Browsing by Subject "science education"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
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    Atomic Science Education for the American Public, 1945-1949
    (2020-12) Gidzak, Bonnie
    A widespread atomic science public education movement in the United States during the late 1940s provided multiple media through which the basic science of the atom moved from scientific obscurity to expected public knowledge. During the first half of the twentieth century information about atomic science for the general public was limited and frequently inaccurate. In 1945, however, following the governmental press releases about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, there was a call for an atomically educated public from social, political, and scientific leaders. Many individuals and organizations took it upon themselves to become atomic educators. Life magazine provided diagrams about the atom, the comic book industry produced comics like Dagwood Splits the Atom, major film studios like MGM created Hollywood films that incorporated didactic scenes on atomic science, scientists gave public lectures, reporters attended educational workshops to improve their atomic stories, and organizations like the National Committee on Atomic Information distributed materials on the atom to all who requested them. Large exhibits and events took place, some part of a larger event such at the Man and the Atom exhibit at the New York Golden Jubilee or independent, as in the Enoch Pratt Free Library’s Atomic Institute.” Although the drive for a public understanding of the atom came initially from government officials and atomic scientists the project was quickly taken up by various members of the general public and popular media creators.
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    Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) Evaluation, 2001-2002
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2003-03) Lawrenz, Frances; Michlin, Michael; Appeldoorn, Karen; Hwang, Eunmi
    The National Science Foundation (NSF) has played a major role in the attempts to improve science and mathematics education. According to the NSF, the Collaboratives for Excellence in Teacher Preparation (CETP) program was designed to significantly improve the science, mathematics, and technology preparation of future K-12 teachers and their effectiveness in these areas. The NSF funded the Core Evaluation Project to design and develop a data collection and reporting system for the CETP program. The CETP Core Evaluation developed surveys, a classroom observation protocol, and a teacher artifact scoring rubric to gather information on the impact of the CETP program. The Core Evaluation collected a variety of data in 2001-2002 derived from open ended and scaled survey items and classroom observations and artifacts. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were necessary to provide a complete picture of the CETP collaboratives.
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    Drawing knowledge from the experience: Students' understandings of ecosystems before and after a short field experience
    (2019-12) Kamesch, Hallie
    Human activities are increasingly and profoundly altering many of the processes and subsystems that make up the Earth System, upon which we depend for life. In order to enable citizens to make responsible environmental decisions, it is necessary to empower them with the knowledge and skills necessary to understand the connections between themselves and the ecological processes and systems with which they interact. A first step toward thinking globally about the Earth system is thinking locally about familiar ecosystems; students need opportunities to engage with ecosystems in ways that help them develop sophisticated understandings of ecosystems as complex systems of interacting abiotic and biotic components. The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to illuminate the phenomenon of students’ understandings of ecosystems and how those understandings changed after a short field study. Participants were 27 fifth-grade students from three schools visiting a local Ecological Research Station during a school field-trip. Data consisted of students’ drawings and written descriptions of ecosystems elicited through a drawing task implemented immediately before and after a field experience. Research has demonstrated that both long-term field experiences and learning units that provide students with explicit frameworks for how to think about ecosystems positively influence student knowledge about ecosystems (eg. Assaraf & Orion, 2010; Hmelo-Silver, Marathe, & Liu, 2007; Kenyan, Assaraf, & Goldman 2014). This study investigates the influence of a short-term (90-minute) out-of-classroom field experience that does not explicitly teach how to think about an ecosystem, but instead engages students in the scientific practices of gathering data and making data-based statements (observations/comparisons). Results of quantitative and qualitative analyses illustrate the ways students’ understandings of ecosystems changed. This study provides information about the type and duration of experiences that can cultivate students’ development of increasingly sophisticated understandings of ecosystems and thus lay the foundation for future learning.
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    Implicit Learning in Science: Activating and Suppressing Scientific Intuitions to Enhance Conceptual Change
    (2018-02) Wang, Jeremy
    This dissertation examines the thesis that implicit learning plays a role in learning about scientific phenomena, and subsequently, in conceptual change. Decades of research in learning science demonstrate that a primary challenge of science education is overcoming prior, naïve knowledge of natural phenomena in order to gain scientific understanding. Until recently, a key assumption of this research has been that to develop scientific understanding, learners must abandon their prior scientific intuitions and replace them with scientific concepts. However, a growing body of research shows that scientific intuitions persist, even among science experts. This suggests that naïve intuitions are suppressed, not supplanted, as learners gain scientific understanding. The current study examines two potential roles of implicit learning processes in the development of scientific knowledge. First, implicit learning is a source of cognitive structures that impede science learning. Second, tasks that engage implicit learning processes can be employed to activate and suppress prior intuitions, enhancing the likelihood that scientific concepts are adopted and applied. This second proposal is tested in two experiments that measure training-induced changes in intuitive and conceptual knowledge related to sinking and floating objects in water. In Experiment 1, an implicit learning task was developed to examine whether implicit learning can induce changes in performance on near and far transfer tasks. The results of this experiment provide evidence that implicit learning tasks activate and suppress scientific intuitions. Experiment 2 examined the effects of combining implicit learning with traditional, direct instruction to enhance explicit learning of science concepts. This experiment demonstrates that sequencing implicit learning task before and after direct instruction has different effects on intuitive and conceptual knowledge. Together, these results suggest a novel approach for enhancing learning for conceptual change in science education.
