Teacher Professional Development and Informal Learning Environments: Investigating Partnerships and Possibilities

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 on 54 elementary teachers. Quantitative data were collected through an exit survey and qualitative data through survey questions and interviews. We found a significant difference between how teachers rated these workshops and how they rated other workshops. Teachers reported that the workshops helped them to (a) increase science content knowledge, (b) understand the process of science-scientific fieldwork, (c) change instructional methods, (d) connect natural science content with formal instruction, and (e) learn about museum resources for the classroom.