Learning Science in Informal Environments People, Places, and Pursuits (2009) / Chapter Skim
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3 Assessment
3 Assessment
Pages 54-90
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From page 54... ...
Nevertheless, the informal science community has embraced the cause of assessing the impact of out-of-school learning experiences, seeking to understand how everyday, after-school, museum, and other types of settings contribute to the development of sci entific knowledge and capabilities. This chapter discusses the evidence for outcomes from engagement in informal environments for science learning, The educational research community generally makes a distinction between assessment -- the set of approaches and techniques used to determine what individuals learn from a given instructional program -- and evaluation -- the set of approaches and techniques used to make judgments about a given instructional program, approach, or treatment, improve its effective ness, and inform decisions about its development. Assessment targets what learners have or have not learned, whereas evaluation targets the quality of the intervention.
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From page 55... ...
. Many have argued that the diversity of informal learning environments for science learning further contributes to the difficulties of assessment in these settings; they share the view that one of the main challenges is the development of practical, evidence-centered means for assessing learning outcomes of participants across the range of science learning experiences (Allen et al., 2007; Falk and Dierking, 2000; COSMOS Corporation, 1998; Martin, 2004)
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From page 56... ...
. Other important features of informal environments for science learning include the high degree to which contingency typically plays a role in the unfolding of events -- that is, much of what happens in these environments emerges during the course of activities and is not prescribed or predetermined.
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From page 57... ...
Taken as a whole, existing studies provide a significant body of evidence for science learning in informal environments as defined by the six strands of science learning described in this report. TYPES OF OUTCOMES A range of outcomes are used to characterize what participants learn about science in informal environments.
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From page 58... ...
Here our formulation of the strands focuses on the science-related behaviors that people are able to engage in because of their participation in science learning activities and the ways in which researchers and evaluators have studied them. Strand 1: Developing Interest in Science Nature of the Outcome Informal environments are often characterized by people's excitement, interest, and motivation to engage in activities that promote learning about the natural and physical world.
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From page 59... ...
. This line of research suggests that the availability or existence of stimulating, attractive learning environments can generate the interest that leads to participation (Falk et al., 2007)
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From page 60... ...
. Whereas positive affect toward science is often regarded as a primary outcome of informal learning, this outcome is notoriously dif ficult to assess.
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From page 61... ...
Such an analysis also could be useful in showing how interest is displayed and valued among participants in informal learning environments, providing an understanding of interest as it emerges and is made meaningful in social interaction. Strand 2: Understanding Science Knowledge Nature of the Outcome As progressively more research shows, learning about natural phenomena involves ordinary, everyday experiences for human beings from the earliest ages (National Research Council, 2007)
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From page 62... ...
. At the same time, studies of informal environments for science learning have explored cognitive outcomes that are more compatible with experiential and social activities: perceiving, noticing, and articulating new aspects of the natural world, understanding concepts embedded in interactive experiences, making connections between scientific ideas or experiences and everyday life, reinforcing prior knowledge, making inferences, and building an expe riential basis for future abstractions to refer to.
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From page 63... ...
An essential element of informal environments is that learners have some choice in what they attend to, what they take away from an experience, what connections they make to their own lives. Consequently, testing students only on recall of knowledge can cause researchers to miss key learning outcomes for any particular learner, since these outcomes are based on the learner's own experience and prior knowledge.
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From page 64... ...
interviewed children using a series of museum exhibits about light and color, to identify common conceptions and suggest modifications to the exhibit. Several methods are used to elicit the concepts, explanations, arguments, models and facts related to science that participants generate, understand, and remember after engaging in science learning experiences.
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From page 65... ...
Sorting tasks have the advantage that they do not publicly reveal that a given answer is scientifically incorrect and can usually be done with the same participants more than once. E-mail or phone interviews, often done weeks, months, or even years after a visit or program, are particularly important in informal learning environments because they are often the only way to test two key assumptions: (1)
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From page 66... ...
The out comes in this strand include scientific inquiry skills, such as asking questions, exploring, experimenting, applying ideas, predicting, drawing conclusions from evidence, reasoning, and articulating one's thinking in conversation with others. Other outcomes are skills related to learning in the particular informal environment: how to use an interactive exhibit, how to navigate a website, how to draw relevant information from a large body of text, how to learn effectively with others of different skill levels -- sharing resources, teaching, scaffolding, negotiating activity.
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From page 67... ...
Research focused on assessing practical and discursive inquiry skills in informal environments often rely on video and audio recordings made during activities that are later analyzed for evidence of such skills as questioning, interpreting, inferring, explaining, arguing, and applying ideas, methods, or conjectures to new situations (see Appendix B for a discussion of video- and audiotaping)
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From page 68... ...