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    Infusing Neuroscience Into Teacher Professional Development
    (American Educational Research Association, 2013-08-01) Dubinsky, Janet M; Roehrig, Gillian; Varma, Sashank
    Bruer advocated connecting neuroscience and education indirectly through the intermediate discipline of psychology. We argue for a parallel route: The neurobiology of learning, and in particular the core concept of plasticity, have the potential to directly transform teacher preparation and professional development, and ultimately to affect how students think about their own learning. We present a case study of how the core concepts of neuroscience can be brought to in-service teachers—the BrainU workshops. We then discuss how neuroscience can be meaningfully integrated into preservice teacher preparation, focusing on institutional and cultural barriers.
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    Minnesota Science Teachers Education Project (MnSTEP)
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2010-06) Michlin, Michael; Kalke, Nan; Gdula, Julie
    The Minnesota Science Teachers Education Project (MnSTEP) was a series of rigorous, content-focused, summer science institutes offered regionally throughout Minnesota for K-12 teachers of science. Institutes were provided in biology, chemistry, physics, earth science, and scientific inquiry – addressing the Minnesota Science Standards in each area – with at least one K-5 and one 6-12 institute offered in each of five regions each summer. MnSTEP completed the third and final year of summer institutes and school year follow-up for Minnesota K-12 science teachers, including licensure programs in both high school physics and chemistry. Over three years, MnSTEP delivered 47 standardsbased science content institutes involving 914 teachers, who then taught more than 85,000 students. This report presents information on performance outcomes for year three of the project including results of pre- and post-assessment data for the year two cohort of teacher participants in the summer 2008 institutes. We presented an evaluation of the year one cohort in the 2008 MnSTEP Evaluation Report. We provide performance outcomes for the year one cohort in this report as a supplement to the 2008 report and for comparison purposes to the year two cohort.
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    Monarch Monitoring: A Teacher/Student/Scientist Research Project. Final Report
    (University of Minnesota, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2001-10) Freeman, Carol; Jeanpierre, Bobby; Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement
    The Monarch Monitoring Project was a field research experience designed to enhance the capacity of middle and high school teachers to incorporate active research into classroom teaching. Active research was defined as students involved in formulating questions and/or designing research protocol, collecting and interpreting data, and reporting results.
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    Monarch Monitoring: A Teacher/Student/Scientist Research Project. Case Studies
    (University of Minnesota, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2001-10) Freeman, Carol; Jeanpierre, Bobby; Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement
    The Monarch Monitoring Project was a field research experience designed to enhance the capacity of middle and high school teachers to incorporate active research into classroom teaching. Active research was defined as students involved in formulating questions and/or designing research protocol, collecting and interpreting data, and reporting results.
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    Museums: They're Not Just for Field Trips Anymore
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 1999) Ingram, Debra
    Although both museums and schools are learning environments, their strategies for reaching learners are very different. It is these differences that can be valuable for schools trying to implement science standards and improve their overall level of science instruction. Based on research about how students learn best, the new national science standards emphasize the need for teachers to provide students with more hands-on, real world experiences related to science topics and to act as a facilitator of student learning rather than a dispenser of knowledge. By working together, museums and schools have found numerous ways to benefit from each other's expertise in teaching and learning.
