The University of Cincinnati Arlitt Child and Family Research and Education will conduct a two-year research investigation to document and understand young children's scientific dialog, interactions, behaviors, and thinking within expressly designed natural play environments called playscapes. Two existing environmental science-focused playscapes will serve as the informal context for the study. Pre-school children and their teachers at early childhood centers, Head Start programs and informal learning institutions such as zoos, nature centers, and museums will participate in the study. The Cincinnati Nature Center and the Cincinnati Playscape Initiative will partner with the University of Cincinnati for this research endeavor. The results of the study are expected to not only address a significant gap in the literature base related to self-directed play and young children\'s scientific thinking within playscapes environments, but the study also has the potential to inform the field more broadly about scientific learning and teaching across informal and formal contexts at the early childhood levels. Nine research questions will frame the study and seek to investigate: (a) children\'s behaviors in intentionally designed playscapes, (b) children\'s scientific thinking in intentionally designed playscapes, and the relationship between access to the playscape environment and children's attitudes about science and their own scientist identities. The study sample includes over 200 children (ages 3-5) will be recruited from local university, child care centers and head start programs. Each child will participate in research activities at one of two test sites, with sixty children participating in research activities at both test sites. As part of the study, the children will visit the test sites at least three different times and will be asked to explore the playscape environments on their own, with other children, and with their teachers. Lavalier microphones will capture the students' self-talk and dialogs with others, as they explore the specially designed playscape environments. Other data collection methods include: behavior mapping, direct observation, dialog analysis, surveys, focus groups, and curriculum-based assessments. A team of researchers, including university faculty and graduate assistants, will employ inductive, deductive, and abductive analytical methods and reasoning to analyze and synthesize the data. Concurrently, an external evaluator at the Evaluation Services Center will employ a mixed-methods approach for the formative, remedial, and summative project evaluations. An ultimate goal of the project is to use the research findings to provide a scientific base for the development of an early childhood approach that promotes scientific thinking and learning within self-directed, informal contexts.
The New England Wild Flower Society, in collaboration with the Yale Peabody Museum, Montshire Museum of Science, and the Chewonki Foundation, is implementing the Go-Botany project, a multi-faceted, web-based botany user interface. "Go-Botany: Integrated Tools to Advance Botanical Learning," improves botanical education by opening plant study to a larger and more diverse segment of the population including novices, citizen scientists, and informal science educators. The project is designed to integrate a variety of web tools and mobile communication devices to facilitate learning about botany and plant conservation with a focus on native and naturalized plants in New England. Project deliverables include an online database of New England plants; online keys to over 4,000 species of New England flora; a customizable user interface; My Plants personal webpages; an outdoor exhibit that incorporates mobile resources; training programs for informal science educators and educational programs for the public. Projected impacts include increased attraction to and engagement in botanical learning for public audiences and improved teaching abilities by informal science education professionals through the application of user friendly, digital resources on mobile communication devices. Go-Botany significantly impacts the field of informal science education by changing the way that informal learners learn about plants by removing barriers through the use of free online materials, mentoring, and user created resources. This project is projected to reach over 46,000 youth, adults, and informal educators in workshops and via the Go-Botany website.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth FarnsworthGregory LowenbergArthur HainesWilliam Brumback
Although informal learning environments have been studied extensively, ours is one of the first studies to quantitatively assess the impact of learning in botanical gardens on students' cognitive achievement. We observed a group of 10th graders participating in a one-day educational intervention on climate change implemented in a botanical garden. The students completed multiple-choice questionnaires in a pre-post-retention test design. Comparing the test scores revealed a significant short-term knowledge gain as well as a long-term knowledge gain. Consequently, our results show the potentials
Supported by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Safari Adventure Advisory Committee Workshop was held on March 11, 2013 at the Bronx Zoo, with the following experts and educators in the fields of children and nature education, hands-on and place-based learning, and digital learning: Professor Louise Chawla, educator David T. Sobel, Urban Assembly high school principal Mark Ossenheimer, researcher Ingrid Erickson, and noted author and environmentalist Richard Louv. Through this workshop, we obtained scholarly input for the purpose of assessing the conceptual
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Wildlife Conservation SocietyLee Patrick