Developing solutions to large-scale collective problems -- such as resilience to environmental challenges -- requires scientifically literate communities. However, the predominant conception of scientific literacy has focused on individuals, and there is not consensus as to what community level scientific literacy is or how to measure it. Thus, a 2016 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report, “Science Literacy: Concepts, Contexts, and Consequences,” stated that community level scientific literacy is undertheorized and understudied. More specifically, the committee recommended that research is needed to understand both the i) contexts (e.g., a community’s physical and social setting) and ii) features of community organization (e.g., relationships within the community) that support community level science literacy and influence successful group action. This CAREER award responds to this nationally identified need by iteratively refining a model to conceptualize and measure community level scientific literacy. The model and metrics developed in this project may be applied to a wide range of topics (e.g., vaccination, pandemic response, genetically-modified foods, pollution control, and land-use decisions) to improve a community’s capacity to make scientifically-sound collective decisions. This CAREER award is funded by the Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) and the EHR CORE Research (ECR) programs. It supports the AISL program goals to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. It supports the ECR program goal to advance relevant research knowledge pertaining to STEM learning and learning environments.
The proposed research will conceptualize, operationalize, and measure community level scientific literacy. This project will use a comparative multiple case study research design. Three coastal communities, faced with the need to make scientifically-informed land-use decisions, will be studied sequentially. A convergent mixed methods design will be employed, in which qualitative and quantitative data collection and analyses are performed concurrently. To describe the i) context of each community case, this project will use qualitative research methods, including document analysis, observation, focus groups, and interviews. To measure the ii) features of community organization for each community case, social network analysis will be used. The results from this research will be disseminated throughout and at the culmination of the project through professional publications and conference presentations as well as with community stakeholders and the general public. The integrated education activities include a professional learning certificate for informal science education professionals and STEM graduate students. This certificate emphasizes high-quality community-engaged scholarship, placing students with partners such as museums, farmer’s markets, and libraries, to offer informal learning programs in their communities. This professional learning program will be tested as a model to provide training for STEM graduate students who would like to communicate their research to the public through outreach and extension activities.
Transforming Communities provides an overview of the agency mission, vision, goals, and objectives, and includes highlights of IMLS initiatives and projects.
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Institute of Museum and Library Services
Many people believe that both public policy and personal action would improve with better access to “reliable knowledge about the natural world” (that thing that we often call science). Many of those people participate in science education and science communication. And yet, both as areas of practice and as objects of academic inquiry, science education and science communication have until recently remained remarkably distinct. Why, and what resources do the articles in this special issue of JRST give us for bringing together both the fields of practice and the fields of inquiry?
"Strengthening Networks, Sparking Change: Museums and Libraries as Community Catalysts" combines findings from a literature scan and input from the library, museum and community revitalization fields with case studies about the experiences and vision of museums and libraries working to spur change in their communities. It describes the complementary conceptual frameworks of social wellbeing and collective impact and explains how libraries and museums can use these concepts to partner with community-based organizations, government agencies and other cultural or educational organizations. It
Science is a way of knowing about the world. At once a process, a product, and an institution, science enables people to both engage in the construction of new knowledge as well as use information to achieve desired ends. Access to science—whether using knowledge or creating it—necessitates some level of familiarity with the enterprise and practice of science: we refer to this as science literacy.
Science literacy is desirable not only for individuals, but also for the health and well- being of communities and society. More than just basic knowledge of science facts, contemporary
Science and technology: these are the mainstays China wants to concentrate on in order to stabilise its future as an emerging world power. Beijing plans to have the whole, enormous Chinese population literate in the scientific field within a few years. Scientific popularization is the key to what now, due to political influences and deep social disparities, seems remote.
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Nico Pitrelli
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This conference at Arizona State University is an early-stage activity inspired by the upcoming 2016 - 2018 bicentennial of the conception, writing and publication of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus." That book, and the dozens of films produced subsequently, have provoked questions for researchers and citizens that have endured for two centuries and are relevant today. - How have we gone from a world in which Mary Shelley could watch public demonstrations of voltaic power on dead animals to one in which the dissection of animals in classrooms is frowned upon, but the creation of new life forms via an international synthetic biology competition (iGEM) is celebrated? - How do literary, artistic and other cultural portrayals of science and engineering inspire and inflect STEM research? - What steps do contemporary scientists and engineers need to take in order to proceed with their innovative activity in a responsible fashion? - What role do lay citizens have in making decisions about science and technology?- How can we understand the broad relationship between creativity and responsibility? The convening brings together a USA and international group of educators in informal science education and multi-disciplinary scholars who study various aspects of the interactions of science, technology and society (STS). This team of natural and social scientists, engineers, museum professionals (Museum of Science, Boston (MOS); Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM)), artists and humanities scholars will begin to formulate plans for producing exhibits, educational programs and demonstrations, fiction and nonfiction writing contests, performances, and curricula that explore science education, ethics and artistry. An overarching goal is to establish a process that could create a national and global network of collaborators to plan programs worldwide and establish new professional collaborations of researchers beyond the bicentennial. The workshop, a first step toward a possible larger initiative, could be significant both for the public's engagement with contemporary issues of science and society and for stimulating new inter-disciplinary research on such issues.