Keynote: Learning Science in and Out of School

Science is shaping people’s lives in fundamental ways. Individuals, groups, and nations increasingly seek to bolster scientific capacity in the hope of promoting social, material, and personal well-being. Efforts to enhance scientific capacity typically target schools and focus on such strategies as improving science curriculum and teacher training and strengthening the science pipeline. What is often overlooked or underestimated is the potential for science learning in nonschool settings, where people actually spend the majority of their time.

In this presentation, I will leverage two sets of National Research Council volumes that detail how, why, and where people learn science. I will draw on research from the University of Washington's Institute for Science and Math Education to illustrate how some of the  principles from the NRC volumes can be operationalized in teaching strategies and curricular interventions. Summarizing the research that details how students can learn science in formal instructional settings, we will draw upon the recent research consensus study Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 (NRC, 2007) and an accompanying guide for practitioners titled Ready, Set, Science: Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms (NRC, 2008). Summarizing the research that details how people learn science across a broad variety of informal environments (e.g., family activities, science center visits, afterschool programming), we will draw upon the recent research consensus study Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places & Pursuits (NRC, 2009) and an accompanying guide for practitioners titled Surrounded by Science (NRC, 2008).

The learning strands developed across the NRC volumes (NRC, 2007, 2009) highlight that when people engage in science learning they . . . 

•    Strand 1: Experience excitement, interest, and motivation to learn about phenomena in the natural and physical world.

•    Strand 2: Come to generate, understand, remember, and use concepts, explanations, arguments, models and facts related to science.

•    Strand 3: Manipulate, test, explore, predict, question, observe, and make sense of the natural and physical world.

•    Strand 4: Reflect on science as a way of knowing; on processes, concepts, and institutions of science, and on their own process of learning about phenomena.    

•    Strand 5: Participate in scientific activities and learning practices with others, using scientific language and tools.  

•    Strand 6: Think about themselves as science learners and develop an identity as someone who knows about, uses, and sometimes contributes to science.