The concern about students' engagement with school science and the numbers pursuing the further study of science is an international phenomenon and a matter of considerable concern among policy makers. Research has demonstrated that the majority of young children have positive attitudes to science at age 10 but that this interest then declines sharply and by age 14, their attitude and interest in the study of science has been largely formed. This paper reports on data collected as part of a funded 5-year longitudinal study that seeks to determine how students' interest in science and
Challenged by a National Science Foundation-funded conference, 2020 Vision: The Next Generation of STEM Learning Research, in which participants were asked to recognize science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning as lifelong, life-wide, and life-deep, we draw upon 20 years of research across the lifespan to propose a new way of thinking about and investigating the topic. We propose Fullness of Life (or Total Life) as the minimal unit of analysis that allows people generally and researchers specifically to make sense of cognition. This move reverses traditional
Although there has been considerable focus on the underrepresentation of minorities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines and the need for science instruction that fosters diversity, much of the associated effort has focused on the goal of diversity and tended to assume that science and science learning are acultural. We describe a conceptual framework employed in our work with both urban and rural Native American communities that focuses on culturally based epistemological orientations and their relation to the cultural practices associated with science
This paper aims to further articulate multicultural science education scholarship. In particular, it explores the notions of borders and border epistemologies as intellectual resources to think again about the challenges of science education in the global world that demand more sophisticated concepts to unravel some of its complexities. It responds in part to Osborne's (2007) call for more “armchair science education” to “develop better theories about our goals and values” (p. 11). Borders and border spaces reconceptualize and extend the view of borders typically presented within the
This paper reports on the findings of a case study that investigated the interaction of the agendas and practices of students, teachers, and zoo educators during a class field trip to a zoo. The study reports on findings of the analysis of two case classes of students and their perceptions of their learning experiences during the field trip. The goals, expectations, and perceived outcomes of the trip for students, their classroom teachers, and the zoo educators were elicited through interviews, surveys, student work, and observations. Both cases demonstrated how students placed high value and
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Susan Kay DavidsonCynthia PassmoreDavid Anderson
This study examines the development and ongoing activities of a collaboration between an urban elementary school and a nearby aquarium. Although the benefits of such collaborations in support of science education are touted by numerous national organizations, the pathway to creating a successful relationship between these two different institutions, with inherently different cultures, is less well documented. Using the theoretical framework of communities of practice (E. Wenger, 1998), a better understanding of the challenges and successes of this collaboration is presented. In particular, the
In this article, the author expresses her views on how science technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) standards can be developed to upgrade lifelong science learning. She mentions that the International Conference in the Learning Sciences (ICLS) that will be conducted by the International Society for the Learning Sciences (ISLS) will have an advantage to the development of the STEM standards. She also comments on the establishment of cyberlearning environments to improve science education.
This executive summary presents demographic data and survey results from participants in the 2010 SciGirls summer camp. Based on the post survey responses, the majority of the participants felt that the camp had increased their interest in science (78%) and science careers (97%). Those students who did not mention an increased interest said that they already had a high interest in science and STEM careers before camp.
We investigated whether and how student performance on three types of spatial cognition tasks differs when worked with two-dimensional or stereoscopic representations. We recruited nineteen middle school students visiting a planetarium in a large Midwestern American city and analyzed their performance on a series of spatial cognition tasks in terms of response accuracy and task completion time. Results show that response accuracy did not differ between the two types of representations while task completion time was significantly greater with the stereoscopic representations. The completion
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American Association of Variable Star ObserversAaron PriceLee Hee-Sun
We examine the research conducted by Kang, Anderson and Wu by discussing it in a larger context of science museum-school partnerships. We review how the disconnect that exists between stakeholders, the historical and cultural contexts in which formal and informal institutions are situated, and ideas of globalization, mediate the success for formal-informal partnerships to be created and sustained.
The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre (doing business as the Learning World Institute), in collaboration with informal science education venues, universities, and corporations in Chicago, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., is organizing a set of three professional conferences and a web site to encourage stronger national and local communities of practice around the application of arts-based learning (ABL) to informal science education. Arts-based learning is the instrumental use of artistic skills, processes, and experiences to foster learning in non-artistic disciplines. The goal is to apply ABL to informal science education in ways that can foster the acquisition of STEM skills that are important in today's workforce. The set of conferences, with a total attendance of 750, will focus on an understanding of current and potential ABL applications to workforce skill development, opportunities to practice ABL directly, and creation of a research agenda on the impact of ABL on science education. The web site (funded through other sources) will help conference attendees prepare for the workshops, provide opportunities for networking, aggregate resources, and host the research agenda.
It is common knowledge that U.S. students have fallen behind in the acquisition of science knowledge and that the necessary solution is greater investment and better practices in our schools. But is better schooling really the solution? Drawing on a large base of research, the authors demonstrate that by the time U.S. citizens are young adults, they are better informed about science than their international peers; that the most important sources of scientific knowledge are not schools; and that the informal infrastructure of museums, aquariums, broadcast programming and other sources of