This report shares the results of a year-long study of the impact of IMLS grants (1998-2003) though programs that served youth aged 9-19. Nearly 400 museum and library programs were surveyed about their goals, strategies, content, audience, and structure, as well as about their impact, effectiveness, and outcomes.
The paper presents and discusses the Research and Development and related reflective practice process for the design of an approach to STEM school education. It focuses on Future Inventors, an education project of the National Museum of Science and Technology Leonardo da Vinci which aims to design, develop, test, and define an approach for teaching and learning in STEM at junior high school. Through this case study, the authors argue for the need to design for learning activities in which children can learn creatively building on their own potential and, for educators, to develop and maintain
How to determine a sample size for studying your informal learning program
What’s important to consider when selecting a sample size, or participant group size, for studying your informal (science) education program? What value does a small sample size have? If program managers have ample resources for collecting a lot of data, what factors are important to consider?
Here is a collection of guidelines and examples for use in making an informed decision about determining the sample size for studying your informal learning program. To design a study whose findings are more authentic
When NSTA first adopted guidelines for science competitions in 1999, two of the important questions addressed were whether competitions should be voluntary or required, and whether the emphasis should be on the learning experience or the competition. Our recent research concerning students’ high school science fair experiences has important implications for both of these questions.
Several years ago, we began a systematic and ongoing study of high school science fairs using anonymous voluntary surveys that included a combination of quantitative and qualitative (open-ended text) questions
Science fairs have a remarkable hold on the public’s attention. President Obama, in his 2011 State of the Union address, said, “We need to teach our kids that it’s not just the winner of the Super Bowl who deserves to be celebrated, but the winner of the science fair.” The 2018 film Science Fair won that year’s Sundance Film Festival favorite award. The 2018 book The Class chronicled a year in a classroom where science fairs are at the center of science education. And a recent GEICO “Science Fair of the Future” television commercial had more than 11 million views on YouTube in its first month
Science fairs offer potential opportunities for students to learn first-hand about the practices of science. Over the past six years we have been carrying out voluntary and anonymous surveys with regional and national groups of high school and post high school students to learn about their high school science fair experiences regarding help received, obstacles encountered, and opinions about the value and impact of science fair. Understanding what students think about science fairs will help educators make science fairs more effective learning opportunities. In this paper, we focus on the
The goal of our ongoing research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of high school level science fair and improvements that can help science educators make science fair a more effective, inclusive and equitable learning experience. In this paper, we confirm and extend our previous findings in several important ways. We added new questions to our anonymous and voluntary surveys to learn the extent to which students had an interest in science or engineering careers and if science fair participation increased their interest in science or engineering. And we surveyed a national rather than
The goal of our project is to develop strategies that effectively engage autistic adolescents in informal STEM learning opportunities that promote the self-efficacy and interest in STEM careers that will empower them to seek out career opportunities in STEM fields.
The research aims are to:
1. Identify evidence-based strategies to engage autistic youth in informal STEM learning opportunities that are well matched to their attentional profiles:
Hypothesis 1: Pedagogical strategies vary in how engaging they are for people with diverse attentional profiles; people with more focused
Many youth programs seek to understand their influence over time on participant outcomes. This paper offers a methodology for measuring a participant’s perception of a program’s contribution amid their perception of other youth influences such as those from family, school, peer groups, hobbies, and other organized activities. The instrument built on the large body of work on youth influences in order to capture the dominant factors in development of the item bank. In addition to item development, the paper documents face validity followed by content assessment of items using a research panel
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
Since 2006, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (MagLab) through the Center for Integrating Research and Learning (CIRL) has offered a SciGirls Summer Camp to introduce middle school girls to various fields of science. Code: SciGirls was created in 2017 to increase the engagement in computer science studies and career paths for girls. This consistent commitment to girls in STEM led the SciGirls creators at Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) to invite CIRL to be a partner with them. In the summer of 2021, CIRL & TPT
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
The project is building a nationwide online coaching/mentoring program for out of school educators in rural settings.
This poster was presented at the 2021 NSF AISL Awardee Meeting.
The project scales up an award-winning coaching model:
Informal educators come together in small groups to share videos of their own interactions with youth
A coach helps them share feedback based on their use of key skills (e.g. how to ask youth purposeful questions).