All Informal Education resources

Journal Article

Teaching Environmental Awareness in Baltimore

A national movement, sparked by Richard Louv’s (2005) treatise Last Child in the Woods, has catalyzed collaborations among government agencies, schools, and nonprofit and community organizations to reconnect children with the environment. Research ...

By Sarah Haines, Chelsea McClure, and Symone Johnson

Middle School Informal Education Citizen Science Environmental Science Teacher Preparation

Journal Article

Formative Assessment of STEM Activities in Afterschool and Summer Programs

The positive impacts of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) afterschool and summer programs have been well documented and summarized in a number of review papers and books (e.g., Allen, Noam, and Little 2017; Krishnamurthi and Bevan 2...

By Cary Sneider and Sue Allen

Informal Education Assessment STEM

Journal Article

Team-Based Inquiry

Regardless of the setting in which learning takes place, identifying the goals and intended outcomes of an educational experience, then measuring how well that experience achieved them, is becoming more commonplace and is often essential. However, ...

By Sarah Cohn

Informal Education Administration Inquiry

Journal Article

Shared Measures for STEM and Science Learning Through the ActApp

Many formal and informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning programs want to understand the impact their work has on learner outcomes. This can be difficult, especially in informal settings (e.g., afterschool programs, museu...

By Matthew A. Cannady and Kalie Sacco

Informal Education

Journal Article

Planning for Quality

Communities across the United States are working together to increase the quality and quantity of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning opportunities for all youth, with special emphasis on encouraging young people from ...

By Lydia Peabody, Rebecca K. Browne, Bailey Triggs, Patricia J. Allen, and Gil G. Noam

Informal Education Administration STEM

Journal Article

The Common Instrument Suite

The fundamental ideas in John Dewey’s 1913 essay, Interest and Effort in Education, are as true today as they were when he published it more than a century ago. His key point was that interest can motivate students to undertake efforts that may n...

By Cary Sneider and Gil G. Noam

Informal Education Administration Teacher Preparation

Journal Article

Practical Program Evaluation

I love data—especially when used to look at learning experiences and figure out what’s working, what isn’t, and what to do next. Not surprisingly, then, I’m quite excited about this issue of Connected Science Learning, which is all about Pr...

By Beth Murphy

Informal Education Assessment Professional Learning old Research STEM

Journal Article

Better Together

When ExpandED Schools, a nonprofit based in New York, began planning a new STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) initiative three years ago, it started by taking a closer look at the existing science programming happening in its network...

By Lizzie Murchison and Emma Banay

Informal Education Disabilities

Journal Article

Inspiring Middle School Young Women to Achieve STEM Careers Through a Nature-Based Summer Mentorship Program

Innovation and progress in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce is critical to the growth of the United States in the global economy (NRC 2007). Men are more likely to pursue a degree in STEM fields, with almost 27% of ma...

By Sarah Rhodes-Ondi, and Maryam Ghadiri

Middle School Informal Education Earth & Space Science STEM

Journal Article

Using Virtual Reality in the Classroom for Students on the Autism Spectrum

Virtual reality has seen rapid development in the first part of the 21st century, although it has been around for many years. Remember the old ViewMasters? And who could forget the first time a sea monster reached out to grab you while you were wea...

By Wyayn Rasmussen, and Kate Drechsler

Informal Education Disabilities Inclusion Teaching Strategies Technology

Journal Article

The BEST Partnership Program

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) become more widely recognized as part of our population every year. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, about 1 in 59 c...

By Katie Slivensky, Ellen Cohn, Alexander Lussenhop, and Christina Moscat

Informal Education Disabilities

Journal Article

Making On and Off the Spectrum

People have been making since the first human used a tool, and have continued to create things for both fun and function. From building model trains to quilting, from woodworking to baking, people have for centuries been enriching their own lives by ...

By Wendy Martin, Regan Vidiksis, Kristie Patten Koenig, and Yu-Lun Chen

Informal Education Disabilities Engineering Technology

Journal Article

Design an Amusement Park

In the last two decades, precollege engineering education has become more prevalent. At the same time, the number of children diagnosed with autism is rapidly growing. Over half a million children with autism will enter adulthood in the next decade...

By Hoda Ehsan, Elizabeth Gajdzik, and Monica Cardella

Informal Education Disabilities Engineering Interdisciplinary

NSTA Press Book

Supporting Emergent Multilingual Learners in Science, Grades 7–12

Many middle and high school teachers are educated to teach science content—they don’t anticipate that one day they may be teaching it to students who need to learn both content and English. If the day has come when you’re facing that two-pronge...

By Molly Weinburgh, Cecilia Silva, Kathy Horak Smith

Elementary High School Informal Education Middle School Curriculum Multilingual Learners Instructional Materials Pedagogy Teaching Strategies Advocacy Careers Equity Inclusion Multicultural New Science Teachers Preservice Science Education Professional Learning old Research Teacher Preparation