NASA's Science Activation Program Achievements and Opportunities (2020) / Chapter Skim
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4 Assessing the Science Activation Portfolio: STEM Learning and Leveraging NASA Assets
4 Assessing the Science Activation Portfolio: STEM Learning and Leveraging NASA Assets
Pages 55-68
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From page 55... ...
activities that engage diverse audiences in both formal and informal learning environments. Project activities and products across the portfolio include but are not limited to hands-on learning experiences, science instructional resources, professional learning opportunities, and data visualization tools.
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From page 56... ...
While the committee does not believe that any single theory of learning should guide all of the projects in the SciAct portfolio, we do believe that it would be beneficial for projects to be explicit about their underlying assumptions about learning and how these assumptions inform the design of their activities. In addition, the design of projects needs to consider what the most current evidence on science learning suggests about effective strategies for supporting learning (also see Chapter 1 for a discussion of the current evidence base on STEM education standards and how people learn)
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From page 57... ...
. This constellation of experiences is often referred to as the "STEM learning ecosystem." STEM learning ecosystems are emphasized in the 2018 National Science and Technology Council's Committee on STEM Education (CoSTEM)
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. This is certainly also true of informal learning environments that are the focus in much of the work of the NASA SciAct portfolio.
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Looking more closely at the specific activities of projects, there appear to be multiple strategies for connecting project design to desired learning outcomes in play as projects mobilize NASA assets. These include
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It is unclear to the committee whether all SciAct awardees are using research and evidence in education to inform how their project activities will lead to the desired learning outcomes. For example, because online gaming, adaptive tutoring, and support for family interaction with museum or library exhibits are quite different settings for informal STEM learning, the approach that a project would employ to bring about a desired learning outcome would likely vary.
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Moreover, even where those plans are specified, they are generally not clearly aligned with the most recent evidence on how to support learning. While many positive learning outcomes are emerging as noted above, the committee believes that projects could be better positioned to support participants' learning if they more clearly delineate their expectations for the relationship between their work and desired learning outcomes.
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LEVERAGING NASA ASSETS While many scientific organizations and federal science agencies are well positioned to support learning about and through scientific practices, we noted in Chapter 1 that NASA brings a wealth of compelling assets (i.e., expert scientists and engineers, datasets, state-of-the-art technology, and data visualizations) developed in the context of the captivating human narratives about specific missions (see Box 4-1)
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From page 63... ...
Research on broadening participation discusses the importance of reducing social distance between people who pursue science as a profession and people from communities that have historically been excluded from STEM fields and therefore have fewer role models and mentors readily available (Malone and Barabino, 2009; Nelson, 2009)
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SMEs can also play key nonpublic engagement roles, which include informing the design and focus of STEM programs. Science communication strategies used by science-based professionals often assume that the listener or learner simply lacks knowledge and the task is to inform them -- often called a deficit approach.
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When SMEs have direct engagement with public audiences, however, they may benefit from additional expertise in learning theories and science communication strategies in order to engage effectively with the audience. 1 Portal to the Public (PoP)
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Considerations for Future Planning Exploring how NASA's assets could be integrated into public engagement programs to deepen participants' desired learning outcomes would be a major contribution of the SciAct Program. With respect to aligning global perspectives with local interests of learners, SciAct might further support the work of its awardees by creating shared tools that would enable
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. Looking across projects in the SciAct portfolio, the committee could not identify a coordinated strategy across projects for how NASA assets are being used to design educational activities that have observable outputs (e.g., media products or citizen science efforts)
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will enhance the potential impact of SciAct's education activities in the broader STEM landscape. CONCLUSION 9: While science, technology, engineering, and math ematics learning is in the foreground as a Science Activation goal, there is no explicit link between theories of learning and how the National Aeronautics and Space Administration assets are used (e.g., transmis sion models, inquiry-based practices)
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