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Learning Environment

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  • Tinkering With Testing: Understanding How Museum Program Design Advances Engineering Learning Opportunities for Children
    Date: 07/08/2021
    Resource Category: Peer-reviewed article
    Using a design-based research approach, we studied ways to advance opportunities for children and families to engage in engineering design practices in an informal educational setting. 213 families with 5–11-year-old children were observed as they visited a tinkering exhibit at a children’s museum during one of three iterations of a program posing ... »
  • CAREER: Supporting Families’ Collective Agency as Learners in Science Centers and Museums through an Integrated Research and Practice Agenda
    Date: 06/01/2021
    Resource Category: Project Descriptions
    Recent studies have advocated for a shift toward educational practices that involve learners in actively contributing to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) as a shared and public endeavor, rather than limiting their involvement to the construction of previously established knowledge. Prioritizing learners’ agency in deciding ... »
  • Purposeful Pursuits: Leveraging the Epistemic Practices of the Arts and Sciences
    Date: 01/01/2020
    Resource Category: Edited Chapter
    But many young people face signifcant economic, cultural, historical, and/or social obstacles that distance them from STEM as a meaningful or viable option— these range from under-resourced schools, race- and gender-based discrimination, to the dominant cultural norms of STEM professions or the historical uses of STEM to oppress or disadvantage ... »
  • Where Should Learners Struggle? Developing a Failure Mindset Through Maker Activities
    Date: 11/22/2019
    Resource Category: Peer-reviewed article
    In this article we explore how activity design and learning contexts can influence youth failure mindsets through a case study of five youth who described failure as sometimes a good thing and sometimes a bad thing (a perspective we characterize as Failure as Mosaic , described in the article). These youth and their descriptions of failure- ... »
  • Building More Inclusive Makerspaces to Support Informal Engineering Learning Experiences
    Date: 10/01/2019
    Resource Category: Project Descriptions
    The project will refine, research and disseminate making exhibits and events that the museum has developed and tested to support early engineering skill development. The project will use cardboard, a familiar and flexible material, to support the activities. The goal is to develop insights and resources for informal educators across the museum ... »
  • Building Capacity in and Access to Informal STEM Learning Settings for Participants with Disabilities
    Date: 09/01/2019
    Resource Category: Project Descriptions
    Consideration of the needs of individuals with a wide range of disabilities is not always considered in the early design stages of an informal STEM learning (ISL) activity or program. The primary access approach for people with disabilities becomes the provision of accommodations once the ISL product or environment is created. In contrast, the ... »
  • Collaborative Research: Making Space for Story-Based Tinkering to Scaffold Early Informal Engineering Learning
    Date: 09/01/2019
    Resource Category: Project Descriptions
    This project responds to calls to increase children's exposure and engagement in STEM at an early age. With the rise of the maker-movement, the informal and formal education sectors have witnessed a dramatic expansion of maker and tinkering spaces, programs, and curricula. This has happened in part because of the potential benefits of tinkering ... »
  • A Resource Roundup of 2018: The Year in Informal STEM Education
    Date: 02/27/2019
    Resource Category: Presentation Slides
    The Year in ISE is a slidedoc designed to track and characterize field growth, change and impact, important publications, and current topics in ISE in 2018. Use it to inform new strategies, find potential collaborators for your projects, and support proposal development. Scope This slidedoc highlights a selection of developments and resources in ... »
  • Learning about Learning: The Story Behind the Story
    Date: 11/27/2018
    Resource Category: Peer-reviewed article
    Experiences-including museum experiences- that are packaged as stories are more likely to be remembered by both children and adults. For museum visitors, the simple act of narrating what they've done even no more than ten minutes ago can make their experience more meaningful and memorable. How connections are made between a museum experience and ... »
  • Making Connections Practitioner Guide
    Date: 11/07/2018
    Resource Category: Report
    This guide offers insight into community engagement practices and activity development from our making and equity project, Making Connections. It includes documentation and recommendations for work that is designed to engage community partners as equal partners, and is written most of all for other practitioners. ... »

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