This paper reports on the results of a research-practice partnership that included a U.S. university research team and a state-funded grants program that supports informal science education. The goal of the 2-year partnership was to develop an empirically-tested model for collaboration and capacity-building (CCB) in support of collective…

In this study, Swedish STEM-teacher students' experiences of STEM-actors are explored. 85 teacher students have visited each, of a total of 21 different STEM-actors (science centres, museums, maker spaces, code clubs etc.) who all offer school classes STEM-activities but also in-service teacher education. The teacher students were given the task…

This research was carried out to reveal the experiences of pre-service elementary teachers during their visit to the science center and their observations and opinions about this experience. For this purpose, a case study, which is one of the qualitative research designs, was adopted. 32 pre-service elementary teachers participated in the…

Apart from equipping learners with 21st-century skills, environmental science (ES) education fosters problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, and a sense of responsibility and agency in children. Community science centers contribute to ES education by stirring up interest, enthusiasm, and awareness in both science and environmental issues;…

Non-formal learning environments, such as science museums, have a fundamental role in science education and high potentialities as ideal contexts for science teachers' training. These aspects have been analyzed and reported in several recent works mainly focused on students' perception of science and increased engagement towards scientific…

This position paper discusses the existent research focused on STEM centers at colleges and universities, focusing on their critical role to support students from racially minoritized backgrounds. The objective of this work is to present a potential framework to recast the role of these institutional STEM centers at both community colleges and…

STEP Forward is a partnership between two established programs that train postdoctoral fellows in science communication: one that focuses on formal communication within college classrooms, and another that focuses on informal science communication at Pacific Science Center, a science museum. By combining these programs, postdoctoral fellows…

This study aims to ascertain academicians' opinions about out-of-school learning, awareness of it, and competency to plan learning activities in such situations for the purpose of teaching in out-of-school learning environments (OSLEs). The research group of this study, which was conducted as a case study, consists of 56 academics in the physics,…

Being immersed in the processes of research can develop undergraduate students' science identities and support their persistence in pursuing science careers. However, it can be difficult for students to find opportunities for engaging in authentic scientific research. The professional staff and scientific objects in natural history museums provide…

Out-of-class learning environments are important learning environments because they improve students' mental and physical health as well as providing them with cognitive, affective, and psychomotor skills. However, it is necessary to make a plan, implement and evaluate the teaching processes appropriately to efficient benefit from out-of-class…

The last forty years have seen significant growth in the area of research in science education in Brazil. Faced with the volume of academic output, studies that present a descriptive character are necessary. However, "states of knowledge surveys" are still rarely found in the field of science education. In this context, the objective of…

Field courses are a critical component of many post-secondary programs in British Columbia and an important option in many others. They are widely recognized for their pedagogical value, mostly because it has been found that students generally achieve more high-level learning, and they retain more of what they learn, in a field-course setting than…

In the study, the data for the field of visual arts in BILSEM have been revealed by studying postgraduate theses and articles related to the field of Visual Arts given in Science and Art Centers in between 2007-2017. In the research, the document was examined with the scanning model. In the scope of the research, it has been scanned from Google…

The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the McWane Science Center have partnered for over 20 years to provide secondary students in Alabama opportunities to conduct inquiry-based, standards-aligned science labs. LabWorks (middle school) and GENEius (high school) programs offer multiple research laboratory experiences in which students…

New science facilities have become a reality on many college campuses in the last few decades. Large time investments in creating shared programmatic vision and designing flexible spaces, partnered with large fiscal investments, have created a new generation of science building. Unfortunately, few studies provide evidence about whether the…