This study can be used by ISE professionals as a source of ideas to guide thinking about the use of a learning progression framework for astronomy education. It is evident from the results that target instruction is necessary as it encourages students toward developing more sophisticated understandings of topics. As students can articulate their learning progressions, they can be useful in measuring students’ understanding relative to a conceptual goal. In addition, this approach connects informal learning to formal learning.
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Giovanna Scalone
resourceresearchMuseum and Science Center Exhibits
Many informal science institutions design exhibits to encourage inquiry and experimentation. But the authors of this paper suggest that often museums have found that visitors lack the expertise or confidence to engage in coherent inquiry. They report here on their efforts to equip visitors with key inquiry skills through providing families and groups with focused trainings on how to use inquiry-based exhibits.
In this study, the authors sought to examine teachers’ views and understandings of science practical work, which in this instance refers to both inquiry-based activities and teacher-led manipulations of experiments and phenomena. The authors note that previous studies have found that teachers regard practical work as challenging and cite lack of support, limited time and limited resource as reasons for their reluctance to pursue it more. Additional training opportunities, involving for example strategies for coping with unexpected results and the development of greater pedagogical content
Complex systems are an essential element of science education because they contain important ideas across science domains and are a part of national science standards. The authors evaluated their model and program for developing system-thinking skills for elementary school students. This article concludes with a hierarchy of levels that ISE professionals interested in engaging learners in system thinking could use to guide program development.
Concept cartoons, with characters expressing both scientific viewpoints and common misconceptions, provide a ready stimulus for discussion. In debating the ideas, students articulate their thoughts, challenge each other, propose claims and explanations, and justify their reasoning. However, this study finds that these activities do not happen automatically and need considered support from educators.
This article reports on a study that reveals some of the complexities of supporting children's understandings of scientific argumentation. The paper could be useful for ISE educators seeking to incorporate scientific argumentation processes and skills into their programs for middle-school-aged children. Specifically, the article notes the benefits of context-specific (rather than generic) prompts and questions, and the need for ongoing professional development to support teachers in encouraging scientific argumentation.
This paper reports on changes in teacher attitudes toward visually impaired students following a yearlong programme that provided funds for adaptive resources, supplies, and equipment. The context framing this study is that special education teachers often lack knowledge of science and mathematics content. Conversely, many science and mathematics teachers lack confidence and competence in engaging young people with disabilities. Perhaps as a consequence of these factors, people with disabilities are notably absent in STEM fields (Bonetta, 2007). This study centres on teaching visually impaired
Researchers found that students developed greater levels of what they call scientific abilities when provided opportunities to design, refine, and reflect on science experiments during a laboratory course, as compared with students who conducted more traditional labs involving following directions in already established experimental designs. This article will interest informal educators seeking to provide students with opportunities to create, make, invent, and lead their own scientific investigations.
This paper describes a study designed to investigate whether fiction can help students to develop their opinions on socio-scientific issues. The findings suggest that fictional accounts can be effective, but the study did not investigate the quality of the reasoning underlying the opinions, nor their longevity.
In this study, the authors describe a conceptual framework addressing culturally based ways of knowing, and provide a brief description of their efforts to design a community-based summer science program with a Native American tribe using this framework. To address the call to attract culturally diverse students to STEM fields, the authors advocate supporting students in their navigation of multiple and perhaps conflicting epistemologies, and using the student community as resources to be built upon, rather than pushing them toward replacing their personal epistemologies with canonical
Many ISE educators design opportunities for children to collaborate in learning activities. This study's findings show that, when collaborations are designed to let children take responsibility for each other's understanding, the development of positive dispositions toward mathematics increases.
This paper presents a quantitative strategy (K-means cluster analysis) for exploring museum-motivated ideas that can be helpful in resource allocation, marketing, event planning, and designing exhibits. Cluster analysis provides a potentially useful way of knowing and understanding visitors, especially when the rating statements used in the questionnaire and in the analysis represent the museum's intentions.