August 18, 2003
Leaders in science education gather at UCSC for
a five-day conference on informal learning
By Tim Stephens
Leaders in science education are gathering at UCSC this week to explore
the connections between the informal science learning that takes place
in settings such as museums and the more formal learning that takes
place in schools.
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Bruce Alberts, director of the
National Academy of Sciences, gave a keynote address on science
education on Sunday, August 17, at the CILS conference. Photo:
Courtesy National Academy of Sciences. |
The five-day conference brings together participants in the Center
for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS), an international collaboration
between UC Santa Cruz, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and King's
College London. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), CILS
aims to invigorate science education in schools by studying how children
learn in informal settings and by strengthening the relationships between
museums and schools.
Bruce Alberts, director of the National Academy of Sciences, and Judith
Ramalay, assistant director for education and human resources at NSF,
are among the speakers at the conference, which began Friday, August
15. Called the Bay Area Institute, the conference includes discussion
sessions, research presentations, and field trips to local informal
science institutions where CILS faculty have been doing research.
Doris Ash, an assistant professor of education at UCSC, has been investigating
informal science learning by videotaping and interviewing visitors (after
obtaining their consent) at the Seymour Marine Discovery Center and
the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Ash described one memorable interaction between
a mother and daughter visiting the Seymour Center that illustrates the
value such informal settings can have for science education.
"They were at an exhibit on elephant seals and were talking about
how elephant seals dive and their adaptations, and the daughter was
very excited; there was a lot of conversation. Then the mother said
something like, 'This is really interesting science.' And the daughter
said, 'I hate science!'" Ash recalled. "She'd been doing wonderful
science, but she didn't recognize it because it wasn't like the formal
lessons in school."
One of the goals of CILS is to find ways to transfer to the classroom
some of the excitement that informal settings can generate. While there
has been a great deal of research on classroom learning, relatively
few studies have been done on informal learning, said Barbara Rogoff,
a professor of psychology.
"Informal learning is very widespread--it occurs in museums, in
the way we learn our first language, in the way many people learn to
use a computer, in many after-school settings, and even in some schools.
But there hasn't been much research on it. People have assumed that
informal learning takes place much the same way learning occurs in the
classroom, but there are important differences," Rogoff said.
Common features of informal learning include active involvement by
the learner and collaboration between people with different levels of
expertise, both of which seem to play an important role in motivating
people in informal settings, Rogoff said. Her research in immigrant
communities where most people haven't had much formal schooling suggests
that informal learning styles may hold valuable lessons for educators.
"Their ways of learning are very effective, which is often surprising
to people who have spent a lot of time in school," Rogoff said.
"That is an important resource for helping schools to work more
effectively."
Studies of informal science learning can also suggest ways to improve
institutions such as museums to make them more appealing to diverse
populations. Ash, for example, is studying bilingual families and how
they make sense of the science they encounter in exhibits. Maureen Callanan,
professor of psychology, is collaborating with Ash, and has also looked
at gender differences in informal settings.
In a study done at the Children's Discovery Museum in San Jose, Callanan
found that parents tend to spend more time explaining science to boys
than to girls. Her findings prompted museum staff to develop a new exhibit,
called "Alice's Wonderland," that presented science and math
content in a scene that would be interesting to girls. At that exhibit,
parents explained as much to girls as to boys.
"We worked very closely with the museum on that exhibit. They
would design prototypes and then we would study how families interacted
with them and provide feedback to the designers," Callanan said.
The Bay Area Institute is the first major conference for CILS. Researchers,
educators, and museum professionals, as well as graduate students and
postdoctoral fellows affiliated with CILS, will be among the participants.
CILS offers doctoral programs that examine learning theory and practice
from formal and informal perspectives, a professional development program
for museum-based teacher educators exploring strategies for supporting
formal education systems, and postdoctoral research appointments.
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