This comprehensive study explores the experiences of underrepresented students who have participated in informal science education programs at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Using qualitative methods, including interviews and participant observations, the research uncovers transformative insights shaping the educational landscape.…

Few investigations of museums have examined the potential of varying displays as related to learning outcomes. This study focused on two museum spaces, presenting different historical events and featuring different objects' characteristics and arrangements, as related to seventh- and eighth-graders' learning and experiences during a self-guided…

In the past decades, collaborative game-based learning has been used to facilitate students' learning in authentic learning contexts. Although several previous studies have reported the potential of this approach for students' learning performance and motivation, unequal participation could negatively influence the learning effectiveness of…

The aim of this article is to explore the worth of a materialist/posthumanist approach to ethics, specifically affirmative ethics (Braidotti, 2018, 2019a), within the field of education. I work empirical material that 'does' this ethics in classrooms and draw on Deleuze's (1988) ethically guided materialism as taken up by Braidotti (2019b), to…

A three-year grant program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City encourages teachers to draw connections between curricular topics and works of art. In this article, museum educator Nicola Giardina describes how the program uses inquiry-based lessons to create meaningful learning experiences for underserved students. She highlights…

Interest against the science, to increase permanence of learned theoretical knowledge can be provided via visual, auditory and tactile science and technology lessons in schools. Museums are seen as the key learning areas that aim to reinforce the learning and to show concrete face of science. Easy and comfortable transportation to museums in major…

This article reports the results of a quartile analysis of the "2008 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) Visual Arts Report Card." The analysis was made from original datasets supplied by the National Center for Education Statistics. It focuses on 8th-grade students who were currently taking art or recently had taken art.…

Eighth-grade students from three school districts in three small towns in Crosby County, Texas, received academic credit for working together with the biannual Crosby County Pioneer Memorial Museum summer travel education program. Each of the three districts radiate from a small town. They were within one county, and the museum was located in the…

While multiple valid measures exist for assessing outcomes of environmental education (EE) programs, the field lacks a comprehensive and logistically feasible common instrument that can apply across diverse programs. We describe a participatory effort for identifying and developing crosscutting outcomes for Environmental Education in the…

Learners encounter science in a wide variety of contexts beyond the science classroom which collectively could be quite influential on student attitudes and abilities. But relatively little is known about the relative influence of different forms of informal science experiences, especially for the kinds of experiences that students typically…

Imagine a classroom where students are actively engaged in seeking scientific knowledge from books and computers. Think of a classroom in which students fervently write to create PowerPoint presentations about their scientific topic and then enthusiastically practice their speaking roles to serve as docents in a classroom museum setting. Visualize…

This book details the Guggenheim Museum's classroom-tested, inquiry-based approach to learning. This user-friendly guide provides teachers (grades 2-8) with strategies and resources for investigating art to enhance student learning across the curriculum. "For the classroom teacher", Art Investigation provides an exciting way to study contemporary…

This research follows on previous studies that investigated how digitally augmented devices and knowledge scaffolds enhance learning in a science museum. We investigated what combination of scaffolds could be used in conjunction with the unique characteristics of informal participation to increase conceptual and cognitive outcomes. 307 students…

In this paper we provide the first rigorous evidence of the impact of a partnership between public middle schools and informal science institutions (ISIs), such as museums and zoos, on student outcomes. This study focuses on Urban Advantage (UA), a program in New York City (NYC) that explicitly draws upon the expertise and resources of the city's…

The last two sections (EJ1039315 and EJ1039319) presented stories about specific moments or lessons. Also, situations infused with complexity where the writers had to toggle back and forth between providing the larger context and the details that support readers' understanding of that big picture were presented. In this section each story is…