Five resources, randomly selected, by members of the CILS community.Parents' attitudes toward science and science reasoning (study)
By Araceli Valle Parents Explain More Often to Boys than to Girls during Shared Scientific Thinking (journal article)
By Kevin Crowley, Maureen Callanan, Harriet Tenenbaum, Elizabeth Allen The bridge study: Multiple methodologies (study)
By Victoria Deneroff, Lucy Avraamidou, Robin Meisner, Saundra Wever-Frerichs, Heather King, Lisa Szechter Dialogue in science-based institutions and school science lessons: Towards an understanding of practice and impact (study)
By Ellen McCallie Firsthand learning through intent participation (journal article)
By Barbara Rogoff, R. Paradise |
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The Center for Informal Learning and Schools (CILS) was funded by the National Science Foundation in 2002. CILS conducts research on informal learning, the informal science education infrastructure, and the connections between in- and out-of-school science learning. CILS also provides training through graduate programs in developmental psychology and science education, professional development for informal educators, and conferences that bring together researchers and practitioners. CILS is a partnership of the Exploratorium, King's College London, and the University of California Santa Cruz.
LATEST NEWS AND EVENTS AT CILSJuly 1, 2010Out-of-School Time STEM: Building Experience, Building Bridges Conference Report Released
This report reviews patterns, challenges, and questions developing in the field of out-of- school-time (OST) science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs by drawing on the efforts of some two dozen federally funded programs that participated and presented their work at a conference held in Washington, DC in October of 2009. Reflecting the questions and concerns of both practitioners and researchers in the OST STEM field, the report is intended to inform the work of OST educators, researchers, and funders.
To download both the report and the executive summary, click the icons below:
May 18, 20102010 China-US Science Center Director's ForumCILS Director Bronwyn Bevan attended the 2010 China-US Science Center Director's Forum in Beijing, China. The forum's mission was to explore the tendencies and future trends in science education, and to introduce ideas and practical proposals for the construction and development of the Beijing Science and Technology Museum (Science Center). In addition, it served to open communication and cooperation between China and the United States within the scientific fields. Visit here to learn more.
April 15, 2010 New CILS article on Schools in Museums Jennifer DeWitt and Jill Hohenstein explore the question of whether museum visits engender new and ongoing modes of discourse for visiting classes in their new article in Journal of Research in Science Teaching: School trips and classroom lessons: An investigation into teacher-student talk in two settings. The citation and abstract can be found here.
March 17, 2010New CAISE report published!The long anticipated report on ties between formal and informal environments, Making Science Matter: Collaborations Between Informal Science Education Organizations and Schools has just been published online. The consensus panel, including CILS leaders Justin Dillon and Bronwyn Bevan, which produced the report examines what the authors call "the hybrid nature of formal-informal collaborations" and draws on relevant theoretical perspectives and a series of case studies to highlight ways in which the affordances of formal and informal settings can be combined and leveraged to create rich, compelling, authentic, and engaging science that can be systematically developed over time and settings. The report can be found here or downloaded by clicking the icon below:
February 26-28, 2010
MAPDD Workshop #3The Exploratorium hosted the third MAPDD (Museums Afterschool: Principles, Data, and Design) workshop. Funded jointly by the Noyce Foundation and IMLS, we spent three days analyzing, unpacking, and discussing some amazing videos that documented activities -- and the design principles underlying them -- at our partner institutions. We can't wait to see what the next round of filming brings!
December 15, 2009Congratulations to Molly!Molly Loomis is heading back to Vermont as the new Director of Education at the Echo Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington, VT. A recent CILS PhD graduate at UC Santa Cruz, she will head ECHO's efforts as the key educational institution for the Lake Champlain Basin.
November 30, 2009CILS Graduate's Spotlighted Dissertation A congratulations is in order for Rhiannon Crain, a recent CILS graduate at UC Santa Cruz. Her dissertation, Institutionalization in Action: Science Center Interactivity and Materiality from the Family Perspective, has been featured as informalscience. org's Spotlight Dissertation. Crain also recently accepted a position running the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's new Citizen Science Project. Congrats Rhiannon!
October 25, 2009
Out-of-School Time STEM conference!
Building Bridges, Building Experience, a conference that brought together over 100 OST STEM practitioners, researchers, and leaders, took place in Arlington, VA on October 19 and 20. With 15 sessions, and over 30 discussion-based presentations, the conference tackled the vital question of how OST environments can support and develop children's interest and learning in STEM fields. To see our agenda and participants, click here.
