There is growing concern that opportunities for outdoor learning by school students in England have decreased substantially in recent years. In response to this, and recent Government calls for ‘schools to make better use of the outdoor classroom as a context for teaching and learning’, the Field Studies Council (FSC) and several partner organisations commissioned the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) to undertake a review of research on outdoor learning.
This document summarises the key findings of this review, which critically examined 150 pieces of research on outdoor
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mark RickinsonJustin DillonKelly TeameyMarian MorrisMee Young ChoiDawn SandersPauline Benefield
The Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance is developing Sugar from the Sun, a project consisting of a 5,400-square-foot exhibition intended to help children and their families explore photosynthesis. This immersive exhibition will use real plants to delve into the process that plants use to manufacture sugar (food energy) from the sun (light energy). Selinda Research Associates (SRA) conducted a front-end evaluation as part of the exhibit development process. The first phase examined what was known in the research literature about the public's understanding of photosynthesis and also about
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Cecilia GaribayJane SchaeferBeth ChangGarfield Park Conservatory
This paper examines learning among museum staff involved in exhibition development in four European natural history museums. It draws upon a larger body of research undertaken for the Mirror project, a European Commission Framework Programme 5 Information Society Technologies (FT5 IST) project aimed at enhancing and improving co-operative practices through the use of new technologies. The aim of this paper is to characterize learning and co-operative practices derived from the interactions of highly heterogeneous teams involved in constructing museum exhibitions, and particularly to
Many biomedical research universities have established outreach programs for precollege students and teachers and partnerships with local school districts to help meet the challenges of science education reform. Science outreach programs held in university research facilities can make science more exciting and innovative for high school students and can offer them much more insight into the nature of science and laboratory research than is available in most high school science courses. This paper describes a long-term follow-up study of high school students enrolled in the Summer Science
The purpose of this longitudinal case study is to describe the educational trajectories of a sample of 152 young women from urban, low-income, single-parent families who participated in the Women in Natural Sciences (WINS) program during high school. Utilizing data drawn from program records, surveys, and interviews, this study also attempts to determine how the program affected the participants' educational and career choices to provide insight into the role informal science education programs play in increasing the participation of women and minorities in science, math, engineering, and
In this paper I focus on the transition from everyday to scientific ways of reasoning, and on the intertwined roles of meaning-making dialogue and science content as they contribute to scientific literacy. I refer to views of science, and how scientific understanding is advanced dialogically, by Hurd (Science Education, 1998, 82, 402-416), Brown (The Journal of Learning Sciences, 1992, 2(2), 141-178), Bruner (Acts of Meaning, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), Roth (In J. Brophy (Ed.), Social Constructivist Teaching: Affordances and Constraints (Advances in Research on Teaching
This paper explores the role of questioning in scientific meaning-making as families talk, look and gesture in front of realistic and artful dioramas at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The focus is on the ways questioning can either enable movement towards scientific understanding or hinder such progress. The socio-cultural framework of this research emphasizes Vygotsky's interpretation of the zone of proximal development (zpd). Questions are viewed as tools for mediation in the zpd. This paper examines three families' dialogues, excerpted from a larger study of collaborative
"Birds in the Hood" or "Aves del Barrio" builds on the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology's (CLO) successful Project Pigeon Watch, and will result in the creation of a web-based citizen science program for urban residents. The primary target audience is urban youth, with an emphasis on those participating in programs at science centers and educational organizations in Philadelphia, Tampa, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. Participants will develop science process skills, improve their understanding of scientific processes and design research projects while collecting, submitting and retrieving data on birds found in urban habitats. The three project options include a.) mapping of pigeon and dove habitats and sightings, b.) identifying and counting gulls and c.) recording habitat and bird count data for birds in the local community. Birds in the Hood will support CLO's Urban Bird Studies initiative by contributing data on population, community and landscape level effects on birds. Support materials are web-based, bilingual and include downloadable instructions, tally sheets, exercises and results. The website will also include a web-based magazine with project results and participant contributions. A training video and full color identification posters will also be produced. The program will be piloted at five sites in year one, and then field-tested at 13 sites in year two. Regional dissemination and training will occur in year three. It is anticipated that 5,000 urban bird study groups will be in place by the end of the funding period, representing nearly 50,000 individuals.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Rick BonneyJohn FitzpatrickMelinda LaBranche
This paper discusses the "Scences de Silence/Scenes of Silence" exhibition designed to enable hearing people to gain access to the world of the deaf. This paper describes the exhibition and evaluation findings which examined the project's impact on visitors and deaf guides.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Orna CohenAndreas Heinecke
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This model science teacher retention and mentoring project will involve more than 300 elementary teachers in "Lesson Study" of inquiry science around school gardens. Drawing on the rich resources of the University of California Botanical Garden and the science educators at the Lawrence Hall of Science this project will develop Teacher Leaders and provide science content professional development to colleagues in four urban school districts. Using the rich and authentic contexts of gardens to engage students and teachers in scientific inquiry opens the opportunity to invite parents to become actively involved with their children in the learning process. As teachers improve their classroom practices of teaching science through inquiry with the help of school-based mentoring they are able to connect the teaching of science to mathematics and literacy and will be able to apply the lesson study approach in their teaching of other innovative projects. Teacher leaders and mentors will have on-going learning opportunities as well as engage participating teachers in lesson study and reflection aimed toward improving science content understanding and the quality of science learning in summer garden learning experiences and having context rich science inquiry experiences throughout the school year.
Extensive research of the exhibit, Kachemak Bay, Alaska: An Exploration of People and Place shows it to be popular and effective with visitors on every communication and affective goal set forth in the Exhibit Master Plan. Research also finds that Community Collaborators who helped to create exhibit elements found the experience deeply meaningful and satisfying, meeting every desired cognitive, affective and behavioral outcome established for the collaboration programs. Pre- and post-test surveys of the exhibit involved nearly 600 visitors to the Pratt Museum. In most studies, Travelers and
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc. (RK&A) was contracted by the Science Museum of Minnesota (SMM) to evaluate Tissues of Life, an exhibition funded by the National Institutes of Health. Data collection took place at the SMM in July and August 2004. The evaluation documents the impact and effectiveness of the exhibition through timing and tracking observations and exit interviews.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Randi Korn & Associates, Inc.Science Museum of Minnesota