In informal learning environments, science experts, explainers, and guides need support in their work to educate the general public in STEM topics. This study surveyed participants and trainers in communications training programs to determine the best methods for achieving such a purpose. The researchers suggest that training programs be practical, authentic and interactive, and provide participants opportunities for feedback.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Elizabeth Walsh
resourceresearchProfessional Development and Workshops
Teachers who participated in professional development aimed at increasing awareness of the cognitive and social functions of questioning social understanding and questioning practices led to teachers creating more student-centered classrooms. This research shows that, through discourse analysis, teachers were able to reflect on and adopt questioning strategies that led to students’ higher-level thinking, longer and more sophisticated responses, and self-evaluation.
This paper describes a teacher professional development initiative aimed at improving science and mathematics teaching and learning and which comprised 1700 schools by the second phase. The initiative fostered cooperation at the school and inter-school levels and involved teachers selecting “modules”—a framework of resources to support development which address previously identified problem areas.
The authors of this paper conducted an evaluation of two pilot credential programs both starting in Massachusetts in 2007, the School-Age Youth Development Credential (SAYD) and the Professional Youth Worker Credential (PYWC). Their reflections on the need for professional development for out-of-school time (OST) staff and youth workers show that the field of youth development at present is at crossroads. Based on the evaluation of these two pilot programs, the researchers advocate the establishment of a nationally recognized credential to professionalize the youth development field. The need
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Fan Kong
resourceresearchProfessional Development and Workshops
This article reports the results of a design research experiment in professional development for teachers of middle school mathematics. The authors report on how they developed their programs to account for three underlying conceptual challenges to their efforts: (1) the institutional contexts that teachers worked in, (2) the ways in which the learning developed in and through the community of practice, and (3) the relationship between teachers' learning in the program and teachers' teaching in their classrooms. Especially because of the different institutional cultures found in ISE versus
You for Youth (www.Y4Y.ed.gov) is a learning community and website started in 2008 for the grantees of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC), a U.S. Department of Education program that began in 1998 to support out-of-school time programs. The Y4Y project team describes how this project started as a response to the need for low-cost professional development in a wide range of skills, including conflict management, student engagement, and building relationships with the community. Inputs from practitioners, policymakers, evaluators, and other stakeholders were used in this
Portal to the Public (PoP) is a proven, scalable guiding framework for Informal Science Educators (ISE) to engage scientists and public audiences in face-to-face interactions that promote appreciation and understanding of current scientific research and its application. The PoP approach has two important characteristics that set it apart for other efforts: PoP (1) focused exclusively on interactions between scientists and general public visitors; and (2) included professional development for the scientists interacting with the public. The three collaborating museums (Pacific Science Center
The Sam Noble Museum contracted Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) to evaluate their Whitten-Newman ExplorOlogy Program. The program offers hands-on, immersive experiences in scientific field research to classroom teachers and middle and high school students. The evaluation study explored how participants experienced the program and how their sense of self and identity was affected during the year following the program's completion. How did we approach this study? The Whitten-Newman ExplorOlogy Program offers an in-depth program experience to a select number of teachers and students. We
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Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History
Engaging and Learning for Conservation: Workshop on Public Participation in Scientific Research was held at the American Museum of Natural History 7-8 April 2011. This preliminary report is based on the delayed post feedback from workshop participants 2-3 months following the workshop. The overall goals of the project are to convene a workshop for scientists, educators, and community members involved in public participation in scientific research (PPSR) to share experiences, lessons, protocols, and tool and to collaboratively set forth a coherent agenda for answering outstanding questions for
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Joe E HeimlichAmerican Museum of Natural HistoryCornell UniversityNational Audubon Society
The Take Two Institutional Research Study was an ethnographic case study of the contributions of Web 2.0 philosophy and technologies to museum practice and staff development at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, North Carolina. It used a naturalistic methodology to investigate staff members' relationships with each other and their publics as the Museum developed and embraced a philosophy of Web 2.0 experimentation, shared authority, and co-creation. An important element in developing Web 2.0 culture at the Museum of Life and Science was leadership that encouraged experimentation and
The National Science Foundation has provided funding through NSF-ISE# 0946691 to support the DISCUSS Colloquium, a seed initiative to nurture a shared Digital Immersive Giant Screen Specifications (DIGSS) for STEM learning film production at a scale and quality that is sustainable in the informal science education (ISE) community. It is anticipated that when such specifications are adopted and published, equipment manufacturers and show producers will be better able to raise capital based on the scale of the network and their need for replacement equipment and new films. Researchers from ILI
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John FraserWhite Oak InstituteVictor YoccoSarah Gruber
The National Science Foundation provided funding through NSF-ISE# 0946691 to support the Digital Immersive Screen Colloquium for Unified Standards and Specifications (DISCUSS), a seed initiative to nurture a shared Digital Immersive Giant Screen Specifications (DIGSS) for STEM learning film production at a scale and quality that is sustainable in the informal science education (ISE) community. The DISCUSS initiative engaged technical experts from across the GS community in concert with the Giant Screen Cinema Association (GSCA) and developed a first draft specification that was presented to