Despite new governmental initiatives aiming to engage the general public in policymaking related to nuclear energy, little is known about how expert stakeholders involved in the decision-making process perceive such activity. This study examines how a series of social, cognitive and communication factors influences expert stakeholders’ attitudes toward public participation in policy decisions related to nuclear energy. Specifically, using data from a survey of 557 experts identified through content analyses of public meeting records, we find that among those perceiving public opinion as being
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Nan LiLeona Yi-Fan SuXuan LiangDominique BrossardDietram Scheufele
The Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), in collaboration with the Tampa Community Development Corporation (CDC), will create a youth STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) program designed by East Tampa neighborhood participants for the neighborhood. The STEAM program will be a first of its kind in the area and will bring a continuum of experiences in STEAM fields to underserved middle and high school students, as well as volunteer participants, who come from the East Tampa neighborhood. Initial programming topics for career exploration include astronomy/cosmology and space exploration, environmental sciences, engineering, robotics, crime scene forensics, and medical explorations. The project will expand the museum's ability to create a STEAM continuum, increase interest in STEAM careers, and to increase awareness of skills necessary to be successful in STEAM careers.
The University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the University of North Carolina, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and 4-H are collaborating to provide professional development to 180 4-H leaders and other informal science educators, and engage 1,400 middle school youth in using research-grade robotic telescopes and data analysis tools to explore the Universe. Youth participating in 4H-based out-of-school programs in Wisconsin, West Virginia and North Carolina are learning about the universe and preparing for STEM careers by conducting authentic astronomy research, completing astronomy-related hands-on modeling activities, interacting with astronomers and other professionals who are part of the Skynet Robotic Telescope Network, and interacting with other youth who part of the Skynet Junior Scholars virtual community. The project is innovative because it is providing a diverse community of 4-H youth (including sight- and hearing-challenged youth and those from underrepresented groups) with opportunities to use high-quality, remotely located, Internet-controlled telescopes to explore the heavens by surveying galaxies, tracking asteroids, monitoring variable stars, and learn about the nature and methods of science. Deliverables include (1) online access to optical and radio telescopes, data analysis tools, and professional astronomers, (2) an age-appropriate web-based interface for controlling remote telescopes, (3) inquiry-based standards-aligned instructional modules, (4) face-to-face and online professional development for 4-H leaders and informal science educators, (5) programming for youth in out-of-school clubs and clubs, (6) evaluation findings on the impacts of program activities on participants, and (7) research findings on how web-based interactions between youth and scientists can promote student interest in and preparedness for STEM careers. The evaluation plan is measuring the effectiveness of program activities in (1) increasing youths' knowledge, skills, interest, self-efficacy, and identity in science, including youth who are sight- and hearing-impaired, (2) increasing educators' competency in implementing inquiry-based instruction and their ability to interact with scientists, and (3) increasing the number of Skynet scientists who are involved in education and public outreach.
The Balboa Park Cultural Partnership, in collaboration with several informal science education and other cultural and business organizations in San Diego, Chicago, and Worcester, MA are implementing a research and development project that investigates a range of possible approaches for stimulating the development of 21st Century creativity skills and innovative processes at the interface between informal STEM learning and methods for creative thinking. The goal of the research is to advance understanding of the potential impacts of creative thinking methods on the public's understanding of and engagement with STEM, with a focus on 21st Century workforce skills of teens and adults. The goal of the project's development activities is to experiment with a variety of "innovation incubator" models in cities around the country. Modeled on business "incubators" or "accelerators" that are designed to foster and accelerate innovation and creativity, these STEM incubators generate collaborations of different professionals and the public around STEM education and other STEM-related topics of local interest that can be explored with the help of creative learning methodologies such as innovative methods to generate creative ideas, ideas for transforming one STEM idea to others, drawing on visual and graphical ideas, improvisation, narrative writing, and the process of using innovative visual displays of information for creating visual roadmaps. Hosting the project's incubators are the Balboa Park Cultural Partnership (San Diego), the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) and the EcoTarium (Worcester, MA). National partners are the Association of Science-Technology Centers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Americans for the Arts. Activities will include: the formation and collaborative processes of three incubator sites, a research study, the development of a creative thinking curriculum infused into science education, professional development based on the curriculum, public engagement events and exhibits, a project website and tools for social networking, and project evaluation. A national advisory council includes professionals in education, science, creativity, and business.
