This report presents findings from a formative evaluation of Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities-Informal Science Education (SENCER-ISE), a National Science Foundation and Noyce Foundation funded initiative to support partnerships between informal science and higher education institutions. This evaluation looked primarily at the collaborative infrastructure of SENCER-ISE, which included the web site, SENCER Summer Institute, and communications with project staff and/or the advisory board. This evaluation is the third evaluation that Randi Korn & Associates, Inc
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
RK&A, Inc.
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (NCSCE) contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to conduct a summative evaluation of its SENCER-ISE project partnerships. SENCER-ISE is an initiative that brings partners from higher education (HE) together with partners from informal science education (ISE) to create projects that engage audiences in science using the lens of civic engagement. SENCER funded 10 partnerships over three years—six through the National Science Foundation (DRL #1001795) and four through the Noyce Foundation. Previously, RK&A conducted a formative
Since 2000, the UK government has funded surveys aimed at understanding the UK public's attitudes toward science, scientists, and science policy. Known as the Public Attitudes to Science series, these surveys and their predecessors have long been used in UK science communication policy, practice, and scholarship as a source of authoritative knowledge about science-related attitudes and behaviors. Given their importance and the significant public funding investment they represent, detailed academic scrutiny of the studies is needed. In this essay, we critically review the most recently
The scientific community has been under increasing pressure from policymakers and the public to explain how research contributes to the public good. The community has emphasized two distinct approaches to explaining its operations and value. The first is the use of narratives that can make the work of science more accessible and engaging to nonscientists. The other is the use of new data mining and analysis methods to document quantitatively the complex paths by which research progresses and eventually contributes to a variety of societal goals. While both of these approaches have proved useful, the goal of this workshop is to explore ways that they might be combined into a hybrid approach that will be even more effective.
This workshop will assemble experts in the narrative and data-driven science communication approaches with leading science researchers to discuss how these various perspectives can be merged to define a template for a type of communication that encompasses the appeal of narrative, the rigor of new analytic data, and the understanding of how science works in practice.
Between 2010 and July 2015, a group of researchers at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge and the National Maritime Museum were engaged in an Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project “The Board of Longitude 1714–1828: Science, innovation and empire in the Georgian world”. The project team included a dedicated Public Engagement Officer whose role was to engage audiences with the outputs of the research project. The National Maritime Museum celebrated the 300th anniversary of the 1714 Longitude Act with a major exhibition, Ships, Clocks & Stars
After being cosseted by the media for what they incorrectly considered to be a scientific feat, the author found himself widely boycotted by the more “responsible” media. The reason for this was his critical view of the evolution of science, which he felt had become a tool at the service of innovation, and, therefore, of industrial interests. The traditional image of science, which serves to help us to understand the world, still persists despite being perverted by commercial interests, because it is defended by naive people as well as by lobbies, themselves responsible for this debasement
The organization and functioning of research have radically changed over the last 10 or 20 years, as a result of a determined political action. The activism of some scientists, during this period, has failed to significantly alter this trend. So far. Today, New Public Management is triumphant. It has been implemented by a category of former scientists who have become administrators, evaluators, organizers. As a result, the prime role of scientific publications is no longer to exchange scientific information but to allow a measure of scientific production, and to rank the principal
Knowledge is not static or unique. It can be exchanged between activists, academia and policy circles: from science to activism and from activism to science. Existing scientific knowledge is being used by activists to expose wrongdoings or improve practices and knowledge in environmental and health conflicts. Activists can either adopt scientific knowledge and data in their own argumentations or produce new scientific knowledge either by becoming scientists themselves or in co-operation with experts. Local and scientific knowledge is being combined to challenge government policies and the
The validity of citizen science conducted by community activists is often questioned because of the overt values that activists bring to their investigations. But value judgments are a necessary part of even the best academic science, and scientists whose findings suggest the need for policy action can learn from the example of citizen scientists. Communicating clearly about value judgments in science would give the public a better basis for distinguishing between responsible and irresponsible research on controversial issues.
Science and activism are terms which are usually seen as quite separate. Yet, they are inextricably linked, even more so as techno scientific progress permeates contemporary society. The five commentaries in this series provide insights for a discussion about how the (apparent) separation between “value laden” activism and “value free” science is in fact very thin, and how science communication can play a key role in ensuring reflexivity and self criticism in science.
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century a varied collection of pressure mechanisms were deployed from nuclear technology exporting countries — mainly from the US — to obstruct the development of a group of semi-peripheral countries’ autonomous nuclear capabilities. Argentina was part of this group. This article focuses on how “fear” of nuclear proliferation was used by US foreign policy as one of the most effective political artifacts to construct and protect an oligopolistic nuclear market. Spread by the press and by some prestigious social science sectors from the US and some
This paper tries to 1) identify the dominant media frames of science and 2) compare media selection and framing of science-related articles in Croatian daily newspapers during two politically and socioculturally different periods: the late socialism and the (post)transition. The research methodology was based on content and frame analysis which encompassed articles on science in daily press with the highest readership between 1986–1988, and 2006–2008. The main findings indicate changes in the selection of science topics as well as in the representation of individual frames. Changes reflected