JoinAll Informal Education resources
Blog Post
Helping Educators Develop Young Ocean Problem-Solvers
Myrtle, the green sea turtle. Photo credit: W. Chappell Informal science centers are in perfect alignment to provide rich NGSS supports using three-dimensional learning and real-world connections....
By Corrine Steever
Journal Article
Fostering a STEAM Mindset Across Learning Settings
Developing a growth mindset has been identified as a key strategy for increasing youth achievement, motivation, and resiliency (Rattan et al. 2015). At its core, growth mindset describes the idea that one’s abilities can change through using new ...
By Laura D. Carsten Conner, Blakely K. Tsurusaki, Carrie Tzou, Perrin Teal Sullivan, Mareca Guthrie, and Stephen M. Pompea
Journal Article
Changing Mindsets Through Educator Training
MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation, is a new museum in Santa Barbara, California, designed to engage visitors of all ages in constructing understanding of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics through active engage...
By Ron Skinner, Danielle B. Harlow, and Kaia Joye Wesolowski
Journal Article
Using the ChangeMaker Mindsets™ to Enhance STEM Experiences
A ChangeMaker is anyone who chooses to take creative action to solve a problem for impact. The ChangeMaker Mindsets™ help youth navigate ambiguity and reframe thinking toward problem-solving. As students embrace and use the ChangeMaker Mind...
By Amanda Kopischke and Angela Anderson
Journal Article
What STEM Mindset Is … and Why Everyone Should Have One
A STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) mindset encompasses many things, and perhaps does not mean the same thing to every person. Many believe, however, that it combines general attributes that are independent of an individual’s acad...
By Beth Murphy
NSTA Press Book
It's Still Debatable! Using Socioscientific Issues to Develop Scientific Literacy, K–5
It’s Still Debatable! encourages scientific literacy by showing you how to teach the content and thinking skills K–5 students need to explore real-world questions like these: • Is football too dangerous for kids? • Do we need zoos? �...
By Sami Kahn
NSTA Press Book
Making Sense of Science and Religion: Strategies for the Classroom and Beyond
The authors of Making Sense of Science and Religion believe that addressing interactions between science and religion is part of all science educators’ collective job—and that this is the book that will help you facilitate discussion when the top...
By Joseph W. Shane, Lee Meadows, Ronald S. Hermann, Ian C. Binns
Journal Article
Evaluating Nature Museum Field Trip Workshops, an Out-of-School STEM Education Program
Out-of-school learning opportunities for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) represent an important context in which students learn about and do STEM. Studies have shown that in- and out-of-school experiences work syn...
By Caroline Freitag, and Melissa Siska
Journal Article
Saturday Seminars for Urban Scholars Program
The K–16 academic journey to a career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is often described as having serious barriers, such as uninspired teaching, an unwelcome environment, and poor math and science preparation that lea...
By Michele W. McColgan, Robert J. Colesante, Albert G. Andrade, and Kenneth Robin
Journal Article
Learning Design Experiments (LDEs), which take their name from design experiments in the learning sciences (Brown 1992), support educational innovation and progressive refinement of learning experiences by taking an evidence-centered design perspec...
By Peter Wardrip, Lisa Brahms, and Annie McNamara
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
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
Journal Article
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