Peg + Cat is a popular broadcast television series, developed by The Fred Rogers Company and airing on PBS, in which a girl named Peg and her sidekick, Cat, solve everyday problems using mathematics, creativity, persistence, and humor. Peg + Cat: Developing Preschoolers’ Early Math Skills was a three-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that aimed to impact children’s interest and engagement with mathematics, as well as their development of positive social-emotional skills. The project supported early math learning via the creation of additional Peg + Cat episodes, online
Peg + Cat is a popular broadcast television series, developed by The Fred Rogers Company and airing on PBS, in which a girl named Peg and her sidekick, Cat, solve everyday problems using mathematics, creativity, persistence, and humor. Peg + Cat: Developing Preschoolers’ Early Math Skills was a three-year project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that aimed to impact children’s interest and engagement with mathematics, as well as their development of positive social-emotional skills. The project supported early math learning via the creation of additional Peg + Cat episodes, online
AHA! Island is a new project that uses animation, live-action videos, and hands-on activities to support joint engagement of children and caregivers around computational thinking concepts and practices. This research is intended to examine the extent to which the prototyped media and activity sets support the project’s learning goals. Education Development Center (EDC), WGBH’s research partner for the project, conducted a small formative study with 16 English-speaking families (children and their caregivers) to test out these media and activity set prototypes. During the in-person video
This paper examines STEM-based informal learning environments for underrepresented students and reports on the aspects of these programs that are beneficial to students. This qualitative study provides a nuanced look into informal learning environments and determines what is unique about these experiences and makes them beneficial for students. We provide results of a qualitative research study conducted with the Mathematics, Engineering, Science Achievement (MESA) program, an informal learning environment that has proven to be effective in recruiting, retaining and encouraging
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Cameron DensonChandra Austin StallworthChristine HaileyDaniel Householder
resourceresearchMuseum and Science Center Programs
Staff facilitators in museums and science centers are a critical but often overlooked component of the visitor experience. Despite assertions about the important role they play in visitor learning, there continues to be almost no research to understand staff facilitation in these settings or identify effective practices. To address these gaps, we conducted a design-based research study to describe the work of experienced museum educators and iteratively refine a model of staff facilitation to support family learning at interactive math exhibits developed through a prior project. The resulting
This consent form was used as part of a TERC project that focused on developing and evaluating math materials in libraries. It uses simple and readable text.
This report presents a project overview and findings from a formative evaluation of the Ready, Set, School prototype exhibit space at Marbles Kids Museum in Raleigh, NC. This study was conducted by museum staff in consultation with Randi Korn & Associates in May 2013.
This report is the result of a project to investigate through a sociocultural lens whether girls-only, informal STEM experiences have potential long-term influences on young women's lives, both in terms of STEM but also more generally. The authors documented young women's perceptions of their program experiences and the ways in which they influenced their future choices in education, careers, leisure pursuits, and ways of thinking about what science is and who does it. This report includes the questionnaire used in the study.
Evaluators sought to determine impact on math attitude and content knowledge of students (3rd - 6th grade), and math literacy workers (high school and college students), based on pre-post testing and observation of YPP after school programs, in which college and high school students teach math games to elementary and middle school students in marginalized and vulnerable communities. The study focused on the Chicago YPP site, 1 of 7 in the YPP national network. Increases in math attitude scores were not statistically significant, however in some instances evaluators found significant increases
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Norman LedermanYoung People's Project, Inc.
Concord Evaluation Group (CEG) performed an evaluation study in the fall of 2010 on behalf of WGBH to evaluate the effectiveness of an online, interactive webisode developed as an educational component of the FETCH! with Ruff Ruffman series (http://pbskids.org/fetch/). The webisode was not connected to the FETCH! website at the time of the evaluation study, but will be after the study is complete. With an emphasis on building math skills, the interactive webisode was designed to teach and engage elementary-aged kids (ages 6 – 10) to identify and create combinations. In addition to identifying
Produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and Nelvana International, the Award-winning series CYBERCHASE is the only mathematics series for children on American television. Designed for kids ages 8 to 12 and packed with mystery, humor, and action, each episode delivers positive messages about math by teaching concepts in a fun way that kids can understand. The goal of this formative evaluation for Season 3 evaluation was two-fold: 1) to observe and assess the performance of third-graders on tasks related to two math topics in development for Season 3 (Angle & Distance and Logic & Reasoning) and 2) to
This formative evaluation gathered feedback from parents and their fourth grade children in response to two activities included in the Cyberchase at Home outreach materials. The user-based feedback assisted with the design of new outreach materials. The general goals for the research were to explore reactions to the activity card format; assess appeal and difficulties in implementation of two activities; estimate comprehension of activity content; and evaluate parental interest in further activities and workshops. Cyberchase is the Emmy Award-winning mathematics series and website on PBS KIDS