In the Communities of Learning for Urban Environments and Science (CLUES) project, the four museums of the Philadelphia-Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative worked to build informal science education (ISE) capacity in historically underserved communities. The program offered comprehensive professional development (PD) to Apprentices from 8-11 community-based organizations (CBO), enabling them to develop and deliver hands-on family science workshops. Apprentices, in turn, trained Presenters from the CBOs to assist in delivering the workshops. Families attended CLUES events both at the museums and in their own communities. The events focused on environmental topics that are especially relevant to urban communities, including broad topics such as climate change and the energy cycle to more specific topics such as animals and habitats in urban neighborhoods.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington DC. It describes the CLUES project that provides STEM education opportunities to families.
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New Jersey Academy for Aquatic SciencesBarbara Kelly
This is a Science Learning+ planning project that will develop a plan for how to conduct a longitudinal study using existing data sources that can link participation in science-focused programming in out-of-school settings with long-range outcomes. The data for this project will ultimately come from "mining" existing data sets routinely collected by out-of-school programs in both the US and UK. 4H is the initial out-of-school provider that will participate in the project, but the project will ideally expand to include other youth-based programs, such as Girls Inc. and YMCA. During the planning grant period, the project will develop a plan for a longitudinal research study by examining informal science-related factors and outcomes including: (a) range of educational outcomes, (b) diversity and structure of learning activities, (c) links to formal education experiences and achievement measures, and (d) structure of existing informal science program data collection infrastructure. The planning period will not involve actual mining of existing data sets, but will explore the logistics regarding data collection across different informal science program, including potential metadata sets and instruments that will: (a) identify and examine data collection challenges, (b) explore the implementation of a common data management system, (c) identify informal science programs that are potential candidates for this study, (d) compare and contrast data available from the different programs and groups, and (e) optimize database management.
President Obama announced in April 2013 that the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) would launch a STEM AmeriCorps initiative to build student interest in STEM. A RFA is currently being prepared to be released in the late fall of 2013. This project will engage in quick response research to identify an evaluation and research agenda that can begin to inform the program launch. Thus, the timeframe for informing the initial stages of STEM AmeriCorps is relatively short, and the creation of an evaluation and research agenda is very timely. The products from the RAPID proposal are: (1) a review of the evaluation and research literature on the use of volunteers and/or mentors to build students' interest in STEM; (2) to convene a workshop to identify evaluation and research priorities to guide the initiative; and (3) a summary evaluation agenda that identifies promising directions along with the strength of evidence around key issues.
This project supports the development of technological fluency and understanding of STEM concepts through the implementation of design collaboratives that use eCrafting Collabs as the medium within which to work with middle and high school students, parents and the community. The researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and the Franklin Institute combine expertise in learning sciences, digital media design, computer science and informal science education to examine how youth at ages 10-16 and families in schools, clubs, museums and community groups learn together how to create e-textile artifacts that incorporate embedded computers, sensors and actuators. The project investigates the feasibility of implementing these collaboratives using eCrafting via three models of participation, individual, structured group and cross-generational community groups. They are designing a portal through which the collaborative can engage in critique and sharing of their designs as part of their efforts to build a model process by which scientific and engineered product design and analysis can be made available to multiple audiences. The project engages participants through middle and high school elective classes and through the workshops conducted by a number of different organizations including the Franklin Institute, Techgirlz, the Hacktory and schools in Philadelphia. Participants can engage in the eCrafting Collabs through individual, collective and community design challenges that are established by the project. Participants learn about e-textile design and about circuitry and programming using either ModKit or the text-based Arduino. The designs are shared through the eCrafting Collab portal and participants are required to provide feedback and critique. Researchers are collecting data on learner identity in relation to STEM and computing, individual and collective participation in design and student understanding of circuitry and programming. The project is an example of a scalable intervention to engage students, families and communities in developing technological flexibility. This research and development project provides a resource that engages students in middle and high schools in technology rich collaborative environments that are alternatives to other sorts of science fairs and robotic competitions. The resources developed during the project will inform how such an informal/formal blend of student engagement might be scaled to expand the experiences of populations of underserved groups, including girls. The study is conducting an examination of the new types of learning activities that are multiplying across the country with a special focus on cross-generational learning.
This Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) project from the University of New Hampshire focuses on a "living bridge", which exemplifies the future of smart, sustainable, user-centered transportation infrastructure. Bridges deliver such a fundamental service to society that they are often taken for granted. Typically, bridges only stir the public's interest when they must unexpectedly be replaced at great cost, or, worse, fail. The Living Bridge project will create a self-diagnosing, self-reporting "smart bridge" powered by a local renewable energy source, tidal energy, by transforming the landmark Memorial Bridge--a vertical lift bridge over the tidal Piscataqua River, with pedestrian access connecting Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Kittery, Maine--into a living laboratory for researchers, engineers, scientists, and the community at large. The Living Bridge will engage innovators in sensor and renewable energy technology by creating an incubator platform on a working bridge, from which researchers can field test and evaluate the impact and effectiveness of emerging technologies. The Living Bridge will also serve as a community platform to educate citizens about innovations occurring at the site and in the region, and about how incorporating renewable energy into bridge design can lead to a sustainable transportation infrastructure with impact far beyond the region. Sustainable, smart bridges are key elements in developing a successful infrastructure system. To advance the state of smart service systems and clean energy conversion, this project team will design and deploy a structural and environmental monitoring system that provides information for bridge condition assessment, traffic management, and environmental stewardship; advances renewable energy technology application; and excites the general public about bridge innovations. This PFI:BIC project is enabled through partnerships between academic researchers with expertise in structural, mechanical and ocean engineering, sensing technology and social science; small businesses with expertise in instrumentation, data acquisition, tidal energy conversion; and state agencies with bridge design expertise. The Living Bridge technical areas are structural health monitoring, tidal energy conversion with fluid-structure interaction measurements, estuarine environmental monitoring, and outreach communication. Sensors will be used to calibrate a three-dimensional analytical structural finite element model of the bridge. The predicted structural response from this model will assess the measured structural response of the bridge as acceptable or not. Instruments installed on the turbine deployment platform will measure the spatio-temporal structure of the turbulent inflow and modified wake flow downstream of the turbine. Resulting data will include turbine performance and loads for use in fluid-structure interaction models. Deployed environmental sensors will measure estuarine water quality; wildlife deterrent sensors will deter fish from the turbine. Hydrophones and video cameras will be used before and during turbine deployment to monitor environmental changes due to turbine presence. Outreach efforts will make bridge data, history, and information about new systems accessible and understandable to the public and K-12 educators, facilitated by an information kiosk installed at the bridge. Public awareness will be assessed with survey methods used in the N.H. Granite State Poll. The lead institution is the University of New Hampshire (UNH) with its departments of Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Sociology, and the Center for Ocean Engineering. Primary industrial partners are a large business, MacArtney Underwater Technology Group, Inc. (Houston, TX) and two small businesses Lite Enterprises, Inc. (Nashua, NH) and Eccosolutions, LLC (New Paltz, NY.) Broader context partners are New Hampshire Department of Transportation, NH Fish & Game Department, NH Port Authority, NH Coastal Program, City of Portsmouth (NH), Sustainable Portsmouth (nonprofit), Maine Department of Transportation; U.S. Coast Guard, Archer/Western (Canton, MA, large business), Parsons-Brinkerhoff (Manchester, NH, large business), UNH Tech Camp, UNH Infrastructure and Climate Network, UNH Leitzel Center for Mathematics, Science and Engineering Education, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Changing Places (a joint Architecture and Media Laboratory Consortium, in Cambridge, MA).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Erin BellTat FuMartin WosnikKenneth BaldwinLawrence Hamilton
