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Bryan Dewsbury is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Florida International University and principal investigator of the Science Education and Society research program, which focuses on the social context of teaching and learning in a variety of education contexts. What are some of the key experiences that shaped your career path in science and education? ... Read more

Dr. Morgan Halane is a New York City-based biologist with a focus on plant immunity. Dr. Halane is a co-founder of Black Botanists Week and has worked for Aanika Biosciences and the National Park Service.   Please tell us how you first became curious or excited about nature, or science? I’ve been excited about nature and ... Read more

The Board on Science Education at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine held a series of conversations with leaders in science education about insights they have gained over the past decade of science standards development, adoption, and implementation. The discussion during this event explored what have they learned from research on science learning ... Read more

The Board on Science Education is continuing its 20th Anniversary monthly celebrations by focusing on education in informal (i.e. outside of school) contexts, specifically looking at the impacts and implications of the 2009 consensus report Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits. Attendees will hear from members of the informal science education community ... Read more

Do you know a current graduate student in the plant sciences who is interested in helping the public learn more about botany? PhD students conducting plant-based research are invited to apply for the 2014 Botany in Action Fellowship at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, PA. Fellows receive: $5,000 to use toward research-related expenses ... Read more

Children benefit greatly from seeing themselves represented in the stories they read. Children’s books have the power to counter stereotypes, challenge gender norms, and open minds to new perspectives and ideas. But it can be challenging for educators and caregivers to find quality children’s books that are diverse and representative, especially when it comes to STEM. Join ... Read more

On Tuesday, September 10, CAISE presented a webinar on informalscience.org to the Afterschool Alliance and over 100 interested afterschool and out-of-school time (OST) stakeholders. CAISE recognizes the afterschool and out-of-school time community to be a rapidly-growing sector in the informal learning landscape, and welcomes the community to contribute and share their work on the site. ... Read more

BRITE Girls Online STEM Practices: Building Relevance and Identity to Transform Experiences is a Research in Service to Practice National Science Foundation Grant led by Florida State University, in partnership with the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) and Smart Girls HQ. The project examines the STEM identity development of girls via the implementation of an online ... Read more

Brite’s Virtual STEM Role Model Camp is an online, interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) program created especially for youth entering 7th-10th grade. Brite is designed to spark curiosity, foster creativity, and build an online community all while having FUN doing STEM projects and meeting STEM professionals from a variety of fields. The theme ... Read more

This article was migrated from a previous version of the Knowledge Base. The date stamp does not reflect the original publication date. Overview  Broadcast television offers a variety of ways to present STEM-content and informal science education programming to public audiences. The educational program “Watch Mr. Wizard” (NBC 1951-1965) introduced a generation of young viewers ... Read more

Learners of all ages have access to a wealth of informal STEM resources through the small screens of television, computers, and mobile devices. Science education programming reaches millions of viewers every week and continues to capture the cultural imagination. Here are some examples of small screen broadcast media resources available in the InformalScience.org repository: SciGirls ... Read more

Visual-spatial ability underlies success in both art and science, yet few girls with this talent go on to enter STEM careers. At the root of the problem is the story we often hear about girls and science: many don’t see science as relevant to their interests, and they often see science as rote, uncreative, and ... Read more

STEM for All’s theme and webinar for May will focus on identity development and its importance and relationship to persistence in STEM for underrepresented minorities. The projects highlighted will address challenges and barriers to identity development, illuminate best practices and disseminate impacts to advance the body of work in this area. Learn more and register.

The Diving Deeper, Looking Forward session topics at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting emerged from a pre-meeting survey of AISL-funded Principal Investigators; discussions with PIs and others who have participated in CAISE convenings over the past two years; and input from CAISE staff, co-PIs, and NSF Program Officers. These sessions were intended to catalyze discussions ... Read more

“In the classroom people don’t always ask us to get involved…” “[My] science teacher didn’t want me to do anything, and I know how I can do these things. I can be one who participates, not the one who takes notes.” The quotes above were captured from the evaluation of the National Federation of the ... Read more

Critical perspectives on broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM and ISE.

How can we develop a more expansive, yet critical, view of what we mean by “broadening participation in STEM”? How can our programs be designed or re-designed to more fully integrate evidence on broadening participation? What resources do organizations and individuals need to better document and assess how programs advance broadening participation? These are some ... Read more

A suite of professional learning tools to support your work

Funding proposals to the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) undergo a peer review process that requires panels to consider the intellectual merit and broader impacts of the proposed research. Informal STEM education (ISE) offers opportunities for scientists and directors of outreach, education, engagement and communication to plan, propose, develop and collaborate on innovative broader impacts ... Read more

In October 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) updated their Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) for the first time in 15 years. Part of this major revision was updated language to reflect significant changes in how NSF panelists, reviewers, and program officers will evaluate STEM research proposals’ broader impacts plan. To help proposers understand these revisions, ... Read more

Broader Impacts and ISE (2013) Participant List In November 2013 CAISE facilitated a convening on Broader Impacts and Informal Science Education for practitioners and researchers who have been working at the nexus of scientific research and ISE. The group included ISE professionals, research scientists who currently lead education and public outreach efforts through science societies ... Read more

Broader Impacts and ISE (2015) Agenda Broader Impacts and ISE (2015) Participant List Broader Impacts and ISE (2015) Key Areas Need Action Items In April 2015, CAISE convened representatives from NSF-funded centers and large facilities with ISE professionals, evaluators and social science researchers for two days of exploration of the needs, opportunities and challenges of ... Read more

From April 16-18, 2014, the University of Missouri will host a Broader Impacts Infrastructure Summit in Arlington, VA. This Summit builds off of last year’s Broader Impacts Infrastructure Summit, and invites all institutional Broader Impacts support professionals to participate in a dialogue about the future of broader impacts (BI) support. The goals of the Summit ... Read more

As described in our previous blog posts, the National Science Foundation-funded project Building Informal Science Education (BISE) (DRL-1010924) created a framework to code and synthesize evaluation reports on informalscience.org. This first round included all reports voluntarily posted through May 2013. In this blog, Carey Tisdal talks about the methods she used to synthesize 22 evaluation ... Read more

This article is a cross-post of a white paper that summarizes a Center for Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE) convening (June 20-21, 2013) designed to facilitate discussion about the resources needed to improve the quality of evaluation in informal science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. A PDF download of this article is available ... Read more