The Arboretum at Flagstaff will complete an interactive outdoor exhibition to provide relevant and science-based climate change information to its northern Arizona audience, as well as visitors from throughout the state. Project activities include the addition of three kiosks to the climate change exhibition; developing standards-based curriculum guides for educators to assist them with both onsite and classroom instruction for students in grades 6-8; and the development of new webpage interfaces designed to make data files and curriculum guides readily available. The climate change center will engage students and general audiences in the STEM components of real-time climate change research, interpretation, and mitigation.
Something Very Fishy Musical Theatre STEAM Exhibit is a collaborative project pairing a ocean-themed musical theatre production with a hands-on marine science exhibit in an informal community setting. The program is designed to increase the awareness of ocean conservation issues in children grades K-5. The storyline of the musical follows the lives of Sandy Carson (marine biologist), Mr. Stu Pidder (fishermen) and a cast of marine animal puppets (Sunny, Boss and Octavia) as they navigate one disaster after another in the ocean that comes to impact their lives and livelihoods. The story is told as a bedtime story between two narrators, mother and child, home sick with a fever. As the story unfolds the rising ocean temperatures and rising fever in the child tell the story of our how the health of the ocean is inextricably linked to our own health. The theatrical production ends when the characters hatch a community-based solution to work together to save the ocean by starting an eco-tourism venture. Then the audience members then begin a imaginary eco-tour of the Florida Keys around the performing arts center where they meet artists, fishermen, park rangers, scientists, engineers, and veterinarians working to save our oceans and the marine life within. To assess the impact of our program, the children complete a pre-post survey in the form of a personal meaning map drawing of what it looks like under the ocean along with a STEM, arts, non-STEM career survey including professions they met in the show and on the virtual eco-tour. Children who participate in the program demonstrate a significant increase in understanding how humans both impact and help solve the issues facing the oceans and their connection to our changing climate and show an increased interest in STEM careers related to ocean conservation.
This three-year project focuses on professional research experiences for middle and high school STEM teachers through investigations of the Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI). Each year 10 teachers (in diverse fields including biology, chemistry, earth and environmental sciences, and oceanography) and three to five professional paleontologists will participate in a four-phase process of professional development, including: a (1) pre-trip orientation (May); (2) 12 days in Panama in July collecting fossils from previously reported, as well as newly discovered, sites; (3) a post-trip on-line (cyber-enabled) Community of Practice; and (4) a final wrap-up at the end of each cohort (December). In addition, some of the teachers may also elect to partner with scientists in their research laboratories, principally located in California, Florida, and New Mexico. The partners in Panama are from the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí (UNACHI), including faculty and students, as well as STEM teachers from schools in Panama. Teachers that participate in this RET will develop lesson plans related to fossils, paleontology, evolution, geology, past climate change, and related content aligned with current STEM standards.
The GABI, catalyzed by the formation of the Isthmus of Panama during the Neogene, had a profound effect on the evolution and geography of terrestrial organisms throughout the Americas and marine organisms globally. For example, more than 100 genera of terrestrial mammals dispersed between the Americas, and numerous marine organisms had their interoceanic distributions cut in half by the formation of the Isthmus. Rather than being considered a single event that occurred about 4 million years ago, the GABI likely represents a series of dispersals over the past 10 million years, some of which occurred before full closure of the Isthmus. New fossil discoveries in Panama resulting from the GABI RET (Research Experiences for Teachers) are thus contributing to the understanding of the complexity and timing of the GABI during the Neogene.
This award is being co-funded with the Office International and Integrative Activities.
This critical discourse analysis examined climate change denial books intended for children and parents as examples of pseudo-educational materials reproduced within the conservative echo chamber in the United States. Guided by previous excavations in climate change denial discourses, we identified different types of skepticism, policy frames, contested scientific knowledge, and uncertainty appeals. Findings identify the ways these children's books introduced a logic of non-problematicity about environmental problems bolstered by contradictory forms of climate change skepticism and polarizing
Research shows that news consumption plays a positive role in youths' environmental engagement. This article examines if this also holds true for sceptics by comparing Swedish climate change sceptics with non-sceptical youngsters in their early and late adolescence. We conceptualise news consumption as foci of public connection and orientation rather than a source of environmental information. The results show that in their early teens, heavy news consumers among both sceptics and non-sceptics are indeed more engaged with environmental issues than their less news-oriented peers. However, in
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.
Polar Literacy: A model for youth engagement and learning will foster public engagement with polar science. The project targets middle-school aged underserved youth and polar research scientists, with the goal to increase youth interest in and understanding of Polar Regions, and to hone researchers' science communication skills. The project will develop affordable and replicable ways of bringing polar education to informal learning environments, extend our understanding of how polar education initiatives can be delivered to youth with maximum effect, and design a professional development model to improve the capacity for Polar Region researchers to craft meaningful broader impact activities. Polar Literacy will create and test a model which combines direct participation by scientists in after-school settings, with the use of curated polar research data sets and data visualization tools to create participatory learning experiences for youth. Beyond the life of the project funding, many of the project deliverables (including kits, videos, and other resources) will continue to be used and disseminated online and in person through ongoing work of project collaborators.
Polar Literacy: A model for youth engagement and learning will advance the understanding of informal learning environments while leveraging the rich interdisciplinary resources from polar investments made by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project's key audiences -- polar researchers, informal educators, and out-of-school time (OST) youth in grades 4-7 (ages 9-13) -- will connect through both place-based and internet-based experiences and work collaboratively to generate a flexible, scalable, and transferable education model. The project will 1) design OST kits and resource guides (focused on Polar Literacy Principles) and include "Concept in a Minute" videos designed to highlight enduring ideas, 2) provide professional development for informal educators, 3) synthesize a club model through adaptation of successful facets of existing informal learning programs, and 4) create Data Jam events for the OST Special Interest (SPIN) clubs and camp programs by modifying an existing formal education model. A research design, implemented at four nodes over three years, will answer three research questions to evaluate the impact of professional development on informal educators, as well as the impact of programs on youth, and the effectiveness of the model. In addition to the project team and collaborators who are informal education practitioners, an advisory board composed of experts in youth programming, informal education, and evaluation will guide the project to ensure that it advances the body of informal STEM learning research.
Polar Literacy is an Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Innovations in Development project in response to the Dear Colleague Letter: Support for Engaging Students and the Public in Polar Research (NSF 18-103). Polar Literacy 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 (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning in informal environments. This project has co-funding support from the Antarctic section of the Office of Polar Programs.
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:
Janice McDonnellOscar SchofieldCharles LichtenwalnerJason Cervenec