Through this review of research on public engagement with science, Feinstein, Allen, and Jenkins advocate supporting students as “competent outsiders”—untrained in formal sciences, yet using science in ways relevant to their lives. Both formal and informal settings can be well suited for work in which students translate scientific content and practices into meaningful actions.
Adams, Gupta, and Cotumaccio examine the STEM interest and identity development of a small group of young women of color who participated in a multi-year, museum-based, out-of-school time program as middle and high school students. Through their positive experiences in the program, participants developed positive STEM identities, which supported their persistence as STEM college majors.
To date, no national studies of science-focused out-of-school time (OST) programs have been implemented, making it difficult to get a sense of program diversity and characteristics. In this paper, Laursen, Thiry, Archie, and Crane map the national landscape of U.S. OST science, technology, and engineering programs. The findings allow the authors to describe a generalized profile for each of eight types of OST program providers.
Bathgate, Schunn, and Correnti investigate students’ motivation toward science across three dimensions: the context or setting, the way in which students interact with science materials or ideas, and the activity topic. Findings point to the importance of understanding children’s perceptions of specific science topics, not just science in general.
Bang, Warren, Rosebery, and Medin explore empirical work with students from non-dominant communities to support teaching science as a practice of inquiry and understanding, not as a “settled” set of ideas and skills to learn.
Research has intimated that engineering design activities can enhance students’ understanding of engineering and technology and can increase their interest in science. Few studies, however, have defined or measured this interest empirically. Dohn examined the effect of an eight-week engineering design competition on 46 sixth-grade students. His findings suggest that design tasks can indeed stimulate interest. He found four main sources of interest: designing inventions, trial-and-error experimentation, making the inventions work, and collaboration.
When engaging in inquiry, learners find it difficult to control variables, design appropriate experiments, and maintain continuity across inquiry sessions. To support learners, researchers developed an inquiry task that promoted record keeping. The aim was to highlight the role that record keeping can play in metacognition and, ultimately, in successful inquiry.
This article describes how two inquiry games promoted student science skills in a museum setting while minimizing demands on teachers, fostering collaboration, and incorporating chaperones. Students who played these games engaged in more scientific inquiry behaviors than did students in control groups.
This paper describes a model developed by education researchers seeking to bridge the gap between formal and informal learning contexts. The model matches organisational, cognitive, affective, and social-environmental aspects of learning with four key design principles to create 16 practical steps to help formal and informal educators communicate and cooperate more effectively.
The Australian Museum, Sydney, has been working with students aged 5–18 from a coalition of around 20 schools to gain advice on the development of exhibitions, programs, and the design of learning experiences, particularly regarding the use of digital environment. This paper discusses some of the results of this working relationship.
What is the relationship between experiences in informal settings and students’ understanding of and attitudes toward science? By analysing existing data sets, Suter finds that science museum attendance has an effect—albeit a small one—on student achievement.