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    Nanoparticle Transformations and Toxicity: Impact of Complex Metal Oxide Nanoparticles, Experimental Tools, and Methods for Communicating Nanotechnology to the Public
    (2020-11) Hudson-Smith, Natalie
    Due to the unique and advantageous physiochemical properties of nanoparticles, they have been increasingly incorporated into consumer products and emerging technologies. The manufacture, wear and tear of use, and disposal of these nano-enabled products will likely result in the release of nanoparticles into the environment. Unfortunately, environmental response and regulation, as well as public awareness, has lagged behind the development and inclusion of nanoparticles into products. In recent years, there have been advances in understanding the mechanisms of toxicity to many nanoparticle types to model organisms in lab conditions. However, there is a still a need to advance these understandings of interaction with and toxicity to organisms to more closely represent the conditions in the environment, including their transformations in complex, protein-containing media and their toxicity towards communities of organisms as opposed to single model species.Chapter One outlines the basis for this work, including the conclusions of previous work in identifying the mechanisms of toxicity of an energy storage nanomaterial, NMC, and highlights some of the challenges in communicating the advances in nanotechnology research to the public. Chapter Two illustrates the role of nanoparticle morphology and surface area in toxicity. Three morphologies of NMC, with the same chemical composition, are evaluated for toxicity. Ultimately, toxicity of the materials is shown to be most predicted by surface area due to the correlation between surface area and dissolution. In Chapter Three, the formation of a protein corona on these same three morphologies of NMC is explored. The formation of a protein corona has been shown to impact the transformations of nanoparticles and often, mitigate their toxicity. Four environmentally relevant proteins and a model protein are studied. Preliminary results show that surface area does not predict protein corona formation for these NMC materials it predicted toxicity. Additionally, results suggest that protein corona formation on NMC may not mitigate toxicity for this class of nanomaterials. In Chapter Four, advances in methodology for studying nanomaterial toxicity in poly-microbial communities are demonstrated. Nanomaterials have been shown to induce dysbiosis in microbiota and may have a different impact of poly-bacterial communities than they do on individual monocultures of the species that make up such communities. However, most techniques to study nanomaterial impacts on communities are expensive and labor intensive. Here, modifications for a method previously established to assess nanomaterial toxicity to bacteria are presented. Chapters Five, Six, and Seven focus on scientific communication about sustainability and nanotechnology to students and the public. Chapter Five presents a module with videos paired with hands-on demonstrations for explaining the chemistry behind climate change. Chapter Six presents a low-cost, model transmission electron microscope (TEM) that students can use to make pseudo-micrographs. Evaluations of this model and activity show that it is effective in explaining this characterization technique and engaging for students. Chapter Seven presents the development of a text-based adventure game that leads the player through a nano-scale world. These modules are all suitable for scientific communications or teaching and provide new ways to communicate modern science, particularly nanotechnology, to the public.
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    Urban Wilderness Canoe Adventures Evaluation
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2010) Sheldon, Timothy
    According to Wilderness Inquiry (WI), the ultimate goal of the Urban Wilderness Canoe Adventures (UWCA) program is to engage youth in a series of deepening wilderness experiences that will result in a percentage of these youth becoming environmental leaders. The intermediate goal of Wilderness Inquiry is to improve student academic performance through an innovative classroom/fieldwork curriculum that uses environmental educational experiences to teach science, social studies, and language arts. The purpose of this initial evaluation was to assess the impact of the UWCA Program and the Mississippi River field trips and on the attitudes and behaviors of fifth through eighth graders in Minneapolis Public Schools’ summer school program. While the ultimate goal of the Urban Wilderness Canoe Adventures (UWCA) program is to improve student academic performance, we limited the scope of the initial evaluation to five key objectives. We wanted to determine the extent to which the Program: (a) positively influenced students’ attitudes about the river, the environment, and science; (b) improved student attendance during the summer session; (c) advanced the learning objectives of a River‐based curriculum; (d) increased students interest in the natural environment; and, (e) increased students awareness of the river and their personal connection to it. We also wanted to assess teachers’ level of engagement and the extent to which they believed the UWCA program affected students.
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    Urban Wilderness Canoe Adventures Evaluation: 2012
    (Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement, 2012) Sheldon, Timothy; Daugherty, Martha
    The Urban Wilderness Canoe Adventures (UWCA) Program provides a continuum of experiences for youth and families that are designed to engage all participants in a life‐long relationship with the outdoors and also encourages environmental awareness and leadership development. The UWCA seeks to fill a gap in the outdoor industry by reaching, engaging, and serving underserved, low and middle income urban youth and families. Researchers from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) have collaborated with Wilderness Inquiry and its partners since spring 2010 to evaluate the UWCA. CAREI evaluators collected data from an array of sources in 2012. We reviewed more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, conducted in‐depth interviews with young adults with long term involvement, and analyzed the responses of more than 1,100 students, teachers, and youth leaders to prepare this report. The 2012 UWCA Evaluation investigated the outcomes of three UWCA activities this year: 1) The Minneapolis Public Schools’ Summer School Mississippi River trip; 2) Washburn High School’s at‐risk students’ involvement with one UWCA trip; and, 3) AVID student’s participation in three UWCA trips. Our findings consistently demonstrate that regardless of the specific program or modification the participants received numerous personal, social, and academic benefits through UWCA trip participation. Many of the variables that influenced these benefits have been identified during our data analyses. The research we initiated before the 2012 evaluation supports findings we observed in earlier evaluations, whether the data was collected from students, teachers, or former youth participants.