March 21, 2009Winter/Spring NSFAYS Site VisitsThe AYS Research and Evaluation team continued our site visits to the individual AYS projects, visiting Mississippi, Michigan, and Tennessee in the past month. The trips, as always, allowed us take a look at some wonderful afterschool STEM programs. To take a look at the AYS projects, visit here.
November 10, 2008Second MAPDD WorkshopThe second MAPDD (Museums Afterschool: Principles, Data, and Design) workshop took place from November 6-8 at the Exploratorium. The twenty five participants focused on video and photo documentation as a means to reflectively capture the learning in their informal education programming. It was an intense and productive three days, and will serve as a solid foundation for the work at each individual institution over the coming months. The next workshop will take place in Spring 2009.
September 5, 2008King's College CongratulationsDrs. Jonathan Osborne and Justin Dillon, are both professors at King's College in London and members of CILS leadership team. Professor Osborne was awarded honorary membership of the UK Association for Science Education at its annual conference in Liverpool in January. The award recognises his services to the Association as Secretary of the London Region for over 10 years and his work more generally in supporting science education. Professor Dillon was elected President of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) at the recent ESERA conference in Malmö, Sweden.
July 9, 2008NSFAYS Site VisitsThe AYS Research and Evaluation team, headed by CILS and SRI International, has been traveling to many of the sixteen AYS projects this summer for qualitative data collection site visits. The trips have offered us a chance to take a look at some wonderful programs and reconnect with key staff and colleagues heading up the projects. To take a look at the AYS projects, visit here.
May 21, 2008MAPDD WorkshopEducators from eleven museums and afterschool organizations came together for the first installment of the Museum Afterschool: Principles, Data and Design (MAPDD) project. Charged with the goal of exploring design principles in informal settings, this workshop constituted the first of three that will guide the creation and data-driven assessment of innovative programs with afterschool audiences. Visit here to take a closer look at the project.
April 8, 2008Keynote at NSTA
Justin Dillon, CILS partner and Head of the
Science and Technology Education Group at King's College, London recently gave
a keynote address at the National Science Teachers Association National
Conference. Titled, "The Global Dimension of Science: What is it and how
can it be taught?" the talk explored the global nature of science, what that means and how it affects science
teachers of students of all ages.
March 7, 2008LOST Authors meeting, Philadelphia35 authors on the LOST Learning project met on February 28th to discuss their developing chapters and flesh out emergent themes for LOST's upcoming book exploring out-of-school learning and how it contributes to underrepresented groups' achievement in STEM fields. The meeting served as a nice entry point to the Ethnography in Education conference held at the Penn Graduate School of Education over the next two days.
February 21, 2008Recent CILS Papers
In the latest issue of the Journal of Research on Science Teaching (Volume 45, Issue 1) UCSC professor Doris Ash has published a paper titled "Thematic Continuities: Talking and Thinking about Adaptation in a Socially Complex Classroom." In the same issue, King's College professor Jonathan Osborne has co-authored a paper titled "Arguing to Learn and learning to argue: Case Studies of How Students' Argumentation Relates to Their Scientific Knowledge." Visit Wiley InterScience to access the articles.
February 8, 2008
Suuccessful joint NSFAYS/ITEST meeting in Washington DC
The CILS' AYS Research & Evaluation Center collaborated with ITEST for our annual meeting in early February. The meeting focused on the themes emerging from the Academies for Young Scientists project and the new ITEST solicitation, while providing a space for fruitful discussion both within and between these two large-scale projects.
October 17, 2007
CILS receives grant from the Noyce Foundation to fund Informal Learning Collaborative Afterschool Leadership Project
The Noyce Foundation has agreed to fund a new leadership component of the Informal Learning Collaborative (ILC). This project will focus on both identifying the underlying design principles driving successful museum/afterschool programs and collecting evidence that demonstrates how student experiences in afterschool STEM
programs are strengthened through these museum/afterschool partnerships.
The project consists of three workshops at the Exploratorium, online peer review and critique of program designs, and site-based data collection of program impact.
Please email cils@exploratorium.edu for more information.
May 9, 2007 CILS Receives Supplement to Work with Robert H. TaiCILS received a supplemental award to work with Dr Robert H. Tai, of the University of Virginia Curry School of Education, to establish an accelerated longitudinal study of participants and non-participants in the NSFAYS initiative.
April 19-20, 2007
LOST Learning Opportunities Explored by Researchers
About 20 researchers from four NSF-funded centers -- CILS, LIFE, CEMELA, and MetroMath -- met for two days to discuss shared research interests in the domain of out-of-school-time learning of science and mathematics. On the first day of the LOST Learning Opportunities meeting, researchers presented their current work and findings. The second day we broke into two groups. One focused on the topic of “what counts/what is valued” as everyday math and science. Over the next 18 months, this group will work with video data, collected from across the centers’ research sites, to look at the nature of math and science in non-school settings. The other group discussed the ecology of learning environments that learners traverse and what we are finding about how resources and capacities developed in particular settings are enacted in new settings. This group will be developing a collection of related case studies. The teams will share their work-in-progress at the 2007 Bay Area Institute and expect to make results public in the spring of 2008.
March 29, 2007
London Research-Practice Series on Engagement and InclusionRob Semper was keynote speaker at the second of three workshops organized by King’s College London, Science Museum London and the Victoria and Albert Museum focusing on engagement and inclusion at museums. Rob spoke about the role of technology in museum-based social interactions. The series, organized by Sally Duensing, brings together academic researchers and museum practitioners to explore common interests and work. Other workshop topics are: Social Affordances of Objects and Creating Controversy: Dialogue and Debate in the Galleries. More information.
March 25, 2007
CILS Receives New Grant CILS received award notification for a CLT dissemination grant. Working with three other centers—LIFE, CEMELA, and MetroMath—the LOST Learning Opportunities project will distill what the four centers are learning about how out of school time learning can support and strengthen student engagement, attainment, and achievement in science and math. On April 19+20 we will meet to identify a set of papers that we will develop collaboratively.
March 15-16, 2007 ILSA Advisory Meeting at Exploratorium/LHSAdvisors for the Informal Learning, Science and Afterschool (ILSA) study gathered at the Exploratorium and the Lawrence Hall of Science to review data from the first phase of this four-phase study. The ILSA study is designed to document the current state of science in ”typical” (non-science specific, >3 days/week) afterschool programs around the country, and to explore existing or missing structures needed to support and enhance it. A policy conference will be held in the fourth year of the project to review implications of the data. Advisors Pat Campbell, George Hein, Cathy Jordan, Kit Klein, Diane Miller, and Tony Streit reviewed the results of our survey phase (n=~1500) and to help us shape the next phase of interviews with science leaders in some 50 programs from across the nation. The ILSA study is led by Gil Noam at Harvard’s PEAR, Rena Dorph at the Lawrence Hall of Science, Reg Clark of Reginald Clark and Associates, and Bronwyn Bevan of CILS.
February 16, 2007
NEMO’s PENCIL Project Wins National Innovation AwardKing’s is evaluating, with the University of Naples, the EU-wide PENCIL project, an EU sister project to CILS. PENCIL is researching 14 different science center projects that are working with schools. On 16 February, the Dutch project, based at NEMO in Amsterdam, won the National Education Fair Innovation prize 2007 in the category of Education and Learning – General. The Dutch Minister of Education Maria van der Hoeven presented this prize. The jury found that NEMO’s Science Center at School project was successful at
>Integrating different school subjects; promoting the coherence in education.
>Providing lesson materials on school and online.
>Promoting the pupil as co-designer of exhibits.
>Training teachers through the NEMO science center.
January 20, 2007
Kick-Off Conference for NSFAYS ProjectCILS hosted the kick-off meeting for research efforts on the NSF Academies for Young Scientists initiative. About 80 people representing 16 projects attended the meeting. Keynotes by Kris Gutierrez and Robert Tai focused our discussions on programs designed to engage and build the interest of students historically under-represented in the sciences. CILS is leading the overall research and evaluation efforts in partnership with SRI, International and Harvard’s PEAR.
CILS by the Numbers
People in the CILS online community: 475
U.S. states represented by the CILS online community: 38
Resources currently in the database: 174
The number authored by CILS community members: 73
Stats last updated on January 30, 2007. Up-to-the-minute numbers may be found here.
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ECSITE 2010CILS presented two sessions at the ECSITE Annual Conference. Click here for a link to the final program.
NARST 2010
Several AYS projects, along with LYREC, the Research & Evaluation Center headed by CILS and SRI, presented two sessions at this year's NARST Annual Conference in Philadelphia. To take a look at our sessions and abstracts click here
AERA 2010The R&E Center presented Teachers’ Participation in Informal STEM Learning Environments: Towards Understanding the Impact of Different Framings on Outcomes at the upcoming AERA conference. Take a look below at our proposal: Recent PresentationsSee the list of conference presentations and sessions contributed by CILS faculty, researchers, students, and practitioners. Where possible, we include hotlinks to relevant papers or powerpoints located in our database:
Aug 2007, ESERA, Malmo Jun 2007, ECSITE, LisbonApr 2007, NARST, New OrleansApr 2007, AERA, ChicagoMar 2007 SRCD, BostonOct 2006, ASTC, LouisvilleJune 2006, ECSITE, Belgium
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