In July 2020, Dr. Brigid Barron and her team at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center convened a virtual workshop to mobilize a community of investigators to explore innovative methods for studying family and community learning during the pandemic. Participants included NSF RAPID-COVID grantees from Stanford University, University of Washington, and the University of Michigan.
This report summarizes the strategies and insights generated at this workshop so that they may be shared among a wider network of researchers, practitioners, funders, and
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.
Science communication is proliferating in the developing world, however, with respect to science centres, as a whole Africa is being left behind. Here 15 participants in a capacity building program are investigated using traditional needs-based and contemporary asset-based development conceptualisations. These development theories parallel deficit and participatory approaches, respectively, within science communication and demonstrate synergies between the fields. Data showed staffing, funding, governments, host institutions, and audiences are prominent needs and assets, networks are a major
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Graham WalkerLeapotswe BantsiSiphesihle BukhosiniKnowledge ChikundiAkash DusrathMartin KafeeroBhamini Kamudu ApplasawmyKenneth Monjero IgadwaKabelo MoswetsiSandile RikhotsoMarthinus J. SchwartzPuleng Tsie
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The attached evaluation is of the A2A (Awareness to Action) Planning Workshop held February 21-23 in two locations simultaneously connected by internet: the University of Colorado, Boulder and Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. It was made possible thanks to a collaboration of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and EcoArts Connections, with additional assistance from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. A2A brought together 39 natural and social scientists, artists, urban planners, “sustainablists” (e.g. sustainability professionals working in a variety
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 informal science education (ISE) sector has an important role to play in addressing current societal issues, including changes in environmental conditions, systemic poverty, and societal responses to natural and manmade disasters. These complex social problems require engaging all sectors of society in deep discussions around science, engineering, technology, and mathematics (STEM) and inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA). To do this, ISE professionals need training in how to bring in diverse perspectives, support inclusive learning, and provide equal access to institutional policymaking, practices and systems. People from different backgrounds within informal science institutions (ISIs) and local communities bring new perspectives, identify new needs, and foster innovation. This broadening of perspectives is critical to address the complex social problems of the 21st century. A key part of the needed transformations in informal science institutions is the preparation of change agents within the ISE sector capable of reimagining what just and equitable informal science institutions might look like. iPAGE 2.0 is an NSF Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) Innovations in Development project conducted by the Science Museum of Minnesota and the Garibay Group in concert with 27 ISIs from across the US. The overarching goal of the project is to support transformative change toward IDEA in the ISE sector. The project is based on an extension service model of knowledge diffusion which seeks to bridge the knowledge-to-action gap by creating intermediaries that can translate research into practical innovations that can be used by practitioners in ISIs. The project brings together teams of strategically placed individuals within ISIs and prepares them to work with their colleagues to enact research-based practices and practical organizational changes toward greater equity and diversity. This project is funded by the 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 ISE professional development initiative will work with annual first-year cohorts consisting of leadership teams from 4-6 ISIs. Each new cohort will spend 11 days together in a 5-day institute and three 2-day colloquia either virtually or at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Individuals and teams will adapt, implement, and refine ideas, strategies, and tools from the iPAGE 2.0 framework for use within their specific ISI context and broader professional networks and engage in ongoing communication and consultation with the iPAGE 2.0 community. All individuals on the team will develop skills, such as communication and collaboration expertise, to function as change agents acting to transform their organizations with respect to inclusion, diversity, equity, and access (IDEA) in STEM. Participants from previous cohorts will continue their roles as change agents and enhance learning in the iPAGE 2.0 community by sharing what they have learned at iPAGE 2.0 colloquia. The iPAGE 2.0 framework focuses on developing participants' understanding of 1) how structural inequalities function to reproduce social advantage and disadvantage within ISIs and the ISE sector; 2) the barriers, supports, and transmission vectors that contribute to or inhibit a continued shift in the sector toward IDEA within a network of practitioners, organizations, evaluators and researchers; and 3) how to prepare and support diversity change agents within the network. The project will employ a creative evaluation approach that combines developmental, principles-focused, arts-based, and transformative evaluation and an interactive, mixed-methods research study grounded in culturally responsive methodologies to address central questions concerning individual, organizational, and sector change. The project's primary audience is ISE professionals, and the secondary audience is researchers and evaluators working within the ISE sector. The project will work directly with an estimated 122 individuals from 27 ISIs.
This Innovations in Development 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.
At the Ecsite Conference held in Copenhagen, Denmark, in June 2019, a pre-conference workshop was held entitled "Beyond fact-checking: addressing misinformation". This workshop brought together practitioners in science engagement alongside researchers on the topic of misinformation from across Europe and beyond to focus on that topic.
Following this workshop, Ecsite, and The Kavli Foundation who supported it, decided to put together this resource document, for anyone developing or implementing activities or exhibitions working to engage the public in science.
This document has been
Communicating about environmental risks requires understanding and addressing stakeholder needs, perspectives, and anticipated uses for communication products and decision-support tools. This paper demonstrates how long-term dialogue between scientists and stakeholders can be facilitated by repeated stakeholder focus groups. We describe a dialogic process for developing science-based decision-support tools as part of a larger sea level rise research project in the Gulf of Mexico. We demonstrate how focus groups can be used effectively in tool development, discuss how stakeholders plan to use
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Denise DeLormeSonia StephensScott HagenMatthew Bilskie
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This report grew out of a workshop and follow-up session sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR). The two-day workshop and subsequent meeting sought to develop and validate evaluation practices to assess the value of NSF's investment in broadening participation across all directorates and programs. Invited participants included NSF grantees, professional evaluators, and the policy community (which included representatives from Congress, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), NSF staff, and staff from other federal agencies).
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Fitzgerald BramwellPatricia CampbellBeatriz Chu ClewellDarnella DavisNorman FortenberryAntonio GarciaDonna NelsonAdam StollVeronica Thomas
resourceevaluationProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This report summarizes the evaluation outcomes of the Collaborative Project Management (CoPM) Institute project, a two-day convening centered on bringing proven project management skills and approaches in the for-profit world to the informal science education (ISE) community to support effective collaborations and successful outcomes. The CoPM Institute was conceptualized as a pilot effort to test the effectiveness of porting of tools and frameworks for collaborative project management from the business/for-profit environment to advance the following project goals:
Build the capacity of