Biology and art have been linked throughout history. Early scientists, such as Leonardo de Vinci and John James Audubon, used sketches and painting to document their findings. Even early hominids left evidence of their world through cave art. Histology, the microscopic study of tissues and cells, relies on defining shape and spatial relationships…

Museums are used in every discipline to collect, classify, and present information for scientific purposes. They also serve as an effective educational medium. Since the establishment of a boutique anatomy museum at Bahçesehir University, lectures, conferences, and seminars have been organized there over the past four years on the history of human…

Museums provide the opportunity to handle real objects, solve problems, and interact with others. And also they are perfect places to ask our own questions, and try to discover the answer. So in many courses, teachers use museums as a learning environment for teaching the subject matter. The purpose of this research is to determine the opinions of…

Informal science learning aims to improve public understanding of STEM. Free-choice learners can be engaged in a wide range of experiences, ranging from watching entertaining educational videos to actively participating in hands-on projects. Efforts in informal science learning are often gauged by their ability to elicit interaction, to foster…

We explore the understudied role of program staff in an out-of-school time (OST) program at a large science museum, which may be especially relevant for supporting underrepresented minority (URM) youth's interest in science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) careers. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-method design, we surveyed 167 program…

The goal of this study was to identify the impact that participation in the Urban Advantage Initiative, a professional development program designed for middle school science teachers in New York City, has had on science teaching and learning. Urban Advantage is a long-term situated learning model whereby teachers engaged in over 100 hours of…

Evolving mobile technology and the rapid spread of STEM-focused informal learning environments have created a unique opportunity to break through the barriers that have traditionally separated diverse learning contexts such as school, family, and community. Previous research suggest that in a well-designed family learning environment, both parents…

Science centers such as museums and planetariums have used stereoscopic ("three-dimensional") films to draw interest from and educate their visitors for decades. Despite the fact that most adults who are finished with their formal education get their science knowledge from such free-choice learning settings very little is known about the…

We present results of an experimental study of an urban, museum-based science teacher PD programme. A total of 125 teachers and 1676 of their students in grades 4-8 were tested at the beginning and end of the school year in which the PD programme took place. Teachers and students were assessed on subject content knowledge and attitudes towards…

"ECHOS: Early Childhood Hands-On Science" was developed at the Miami Science Museum as a comprehensive set of science lessons sequenced to lead children toward a deeper understanding of science content and the use of science process skills. The purpose of the research is to determine whether use of the "ECHOS" model will…

The Exploratorium is home to XTech, a science education program which began in 2006 and was primarily funded by a three-year National Science Foundation grant (Award # 05-25217) through its ITEST (Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers) initiative. XTech provided project-based afterschool activities in science, engineering,…

In 1998, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) launched an ambitious effort to create on-line science courses for K-12 educators that would immerse them in exciting science topics and give them access to the Museum's scientific resources (scientists, research, expeditions, collections, and exhibitions). This project, called Seminars on…

Reports on program effectiveness for the Teacher Internship Program for Science (TIPS), a museum-school partnership. Survey results show that significantly more TIPS teachers involved their students in various science instruction activities, and TIPS teachers rated their students higher in interest in and understanding of science. (LZ)

To provide meaningful science experiences for students, educators need quality science experiences themselves from which to draw. Informal learning contexts, such as museums, are well positioned to provide educators with these professional development experiences. We investigated the impact museum-created professional development experiences had…

Inverness Research studied the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) Seminars on Science program for eight years, from its inception in 1998 to 2006. In 2009, Inverness Research conducted additional studies of the AMNH's new online course, The Solar System. This paper presents teacher survey ratings for The Solar System, along with profiles of…