PBS has a long history of creating award-winning children’s media and has published a wide range of free educational apps. PBS stations often seek organizational partnerships for help in reaching families with the free digital resources they produce. One such collaboration is between WGBH and ALSC as we together introduce a new series of apps developed with National Science Foundation funding. These PEEP Family Science apps feature characters children love from the Emmy Award-winning preschool STEM series on public television, PEEP and the Big Wide World—combining brief, animated stories with
Nature-based playgrounds—known as playscapes—offer numerous opportunities for young children to learn about nature. In the current study, we focus on teacher talk on playscapes, namely to capture the spontaneous utterances teachers offer when engaging with young children during playscape visits. Two different playscapes were contrasted, both of which featured loose parts, native plants, and running water. The difference in playscape was whether it featured ecosystems: While the rural playscape had a natural forest and a wetland, the urban playscape had a man-made stream and a garden. Ten
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Heidi KloosCatherine MaltbieRhonda BrownVictoria Carr
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The attached Briefing Booklet was created collaboratively by A2A (Awareness to Action) Planning Workshop facilitators and organizers in advance of the February 2018 convening and was available to participants.
The workshop's primary goal was to establish an operational strategy for knowledge sharing across entities, networks, and associations designed to strengthen communities of practice nationally to better conceive, conduct, and evaluate projects for the public, working at the intersection of science, arts, and sustainability.
The booklet contains an overview of the workshop purpose
The Brains On! exploratory research study was guided by three overarching research questions:
Who is the audience for Brains On! and what are their motivations for listening to children’s science podcasts?
How are Brains On! listeners using the podcast and engaging with its content?
What kinds of impacts does Brains On! have on its audiences?
These questions were answered through a three-phase mixed-methods research design. Each phase informed the next, providing additional insights into answering the research questions. Phase 1 was a review of a sample of secondary data in the
Given the growth of technology in the 21st century and the growing demands for computer science skills, computational thinking has been increasingly included in K-12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education. Computational thinking (CT) is relevant to integrated STEM and has many common practices with other STEM disciplines. Previous studies have shown synergies between CT and engineering learning. In addition, many researchers believe that the more children are exposed to CT learning experiences, the stronger their programming abilities will be. As programming is a
In October 2017, the PBS NewsHour team produced a week and a half of opioid-related content, including several online explainers, which presented the opportunity for a natural experiment for the Experiments in Transmedia project.
Knology (formerly New Knowledge Organization Ltd.) conducted a two-wave research study to advance understanding of the youth audience’s knowledge and news consumption on the topic.
The first wave of the study, conducted in September 2017, provides a baseline. The content aired in October 2017, and the second wave of the study, conducted in November 2017, asked a
This meta-article aims to explore the role of uncertainty in knowing in informal science learning contexts. Subjects (N=2591) were sixth-graders from four countries. In addition to the correct and incorrect questionnaire alternatives, there was a "don't know" option to choose if uncertain of the answer. The unique path-analysis finding showed that the role of motivation was uniformly positive on correct and negative on uncertainty of answers. In all contexts the number of correct answers increased, incorrect and uncertain answers decreased. Interestingly, although there was no more difference
Participants in this study reported a variety of resources used in the past to learn to code in Apex, including online tutorials, one-day classes sponsored by Salesforce, and meet-up groups focused on learning. They reported various difficulties in learning through these resources, including what they viewed as the gendered nature of classes where the men already seemed to know how to code—which set a fast pace for the class, difficulty in knowing “where to start” in their learning, and a lack of time to practice learning due to work and family responsibilities. The Coaching and Learning Group
The goal of our research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of high school level science fair and improvements that might enhance learning outcomes based on empirical assessment of student experiences. We use the web-based data collection program REDCap to implement anonymous and voluntary surveys about science fair experiences with two independent groups -- high school students who recently competed in the Dallas Regional Science and Engineering Fair and post high school students (undergraduates, 1st year medical students, and 1st year biomedical graduate students) on STEM education
This report summarizes the ideas and conversations of the CAISE Broadening Participation Task Force, which was led by the authors, along with James Bell, Principal Investigator and project director of CAISE (see informalscience.org/bp-task-force). The task force was instrumental in identifying key ideas and challenges to the field, providing edits and input into the report, developing and drafting the associated practice briefs, and piloting the materials.
Across the nation, many are undertaking efforts to significantly transform who participates in science, technology, engineering, and
This Conference Paper was presented at the International Soceity for the Learning Sciences Confernece in June 2018. We summarize interviews with youth ages 9-15 about their failure mindsets, and if those midsets cross boundaries between learning environments.
Previous research on youth’s perceptions and reactions to failure established a view of failure as a negative, debilitating experience for youth, yet STEM and in particular making programs increasingly promote a pedagogy of failures as productive learning experiences. Looking to unpack perceptions of failure across contexts and
Making is a recent educational phenomenon that is increasingly occurring in schools and informal learning spaces around the world. In this paper we explore data from maker educators about their experiences with failure. We surveyed maker educators about how they view failure happening with youth in their formal and informal programs and how they respond. The results reveal some concrete strategies that seem to show promise for helping educators increase the likelihood that failure experiences for youth can lead to gains in learning and persistence.
This article summarizes a survey of formal