Informal learning institutions--museums, libraries, news organizations, and others--work to inform their audiences about the rapidly emerging scientific consensus on various topics. Often this information invites action such as social distancing during a pandemic. What motivates people to act upon that information (or not)? When recommended actions can yield good or bad outcomes for oneself, the information needs to fit with motivational tendencies towards preventing bad outcomes and/or promoting good outcomes. Recent theories indicate similar motives for recommended actions that affect others: family, friends, neighbors, and up the scale to the societal and the biological world. This small virtual conference will bring together STEM researchers and practitioners to offer a transdisciplinary and practically minded critique of the model of moral motives and discuss its implications for actions related to STEM topics. Specifically, the conference will use data collected by NSF RAPID grant (#2027939) that connects people’s news consumption, their compliance with COVID-19 prevention recommendations, and their judgments of whose wellbeing (from self to society) recommended behaviors protect or promote.
This small virtual conference will recruit approximately 16 attendees including transdisciplinary scholars whose work addresses social responsibility in the context of STEM informal learning and practitioners from a broad range of sectors including science centers, libraries, zoos, and the media. Individual disciplines will include anthropology, psychology, the interdisciplinary fields of the learning sciences and judgement and decision-making. The conference strategy will include synchronous, asynchronous, and small group collaborations in addition to full-group discussion. Conference activities will spread over 8 weeks. The structure of the conference is loosely based on the Open Space Technology approach (i.e.: General & Lantelme, 2014, Owen 1997). To build capacity in these various informal learning sectors participants will distill implications about moral motives into practical advice to publish in the conference proceedings that will include a report on the initial and collaboratively revised models. An editable version of the proceedings will allow registered practitioners to further critique and develop that advice. The conference proceedings will be distributed as a short Creative Commons e-book with copies and links distributed on the website of the Center for Advancing Informal STEM Education , and through all the participant’s professional research and practitioner societies.
Massachusetts General Hospital, representing Partners HealthCare System, Inc., is producing a large format film on the brain that is designed to increase the popular understanding of brain biology and recent advances in neuroscience. Framed within the larger question of the unique abilities of the human mind, the project will take an interdisciplinary look at brain science and raise questions about the nature and biological basis of diverse aspects of human experience including consciousness. By following a rider in the Tour de France, the film will illustrate how the brain functions in both normal and stressful situations. Major sequences will explore vision, memory and emotion. Slightly shorter sequences will delve into imagination and creativity, language, dreams and pain. Brief "interludes" will allow the film to reflect on the brain as it is represented in a range of human capabilities. Finally, the film turns it attention to consciousness, self-awareness and the totality of experiencing life as a human. Outreach components of the project include: A weeklong national symposium for museum educators, teachers, and community organizations from all regions of the country. Follow up regional "Brain Workshops" designed to provide more focused project support. "The Brain: Exploratory Trips Into the Final Frontier" -- An Educator/Student Activity Guide Fun Facts Family Guide to "The Brain" An Educational Lobby Kiosk "Head Trip: A Voyage Through the Young Human Mind" -- An illustrated instructional brochure A Brain Website The film will be directed by Bayley Silleck whose prior large format films include "Cosmic Voyage" and "Lost Worlds: Life in the Balance." The lead scientific advisors are Dr. Dennis Selkow, Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Anne Young, Julieanne Dorn Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School. There also will be a seven-member advisory committee composed of neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers.