| NSF Org: |
DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | November 20, 2014 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | October 7, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1451290 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Catherine L. Eberbach
DRL Division of Research on Learning in Formal and Informal Settings (DRL) EDU Directorate for STEM Education |
| Start Date: | December 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $115,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $115,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1101 BISCAYNE BLVD MIAMI FL US 33132-1758 (305)434-9567 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
FL US 33129-2832 |
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Performance Congressional District: |
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| NSF Program(s): | AISL |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.076 |
ABSTRACT
As part of NSF's Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, Science Learning+ is a partnership among US and UK foundations. Science Learning+ makes grant awards that take transformational steps to inform, improve, and advance the knowledge bases, practices, and design of informal STEM learning experiences and environments. The long-term SL+ goals are to broaden participation in STEM and to better understand, strengthen, and coordinate STEM engagement and lifelong learning.
This is a Science Learning+ planning project that will develop a research plan for investigating how applying the principles of embodied cognition to the design of informal learning environments can support young children's (ages 2-6) engagement with, and understanding of, science topics and concepts. While it has been fairly well established that cognition is intertwined with the body's interaction in the physical world, the precise means of applying these ideas to the design of effective learning environments is still emerging. Experimenting with various embodied cognition activities and physical learning configurations to understand what conditions are optimal for informal learning environments for early learners is a major objective of this project.
During the planning grant period, the project will identity additional practitioner/research collaborations and will develop research plans for a suite of studies to be enacted by multiple teams of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists across the US and UK and that will be submitted as a Phase 2 research. The primary activities of this planning period include organizing a series of workshops that bring together informal learning educators and embodied cognition researchers to engage in deep discussion and design experimentation that will inform the development and refinement of research questions, protocols, and measurement tools. These discussions will be informed by observations of young children as they interact with the River of Grass, an exhibit prototype in which principles of embodied cognition are embedded in its design.
The planning period will be led by a collaborative team of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists from the US and UK. This group will also oversee plans for the development of a new model for informal STEM research in which a constellation of practitioner/research teams across multiple organizations investigates topics of importance to informal learning practice and research that have the potential to result in a robust body of research that informs the design of informal learning spaces.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
Move2Learn
The Move2Learn planning effort was a collaboration between museum practitioners and researchers in the United States and the United Kingdom, who represented the spectrum of science education, embodied learning, interactive exhibit designers and technology specialists. The overall goal was to begin the process of identifying relevant research questions related to the design of physical and digital exhibits for young children, examining the role of bodily engagement in informal science learning settings. The project tested a new model of collaboration to bridge theory and practice.
Project outcomes included:
- Increasing the capacity of informal science institutions to be more intentional in the application of insights from embodied learning and technology research to the design of exhibits and programs.
- Raising awareness of the need for the research community to work with practitioners to articulate exploratory and experimental designs that involve full body interaction exhibits in informal learning spaces.
- Sharing promising strategies and practices that practitioners and researchers can and are using to better understand the role of body movement and action in learning.
- Beginning to establish a network of research/practice teams interested in investigating the role of whole body interactive exhibits in the development of young children’s STEM concepts across different contexts and perspectives.
Project activities focused on the planning, preparation, and execution of two interdisciplinary convenings held at the Frost Science Museum in Miami, Florida (April 21-23, 2015) and the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland (June 29-31, 2015). The events were facilitated by the project’s leadership team, comprised of Frost Science Museum’s PIs Judy Brown and Cheryl Juárez, Drs. Robb Lindgren and H Chad Lane from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Andrew Manches from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and Dr. Sara Price, from the UCL Institute of Education, London. Workshop attendees represented a wide range of museum practitioners, and researchers from multiple disciplines. To engage participants in dialogue, they were divided into small groups of research/practice teams and tasked with the challenge of designing a research scenario based on a question of interest to the group. The project input related to whole body interactions was distilled into the following research questions for future consideration:
Building a Research Agenda Related to Whole Body Interaction (WBI)
1) What elements of WBI are key to enhancing science learning?
- What body-based metaphors or bodily actions are congruent with scientific concepts, and for which key concepts is this is the case?
- What designs guide bodily engagement to elicit cause and effect relationships/ other foundational science concepts?
- In what way do WBI exhibits encourage social interaction around scientific ideas between children? Children and adults?
- How do parents facilitate children’s movement? What adult bodily interactions best support children’s participation in science exploration?
- What WBI activities best support peer-peer learning about science?
2) What is the role of bodily enactment in assessing children’s understanding of science concepts?
- Does intentional design of bodily actions, that are congruent with the science concepts and/or exhibit key messages, enhance children’s scientific explanations?
- Does it increase children’s imagining of hypothetical scenarios?
- Does it increase their ability to articulate their thin...
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