Evaluation Publications

The Lawrence Hall of Science implemented a two-phase project, Building Understanding in Language Diverse Students, to modify school group workshops and drop-in public programs to better support linguistically diverse students and visitors. As we applied language support strategies developed for the school group workshops to additional areas of the science center, we encountered emergent complexities related to understanding our audience, designing program-specific modifications, and implementing professional learning opportunities for part-time facilitators and volunteers.

This paper explores the use of science learning activation to understand how various types of visitors engage with different exhibits. In particular, we examined how learners engaged in two very different resource-rich exhibits using two distinct analytic techniques.

The Ocean Literacy movement began in the U.S. in the early 2000s, and has recently become an international effort. The focus on marine environmental issues and marine education is increasing, and yet it has been difficult to show progress of the ocean literacy movement, in part, because no widely adopted measurement tool exists.

This paper proposes three new measures of components STEM career preferences (affinity, certainty, and goal), and then explores which dimensions of science learning activation (fascination, values, competency belief, and scientific sensemaking) are predictive of STEM career preferences.

Expanding on recent advances in science education, cognitive and social psychology, and sociocultural studies, the paper explores a construct called science learning activation and a theoretical framework that describes the characteristics, function, and impact of this construct. Authors define science learning activation as a set of dispositions, skills, and knowledge that commonly enable success in proximal science learning experiences and are in turn influenced by these successes.

The authors of this article, all of whom have been a part of this effort to assess argumentation in literacy-rich science curriculum, have struggled with our attempts to build 3 argument-related assessments—understanding, critiquing, and constructing arguments about scientific phenomena in both oral and written modes.

Engaging in science as an argumentative practice can promote students’ critical thinking, reflection, and evaluation of evidence. However, many do not approach science in this way. Furthermore, the presumed confrontational nature of argumentation may run against cultural norms particularly during the sensitive time of early adolescence. This paper explores whether middle-school students’ ability to engage in critical components of argumentation in science impacts science classroom learning.