones. We have implemented two activities using the results of the SEDEC survey on science perception
Organized creationism is not widespread in Italy. It is a rather limited resource politicians and columnists draw upon when wishing to stir up a “debate”. Judging by its results, Italian creationism is old-fashioned, still comparing Darwin’s theories with the Bible, hoping to find the wreckage of Noah’s Ark, holding conferences on the origin of apes, questioning fossil dating and distorting science debates with out-of-context quotations from disparate sources. It is not a lobby that could obtain considerable electoral support, win favour or drag scientists to court.
In addition to their intrusive presence in American schools, creationists - or more modern epigones thereof, known as “intelligent designers” - are also and unexpectedly to be found in other countries. Take the United Kingdom as an example. Over the past few years, Darwin’s homeland has actually been witnessing attempts to introduce literal faith in the Bible into school programmes in a way which does not significantly differ from the one adopted in the United States. It is multi-billionaire Howard H. Ahmanson who generously finances the Discovery Institute across the Atlantic, one of the
I have been involved in College education since my days as a student in the Universidad de Buenos Aires. At that time, 1960, I helped to teach the course of Scientific Russian given in the Faculty of Sciences; strange as it might seem, the aim of the course was to allow the students to use scientific books especially in the area of Physics and Mathematics.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The third season of the national PBS series, SciGirls, is the first national children’s television series and website designed to engage and educate millions of children about citizen science. In each half-hour episode, a female mentor guides a group of ethnically diverse middle school girls as they learn about citizen science protocols and collect and share data for an established citizen science project. In addition to the videos, the SciGirls website presents
The impact of four half-hour science programs aired on commercial children's radio was assessed by Dr. Barbara Flagg of Multimedia Research in a causal-comparative between-groups study with prebroadcast and postbroadcast questionnaires. Of 253 fourth graders, 34% listened to one or more shows of the Kinetic City Super Crew series. Significantly more girls listened than boys. Listeners and Non-listeners did not differ on background variables of ethnic status, science attitudes, science reading and television viewing, and participation in seven of eight common at-home science activities