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Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions

Despite the fact that most science learning takes place outside of school, little is known about how engagement in informal science learning (ISL) experiences affects learners’ knowledge, skill development, interest, or identities over long periods of time. Although substantial ISL research has docu...

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Autores principales: Staus, Nancy L., Falk, John H., Price, Aaron, Tai, Robert H., Dierking, Lynn D.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Singapore 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8090518/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s43031-021-00031-0
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author Staus, Nancy L.
Falk, John H.
Price, Aaron
Tai, Robert H.
Dierking, Lynn D.
author_facet Staus, Nancy L.
Falk, John H.
Price, Aaron
Tai, Robert H.
Dierking, Lynn D.
author_sort Staus, Nancy L.
collection PubMed
description Despite the fact that most science learning takes place outside of school, little is known about how engagement in informal science learning (ISL) experiences affects learners’ knowledge, skill development, interest, or identities over long periods of time. Although substantial ISL research has documented short-term outcomes such as the learning that takes place during a science center visit, research suggests that the genuine benefits of informal experiences are long-term transformations in learners as they pursue a “cascade” of experiences subsequent to the initial educational event. However, a number of major methodological challenges have limited longitudinal research projects investigating the long-term effects of ISL experiences. In this paper we identify and address four key issues surrounding the critical but challenging area of how to study and measure the long-term effects or impacts of ISL experiences: attribution, attrition, data collection, and analytic approaches. Our objective is to provide guidance to ISL researchers wishing to engage in long-term investigations of learner outcomes and to begin a dialogue about how best to address the numerous challenges involved in this work.
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spelling pubmed-80905182021-05-03 Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions Staus, Nancy L. Falk, John H. Price, Aaron Tai, Robert H. Dierking, Lynn D. Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res Position Paper Despite the fact that most science learning takes place outside of school, little is known about how engagement in informal science learning (ISL) experiences affects learners’ knowledge, skill development, interest, or identities over long periods of time. Although substantial ISL research has documented short-term outcomes such as the learning that takes place during a science center visit, research suggests that the genuine benefits of informal experiences are long-term transformations in learners as they pursue a “cascade” of experiences subsequent to the initial educational event. However, a number of major methodological challenges have limited longitudinal research projects investigating the long-term effects of ISL experiences. In this paper we identify and address four key issues surrounding the critical but challenging area of how to study and measure the long-term effects or impacts of ISL experiences: attribution, attrition, data collection, and analytic approaches. Our objective is to provide guidance to ISL researchers wishing to engage in long-term investigations of learner outcomes and to begin a dialogue about how best to address the numerous challenges involved in this work. Springer Singapore 2021-04-30 2021 /pmc/articles/PMC8090518/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s43031-021-00031-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Position Paper
Staus, Nancy L.
Falk, John H.
Price, Aaron
Tai, Robert H.
Dierking, Lynn D.
Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
title Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
title_full Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
title_fullStr Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
title_full_unstemmed Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
title_short Measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
title_sort measuring the long-term effects of informal science education experiences: challenges and potential solutions
topic Position Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8090518/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s43031-021-00031-0
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