This evaluation report provides a brief review of the National Science Foundation (NSF) planning grant, Creating an Early Childhood STEM Ecosystem, as of August 2019. The purpose of the evaluation was to provide an external, independent overview of the work completed and some of the lessons learned to date.
The Practitioners and Researchers Investigating Sensorimotor Movement (PRISM) Toolkit provides a suite of observation tools for identifying and categorizing gestures, movement, and speech for interactive museum exhibits (espeically those that involve full-body interactions). The tools can be used live in some settings when appropriate, but also can be used on video recordings of exhibit interactions.
This is the summative evaluation report from the Move2Learn Project, a collaboration between researchers and museum practitioners in the US and UK to study embodied learning in the context of early childhood informal learning. This summative report covers the effectiveness of the collaboration and documents best practices for large interdisicplinary teams.
This is the summative evaluation for the My Sky Tonight: Early Childhood Pathways to Astronomy is a National Science Foundation funded Full-Scale Development project that was designed to support informal science education practitioner’s ability to provide astronomy learning for young children ages 3-5 years. Based on prior research and assessment of the field, the project team identified that many informal educators lack the astronomy content, interpretive strategies, and confidence they need to effectively engage audiences of families with preschool-aged children. Three mechanisms were
Previous research has identified parental involvement—the ways parents and other caring adults interact with children in and outside of the home, and the kinds of learning materials with which parents surround children—as key to helping children develop knowledge and skills in literacy and math (Bassok, Finch, Lee, Reardon, & Waldfogel, 2016; Burgess, Hecht, & Lonigan, 2002; Niklas, Nguyen, Cloney, Tayler, & Adams, 2016; Sénéchal & LeFevre, 2002; Skwarchuk, Sowinski, & LeFevre, 2014). Parental support may be critical to children’s developing knowledge and understanding in science as well.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Megan SilanderTodd GrindalNaomi HupertElisa GarciaKea AndersonPhilip VaheyShelley Pasnik
PEEP and the Big Wide World/El Mundo Divertido de PEEP is a bilingual, NSF- funded public media project that uses animation, live-action videos, games, mobile apps, hands-on science activities to motivate preschool-age children to investigate the world around them. Online, PEEP extends children’s science and math learning with a mobile-friendly website that offers games, videos, and hands-on activities, as well as a collection of 15 apps. PEEP is also reaching children in preschool classrooms and family/home childcare settings via the PEEP Science Curriculum, which provides resources for a