Afterschool and community science programs have become widely recognized as important sanctuaries for science learning for low-income urban youth and as offering them with "missing opportunities." Yet, more needs to be known about how youth, themselves, perceive such opportunities. What motivates youth to seek out such opportunities in the nonschool hours? How do youth describe the doing and talking of science in such programs? Given such descriptions, how do youth perceive the role of these programs in their lives? This paper relies on stories from three youth drawn from a multisited
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jrene RahmMarie-Paule Martel-RenyJohn Moore
This paper focuses on an early stage of developing curricular materials to support students' learning of scientific inquiry. The materials being developed and tested, called Classroom FeederWatch (CFW), aimed to support science inquiry and were developed by a collaborative team of private curriculum developers and scientists (ornithologists). Inquiry dimensions were influenced at the outset by the newly released National Science Education Standards (National Research Council, Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1996) and by prior successful experiences of ornithologists with inquiry
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Deborah TrumbullRick BonneyNancy Grudens-Schuck
Museums are favorite and respected resources for learning worldwide. In Israel, there are two relatively large science centers and a number of small natural history museums that are visited by thousands of students. Unlike other countries, studying museum visits in Israel only emerges in the last few years. The study focused on the roles and perceptions of teachers, who visited four natural history museums with their classes. The study followed previous studies that aimed at understanding the role teachers play in class visits to museums (Griffin & Symington, 1997, Science Education, 81, 763
The 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development (PYD), a longitudinal investigation of a diverse sample of 1,700 fifth graders and 1,117 of their parents, tests developmental contextual ideas linking PYD, youth contributions, and participation in community youth development (YD) programs, representing a key ecological asset. Using data from Wave 1 of the study, structural equation modeling procedures provided evidence for five firstorder latent factors representing the “Five Cs” of PYD (competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring) and for their convergence on a second-order PYD
This article describes the Quest Atlantis (QA) project, a learning and teaching project that employs a multiuser, virtual environment to immerse children, ages 9–12, in educational tasks. QA combines strategies used in commercial gaming environments with lessons from educational research on learning and motivation. It allows users at participating elementary schools and after-school centers to travel through virtual spaces to perform educational activities, talk with other users and mentors, and build virtual personae. Our work has involved an agenda and process that may be called socially
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Sasha BarabMichael ThomasTyler DodgeRobert CarteauxHakan Tuzun
Design-based research is a collection of innovative methodological approaches that involve the building of theoretically-inspired designs to systematically generate and test theory in naturalistic settings. Design-based research is especially powerful with respect to supporting and systematically examining innovation. In part, this is due to the fact that conducting design-based research involves more than examining what is. It also involves designing possibilities and then evolving theories within real-world contexts. In this article we share the historical development of three outcomes of
Free-choice learning and, derivatively, free-choice environmental learning emerges as a powerful vehicle for supporting diversity in learning styles (Falk & Dierking, 2002). In this article, I argue that free-choice environmental learning holds great potential for enabling us to understand what is at stake in environmental learning and thus help us build a sustainable future. I examine the different informal learning contexts for children, home (family and play), museums, zoos, nature parks and wilderness, among many others, and offer an explanation for how learning occurs in these settings
Students will apply themselves to learning if the context interests them. Focusing on a subject close to middle school students' hearts, such as fashion, rather than on specific academic tasks such as writing or researching, builds intrinsic motivation for learning. This article explores the Fabulous Fashions program, which engages students in mathematics and literacy through the context of their interest in fashion.
This study investigated the ways in which the Science Mentoring Project, an afterschool program with a youth development focus and mentoring component, helped fifth-grade participants develop key competencies in five areas: personal, social, cognitive, creative, and civic competencies. Development of these competencies, in turn, positively affected participants’ school experiences. Using program observations, teacher interviews, student surveys, a student focus group, and mentor feedback forms, researchers studied how—not just whether—the project’s youth development activities affected school
Multilingual and multimodal literacy practices in a out-of-school migrant education program support Cambodian (ethnic Khmer) youth in using diverse modes of communication, revealing the intimate connections among literacy, language, culture, and identity.
African-American adolescent girls who expressed little interest in literacy activities nevertheless enthusiastically engaged in reading and writing around a topic that mattered to them—doing hair—particularly when they were allowed to determine the format of the literacy activities. The program aimed to carve out free spaces for self-directed learning.