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
There is a gap between the discipline of economics and the public it is supposedly about and for. This gap is reminiscent of the divide that led to movements for the public understanding of and public engagement with the natural sciences. It is a gap in knowledge, trust, and opinions, but most of all it is a gap in engagement. In this paper we ask: What do we need to think about — and what do we need to do — in order to bring economics and its public into closer dialogue? At stake is engaged, critical democracy. We turn to the fields of public understanding of science and science studies for
Showing how various math and science topics relate to the real world is the key to motivating youth to pursue STEM careers. This idea is essential to the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) BLOSSOMS initiative.
BLOSSOMS, which stands for Blended Learning Open Source Science or Math Studies, is a program that freely provides interactive video lessons that teach teens how math and science pertain to everyday life, while encouraging critical-thinking skills. BLOSSOMS offers more than 200 online videos on various STEM topics, which are presented in a form that will provide youth with a
The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), located in Portland, is a hands-on science museum. In 2013, OMSI received funding from the National Science Foundation for the project Researching the Value of Educator Actions for Learning (REVEAL) to study how museum educators can better help families learn math while interacting with museum exhibits. Through REVEAL, OMSI was able to partner with Adelante Mujeres, a non-profit community organization located in Forest Grove that educates and empowers Latina women and their families. Here we share some of the lessons learned from the