This project focuses on environmental health literacy and will explore the extent to which diverse rural and urban youth in an out-of-school STEM enrichment program exhibit gains in environmental health literacy while engaged in learning and teaching others about community resilience in the face of changing climates. Science centers and museums provide unique opportunities for youth to learn about resilience, because they bring community members together to examine the ways that current science influences local decisions. In this project, teams of participating youth will progress through four learning modules that explore the impacts of changing climates on local communities, the local vulnerabilities and risks associated with those changes, possible mitigation and adaptation strategies, and building capacities for communities to become climate resilient. After completion of these modules, participating youth will conduct a resilience-focused action project. Participants will be encouraged to engage peers, families, friends, and other community stakeholders in the design and implementation of their projects, and they will gain experience in accessing local climate and weather data, and in sharing their findings through relevant web portals. Participants will also use various sensors and web-based tools to collect their own data.
This study is guided by three research questions: 1) To what extent do youth develop knowledge, skills, and self- efficacy for developing community resilience (taken together, environmental health literacy in the context of resilience) through participation in museum-led, resilience-focused programming? 2) What program features and settings foster these science learning outcomes? And 3) How does environmental health literacy differ among rural and urban youth, and what do any differences imply for project replication? Over a two- year period, the project will proceed in six stages: a) Materials Development during the first year, b) Recruitment and selection of youth participants, c) Summer institute (six days), d) Workshops and field experiences during the school year following the summer institute, e) Locally relevant action projects, and f) End- of-program summit (one day). In pursuing answers to the research questions, a variety of data sources will be used, including transcripts from youth focus groups and educator interviews, brief researcher reflections of each focus group and interview, and a survey of resilience- related knowledge. Quantitative data sources will include a demographic survey and responses to a self-efficacy instrument for adolescents. The project will directly engage 32 youth, together with one parent or guardian per youth. The study will explore the experiences of rural and urban youth of high school age engaged in interactive, parallel programming to enable the project team to compare and contrast changes in environmental health literacy between rural and urban participants. It is anticipated that this research will advance knowledge of how engagement of diverse youth in informal learning environments influences understanding of resilience and development of environmental health literacy, and it will provide insights into the role of partnerships between research universities and informal science centers in focusing on community resilience.
The Portland Children’s Museum will open a new exhibition, “Drip City,” which focuses on water as a precious natural resource that has shaped the region’s geography, weather, and culture. Following an IMLS-funded evaluation and design process, the museum will engage a local fabrication company to construct and install exhibit components that explore concepts in science, engineering, and art. The museum will also engage community members in the design and testing of associated programs that target families and children ages 0 to 7. Museum staff will evaluate all exhibit elements to ensure they are working properly, accessible as intended, and making children’s learning visible to adult audiences.
This video presents reflections on SCIENCES: Supporting a Community’s Informal Education Needs—Confidence and Empowerment in STEM. SCIENCES brought together Eden Place Nature Center and the Chicago Zoological Society to collaboratively support environmental conservation and lifelong scientific learning in the Fuller Park neighborhood of Chicago.
The SCIENCES project began in 2013 and focused on adapting existing educational programs into a suite of environmentally focused science learning opportunities for professional, student, and public audiences in the Fuller Park neighborhood
In The Nature of Community: SCIENCES, we share the lessons learned from an innovative partnership designed to leverage the strengths of two nonprofit organizations—a large cultural institution and a smaller, deeply-rooted community-based organization, both of which offer informal science education expertise.
You’ll read first-hand reflections of how staff members, community leaders and members, children, and adults experienced this partnership: the expectations, surprises, challenges, successes, and lessons learned. We hope the description of this partnership inspires other organizations to
Intellectual Merit: Project RESET utilized a responsive teaching approach to engage youth in critical STEM literacy on the topic of climate change. Video recordings of the afterschool program, artifacts from the program, and interviews with youth were analyzed to better understand how youth supported each other’s participation in science discourse. The team outlined four themes of critical STEM literacy (CSL) and identified a “constellation” of knowledge, dispositions, and practices within each of those themes. Finally, Project RESET demonstrated the potential benefits of multi-modal analysis
Youth from non-dominant racial and linguistic backgrounds often have limited access to school science learning opportunities. Afterschool settings may provide learning environments in which they improve science knowledge and construct positive science identities. With this premise, our research team designs and provides a community-based afterschool program that engages resettled Burmese refugee youth in STEM learning. In this paper, we seek to understand how refugee youth utilize their funds of knowledge and what identities were foregrounded in the program. We adapt a micro-ethnographic
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Minjung RyuMavreen Rose Sta. Ana TuvillaCasey Elizabeth Wright
This handout was prepared for the Climate Change Showcase at the 2019 ASTC Conference in Toronto, Ontario. It highlights resources available on InformalScience.org related to the topic of climate change.
