Day 5
Day 5 already??
Today we were out the door bright and early around 7:30am to head over to the Lawrence Hall of Science. The Hall is a “public science museum and research center for K-12 education at the University of California, Berkeley” involved in both research and curriculum development for science education in California as well as across the nation and even world. We first met with Bernadette, a Research and Evaluation Specialist, who led us to a meeting room where we spent the first part of our day speaking with various members of the Hall, the work they do, and the questions we have been exploring with regards to inequities in STEM education. First up was Ellen Blinderman who spoke to us about the role of early childhood science and the programs the Hall supports to increase accessibility for parents and local community playgroups focused on low-income and/or immigrant families. The incorporation of science into other facets of life and the natural world through hands-on discovery forms the basis for many of the activities the program partakes in. In particular, the emphasis on integrating science and English for ESL learners and the focus on developing long-term, lasting impacts through multi-week engagements and take-home resources stood out to me as particularly impactful.
Next, we got an opportunity to volunteer on the floor, interacting with visitors in the Design Quest challenges and Giant Geometries interactive exhibits. Though today was a fairly slow day for the museum, there were still several 7th grade field trip classes and other families who we engaged with and even built some contraptions of our own. Even though the museum is clearly less flashy than the Exploratorium or the Tech Museum, I felt the Hall was still very immersive and accessible, maybe even more so than the others, because the exhibits and activities focused or used more everyday materials. For instance, I volunteered at the Giant Geometries exhibit which allowed visitors to build giant structures using oversized wooden dowels and some simple connectors made from hoses. Another exhibit on water quality and protecting oceans was constructed from simple tubing with vivid visual displays and interactive spinners, puzzles, etc via posterboards. It was apparent that the Hall was very resourceful in the way the exhibits were constructed and provided many opportunities for inter-visitor-interactions as well. That is, just because budget or resources may be more limited does not mean the quality of learning experiences or opportunities for engagement need to be sacrificed.
After the break, we returned to the meeting room and met with Harold who spoke about math education and the new Common Core standards. He got us thinking about what it means to be “good” at math and how the new standards emphasize a more incremental and hollistic development of mathematical and analytical/logical reasoning skills from kindergarten up. Next was Kevin who leads East Bay Academy for Young Scientists or ebays which focuses on providing opportunities to engage in research projects focused on community issues such as air quality. Through both in-school programs for classes as well as after-school programs, ebays has been able to reach many students from low-income communities in the Easy Bay, though they haven’t tracked longitudinal data of its attendees. I do think the focus on projects that directly relate to issues in the community is a very effective means to engage with students though and would suspect that the program has significantly impacted its students. We then met with Mac who works on quantitative analysis and was the author of a paper we read on a critique of the “STEM pipeline” metaphor that is often used. One of the biggest shortcomings of the pipeline metaphor is its rigidity in not acknowledging the many different journeys that may be taken to arrive in the STEM workforce; instead Mac advocates for a “pathways” framework that archetypes several different typical avenues based on a study they conducted by backtracing the academic backgrounds of current workforce members (what they majored in) and whether they were competent and/or interested in STEM during high school. We also got a brief introduction into the work the Activation Lab does honing in on how positive experiences foster success which foster more experiences, and so on. Finally, we had the opportunity to sit in on Bernadette’s research group meeting and ask some final questions before briefly exploring the museum and heading out to our next stop: the Chabot Space and Science Center.
A short drive away, Chabot is a space history museum I did not know existed and though much of it felt dated and lackluster in many ways, as a person interested and excited by space, it was cool to know that such a place did exist. Our visit, however, was much more about our meeting with Caleb who formerly had experiences as both a a teacher and a science advisor for the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) and now works at Chabot. We participated in an activity investigating burning candles over water in a jar and interacting with each other to understand and explain what was happening and why. He then walked us through the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and compared the old and new standards to emphasize how NGSS focuses on more than just content mastery traditionally assessed through multiple choice, fact-based problems and instead focused more on developing a broader ways of thinking and practicing science. In a sense, NGSS represents a very large conceptual shift in the way science education is taught by emphasizing a deeper understanding of core ideas, skills, and concepts in science and engineering that extend beyond traditional content. For instance, rather than having standards with language like “Students should know….”, NGSS frames standards as “performance expectations” such as “Develop a model to…”. Obviously as with any change, there are difficulties, one of the biggest being the implementation of NGSS in classrooms so there is also a large push for teacher trainings and adapting or creating curriculum that matches NGSS. However, much of this is still in preliminary phases and has varied greatly by district, school, and teacher. Caleb also shared statistics on gaps in science performance across gender, race/ethnicity, socio-economic status, and disabilities, indicating that the latter three of these are particularly potent factors that correlate to better or poorer performance under current standards and methods of teaching. The ultimate goal is really to better align educational practices to level the playing field and help students, teachers, parents, and educators alike to see science as a critical part of education.
After Chabot, we headed to Oakland Chinatown for a Laos-Thai ASB-family-style-meal and then to Vampire Penguin for dessert and Julie’s spotlight stories! It seemed like everyone got a lot out of the discussions we had today both at the Hall and at Chabot and was very excited to see how all the research, trends, and topics we learned about in class have been tackled by such institutions. We’re off to the Cal Academy of Science and the Tech again tomorrow for our second to last day already! Crazy how quickly this week is going by, but hope the immense learning experience will continue for the next few days and beyond.