The aim of this project is to create conversations in science museums among scientists, engineers, and public audiences about an emerging research field, synthetic biology. Synthetic biology applies science and engineering to create new biological systems, and re-design existing biological systems, for useful purposes. This is an important new area of research and development that raises societal questions about potential benefits, costs, and risks. Conversations between researchers and public audiences will focus not only on what synthetic biology is and how research in the field is carried out, but also on the potential products, outcomes, and implications for society of this work. Researchers and publics will explore personal and societal values and priorities as well as desired research outcomes so that both groups can learn from each other. Public participants will benefit from knowing about this field of research, and researchers will benefit from hearing public perspectives directly from the public participants. This project will be led by the Museum of Science with partners at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, the Science Museum of Minnesota, the Ithaca Sciencenter, and several other universities and science museums. It is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. This includes providing multiple pathways for broadening access to and engagement in STEM learning experiences, advancing innovative research on and assessment of STEM learning in informal environments, and developing understandings of deeper learning by participants. This project is aimed at pushing beyond traditional modes of communicating with public audiences rooted in "public understanding of science" modalities into the mechanisms and perspectives associated with "public engagement with science" (PES). The project will support informal educational institutions as facilitators of such PES activities through which mutual learning takes place among research experts and various publics. Formative evaluation will support the development of evaluation tools that practitioners can use themselves to measure impacts of public engagement activities on both scientist and public participants. Summative evaluation will measure the impacts of the project on informal science education practitioners and researchers participating in the development of the project. In the first year of the project, two kinds of engagement activities will be tested at eight pilot sites across the U.S. The first kind will be the focus of "showcase" events, in which researchers demonstrate and talk with museum visitors about the basics of synthetic biology and their research work. The second kind will be the focus of "forum" events in which the multi-directional conversations focus on societal implications and participants' priorities for maximizing the benefits of this new field while minimizing the risks. The work of the first year will inform development of a kit of public engagement materials that will support widespread public engagement with synthetic biology in the second year at up to 200 sites across the U.S. Successful practices and infrastructure developed by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network to support NanoDays events will be use for this broad dissemination of public engagement in synthetic biology in year 2. When the project is complete a set of tools and guides will be provided online for developing, implementing, and evaluating engagement events that bring scientists and publics together, specifically about synthetic biology, but adaptable to other emerging research topics. The informal science education field will have a better understanding of how to get scientists, engineers, and publics to engage together in discussions about the societal implications of emerging technologies, and how to evaluate the quality of that engagement for both the researchers and the publics involved. The project will also provide a sense of informed public views on societal issues related to synthetic biology that emerge through a variety of public engagement activities that take place in science museums.
The Exploratorium, in collaboration with the Boys and Girls Club Columbia Park (BGC) in the Mission District of San Francisco, is implementing a two-year exploratory project designed to support informal education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) within underserved Latino communities. Building off of and expanding on non-STEM-related efforts in a few major U.S. cities and Europe, the Exploratorium, BGC, and residents of the District will engage in a STEM exhibit and program co-development process that will physically convert metered parking spaces in front of the Club into transformative public places called "parklets." The BGC parklet will feature interactive, bilingual science and technology exhibits, programs and events targeting audiences including youth ages 8 - 17 and intergenerational families and groups primarily in the Mission District and users of the BGC. Parklet exhibits and programs will focus on STEM content related to "Observing the Urban Environment," with a focus on community sustainability. The project explores one approach to working with and engaging the public in their everyday environment with relevant STEM learning experiences. The development and evaluation processes are being positioned as a model for possible expansion throughout the city and to other cities.