The Lawrence Hall of Science
The public science center of the University of California, Berkeley.
Wednesday–Sunday 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Animal Discovery Zone 11:00 a.m.–4:00 p.m.
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We partner with school districts to support science learning. We offer district-wide elementary, middle, and high school programs, either virtually or in-person.
We collaborate with a range of partners to innovate in science education. Together, we go further.
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Designing for and facilitating intergenerational group learning is an important objective of informal science institutions as most visitors in those settings engage with scientific thinking in the context of a group. New, deeply engaging, and interactive technologies such augmented reality (AR) have been shown to have positive outcomes in educational settings, but their implications have yet to be investigated for the purpose of intergenerational group learning design.
Science consists of a body of knowledge and a set of processes by which the knowledge is produced. Although these have traditionally been treated separately in science instruction, there has been a shift to an integration of knowledge and processes, or set of practices, in how science should be taught and assessed. We explore whether a general overall mastery of the processes drives learning in new science content areas and if this overall mastery can be improved through engaged science learning.
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.