There is a gap between the importance of certain archeological material sources and their perception, both by professionals and by the general public. Textiles, for example, are essential to understanding practices that marked daily life and rituals in the past, but they have often been extremely degraded over time, particularly in temperate…

Interventions by creative practitioners play an increasingly important part within museum education. This produces a series of questions and tensions around the relationship between creativity and authenticity in terms of the role and limits of evidence, where room for creativity lies, and what it looks like. We explore these questions in the…

Designing for digitally enhanced learning has increased in complexity. In response, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of technology--as the reconfiguring of space, place, materials, time and social relations--enrolled and refashioned in emergent learning activity. Such reconceptualization requires analytical tools, methods and processes…

In 2016, we (seven high school students from a school in Plock, Poland) participated in the CERN Beamline for Schools competition. Together with our team coach, Mr. Janusz Kempa, we submitted a proposal to CERN that was selected as one of two winning proposals that year. This paper describes our experiment from the early days of brainstorming to…

As younger generations become immersed in technology, museums and cultural institutions must create a familiar digital experience to cultivate connections with the 21st century visitor. Authors present an example of working with institutional content experts to create a digital outreach package that activates the museum's content to engage K-12…

"Govan Young" (2017) is a 30-minute documentary in which schoolchildren from Glasgow learn of the area's important but largely unknown medieval history. This dossier brings together four essays that reflect on the film from various academic perspectives -- film studies, archaeology and education -- to explore how schoolchildren might…

This paper introduces a novel framework aimed at supporting non-education faculty and facilitators in creating inclusive educational programs and learning opportunities that address the needs, interests, and priorities of underrepresented individuals and communities in the field of STEM. The framework centers on the fundamental concept of…

The compound microscope is an important tool in biology, and mastering it requires repetition. Unfortunately, introductory activities for students can be formulaic, and consequently, students are often unengaged and fail to develop the required experience to become proficient in microscopy. To engage students, increase repetition, and develop…

Understanding the global, societal, environmental and economic (GSEE) context of a product, process or system is critical to an engineer's ability to design and innovate. The already packed curricula in engineering programs provide few occasions to offer meaningful experiences to address this issue, and most departments delegate this requirement…

Children often associate the study of bones with dinosaurs or crime scenes. This unit introduces students to "zooarchaeology," the study of animal remains from archaeological sites. Students in grades 3-5 engage in hands-on activities examining bones, shells, and other "hard parts" of animals. They use their observations as a starting point for…

Getting students involved in the process of inquiry takes much more than pointing out a problem, offering sources, and setting them on their way. Fortunately, there are a number of teaching strategies that can be instrumental in engaging students in the process of inquiry. As a teacher of world history in the seventh grade, House of Avalon, at…

Field trips and the outdoor classroom are a vital part of many areas of education. Ideally, the content should be taught within a realistic environment rather than just by providing a single field trip at the end of a course. The archaeo-astronomy project located at Nottingham Trent University envisages the development of a virtual environment…

Contemporary curriculum theorists conceptualize curriculum, schooling, and the teacher as sites of discursive production and as dwelling places for theory. Drawing on memory work around childhood report cards, this article uses commonplace artifacts to reassemble autoethnographic memory. In sifting through memories and artifacts, the author…

Mock excavations, or "dig boxes," offer students a hands-on opportunity to explore artifacts and their importance and to learn the principles of context and stratigraphic association. The dig box can be central to discussing differences that existed between classes, races, ethnic groups, and the sexes at different times in history. By…

Once an archaeological site is destroyed, it is gone forever. There are ways to teach our children about archaeology which do not involve finding artifacts. The meaning of artifacts, their uses, and relationships to the people who made them should be emphasized. (MT)