Strand 4: Reflecting on Science Nature of the Outcome A fundamental goal of science education is to improve learners' under standing of what science is -- that is, to increase understanding of the nature of the scientific enterprise. The outcomes targeted in this strand address issues related to how scientific knowledge is constructed, and how people, includ ing the learner herself, come to know about natural phenomena and how the learner's ideas change.
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From page 69... ...
Methods of Researching Strand 4 Outcomes Studies regarding conceptions of the nature of science, typically using either questionnaires or structured interview protocols, have been conducted in schools, often with the aim of drawing relationships between children's conceptions of what real scientists do and their own classroom activities (Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman, 2000; Bartholomew, Osborne, and Ratcliffe, 2004; Schwartz and Lederman, 2002)
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From page 70... ...
take this argument to a much broader scale, arguing that the entire infrastructure of environments for science learning should be assessed, at least in part, on the basis of its voluntary usage by the public as a learning resource. A common goal across informal contexts is for participants to experi ence pleasure while working with tasks that allow exploration and do not
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From page 71... ...
researchers had to broaden their definitions of "parent involvement" to fit the norms of a community they were unfamiliar with. Methods of Researching Strand 5 Outcomes Because learner choice is such a key element in most informal learning environments and the extent to which learners engage in science over time is a key element of learning to participate in science, data on who enrolls in a program, attends an event or offering, joins science clubs and related affinity groups, or uses websites or other forms of media or tools for science learning is important to track.
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From page 72... ...
These means of collecting data may be useful for research as well as for institutional and practical reasons, so it is important to be clear when they are appropriately construed in a science learning framework. Showing up is important and the scale of research of informal learning institutions speaks to their capacity, but making claims about participation in science is not the same as making claims about how many people passed through a particular setting.
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From page 73... ...
Taking a longitudinal approach to data collection allows researchers to get a more complete picture of the role of these learning experiences in peoples' lives. Researchers have repeatedly shown that many of the conversations that begin in the museum continue once families are back at home (see Astor-Jack et al., 2007)
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From page 74... ...
The changes in community affiliation and related behaviors that can signal changes in identity usually require extended time frames of involve ment with a program or community (e.g., Beane and Pope, 2002; McCreedy, 2005)
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From page 75... ...
Methods of Researching Strand 6 Outcomes In many cases, research on scientific identity has relied on questionnaires and structured interviews regarding beliefs about oneself, one's experiences, and the supports for science learning that exist in one's school and community (Barron, 2006; Beane and Pope, 2002; Moore and Hill Foy, 1997; Schreiner and Sjoberg, 2004; Weinburgh and Steele, 2000)
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From page 76... ...
PERSPECTIVES, DIRECTIONS, AND CONCLUSIONS The outcomes discussed in this chapter represent a broad view of the ways in which practitioners and researchers characterize and measure the effects of science learning experiences. The six strands cover a wide range of approaches to studying and understanding individual learning, from those most focused on cognitive and conceptual change to those most focused on shifts in participation and identity.
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From page 77... ...
. Third, the assessments used must be valid, measuring what they purport to be measuring -- that is, outcomes from those science learning experiences (National Research Council, 2001)
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From page 78... ...
Researchers and practitioners are receptive to acknowledging the many types of outcomes, anticipated or not, that emerge from the interplay of people and resources as they engage in science learning activities. This receptivity to contingencies, George Hein explains, is "a matter of ideology" (1995, p.
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From page 79... ...
Efforts to create more rigorous, meaningful, and equitable opportunities for science learning depend on understanding what opportunities for science learning exist across the educational landscape, what the nature of this learning is in the variety of environments, how outcomes currently complement and build on one another, and how designs, processes, and practices for supporting learning can be improved in the future. Developing new ways to document learning outcomes that are both appropriate in informal environments and useful across the range of them would create greater opportunity to leverage their potency to improve science learning for all.
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From page 80... ...
, Informal science learning: What the research says about television, sci ence museums, and community-based projects (pp.
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From page 81... ...
. Scientific literacy and discursive identity: A theoretical framework for understanding science learning.
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From page 82... ...
. A longitudinal study of the educational and career trajectories of female participants of an urban informal science education program.
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Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12 (1)
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St. Paul: GE Foundation and Science Museum of Minnesota.
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. An emerging research framework for studying informal learning and schools.
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Committee on Science Learning, Kindergarten Through Eighth Grade.
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Journal of the Learning Sciences, 15 (2)
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Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4 (2)
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From page 89... ...
. Rethinking diversity in learning science: The logic of everyday sense making.
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