The purpose of the Science Center Public Forums project was to engage citizens with NOAA data about climate-related hazards, resilience strategies, and related policies. Forum modules about four climate-related hazards were created, and used as a part of forum programs at eight museums around the US. Evaluation findings are structured around three themes: 1) learning, 2) interest, engagement, and attitudes, and 3) educator outcomes. Data showed high levels of prior knowledge about environmental hazards and interactions between human and natural systems; resilience efforts; and the ways science
This program will derive knowledge on extreme weather and its concepts to be shared with youth in the Boston and Kansas City areas. Subsequently, the youth will share this knowledge by displaying it as art work on the rapid transit systems. The art projects will culminate in broad-based exhibition at the end of each group's sessions. The project will involve 200 youth per region resulting in an impact of 1000 youth per year, 80 adult mentors and 20,000 adult transportation riders in learning about extreme weather concepts. Participant organizations are the University of Mass-Boston, University of Mass-Lowell, The Massachusetts College of Art, the University of Kansas Center for Research Inc., and the Goodman Research Group Inc.
The goals of this project are to bring the topic of extreme weather to the foreground by educating youth and in turn having them educate a selected group of adults that use the rapid transit system. Groups of youths will learn about the topic through a series of meetings with mentors who are experts on the issues around extreme weather. The youth will derive their own art-works with their interpretation. These art-works will be displayed on the rapid transit systems in New England (Merrimack Valley and Worcester regions) and the Mid-West (Topeka and Kansas City areas). Using a quasi-experimental mixed methodology (demographics, bus ridership, initial level of science awareness, and interest) the goal is to understand science learning outcomes associated with the creation and public display of youth art. Research questions of importance in this regard are 1. In what ways does blending art with the science enhance youth learning about extreme weather concepts? 2. To what extent does youth art support adult learning of science? and 3. How does regional context affect learning about extreme weather?
Broader impacts will result from the youth diversity as well as the diversity of riders of the rapid transit systems where the art of extreme weather is displayed.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) program, which supports innovative research, approaches, and resources for use in a variety of learning settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert ChenLois HetlandJill LohmeierStephen MisholSteven SchrockClaudia Bode
RK&A conducted a summative evaluation of five climate change and resiliency programs at the Science Museum of Virginia (SMV). The summative evaluation was the culmination of a three-year grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—front-end and formative evaluations were completed in the two years prior. The goal of this evaluation was to test the extent to which the programs achieved the intended visitor outcomes defined in SMV’s Impact Framework.
How did we approach this study?
The summative evaluation focused on five programs—the Digital Dome theater’s
How does focusing on “community science literacy” change the role of an informal science learning center?
This poster was presented at the 2019 NSF AISL Principal Investigators meeting.
Explore the Science of Spring: A Live Media Event is an Innovations in Development project produced by the signature PBS series Nature. The new primetime series Spring LIVE (working title) will break the frame of a traditional documentary, letting viewers themselves explore the dramatic seasonal changes of spring through the immediacy of live television. On-camera hosts, scientists and naturalists in locations across the U.S., and scores of citizen scientists will use observation and scientific inquiry to explore the workings of nature during this season of rebirth. The unfolding stories of seasonal change will illuminate larger scientific insights--into the biodiversity of species in habitats, the interconnectedness of plants and animals in diverse ecosystems, the global phenomenon of species migration, and how spring "green-up" can be affected by environmental change--while inspiring appreciation for species conservation and habitat preservation. Spring LIVE is conceived as an ongoing series, with this inaugural season composed of three one-hour programs broadcast live on three consecutive nights, along with real-time interactions via Facebook. Reaching long-standing Nature viewers (2.5 million per episode), Spring LIVE will seek to turn mature adults and diverse families into citizen science doers, and leverage younger Nature online audiences through social media and community engagement in partnership with citizen science projects.
Spring LIVE will build public knowledge of and engagement in phenology and citizen science. The project will also conduct knowledge-building research on the effectiveness of Facebook as a science learning tool. It will experiment with eliciting audience participation via Facebook within the live shows to generate synchronous, second-screen thought and discussion. An exploratory study by Multimedia Research will look at the impact of this feature, addressing the question: To what extent and how does Facebook interactivity within live science shows impact adult engagement, learning and motivation? Spring LIVE will also engage multiple partners to expand reach and impact and build capacity in their fields. National partners include the National Park Service and Next Avenue; citizen science partners include Celebrate Urban Birds, National Phenology Network, Monarch Blitz, and SciStarter, among others. PBS stations will work with these organizations to involve diverse, intergenerational audiences in observation of nature and seasonal change. Project evaluation, implemented by Knight Williams Research Communications, will focus on the impact of live television on science learning, and the success of the integration of citizen science projects on air, online, and in communities. This project 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 award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.