Impact of Informal Science Education on Children's Attitudes About Science Documents
Laurel Mayhew, and
Noah D. Finkelstein
The JILA Physics Frontier Center Partnerships for Informal Science Education in the Community (PISEC) provides informal afterschool inquiry-based science teaching opportunities for university participants with children typically underrepresented in science. We focus on the potential for this program to help increase children's interest in science, mathematics, and engineering and their understanding of the nature of science by validating the Children's Attitude Survey, which is based on the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey  and designed to measure shifts in children's attitudes about science and the nature of science. We present pre- and post-semester results for several semesters of the PISEC program, and demonstrate that, unlike most introductory physics courses in college, our after- school informal science programs support and promote positive attitudes about science.
- Download PERC2010_Wulf.pdf - 37kb Adobe PDF Document
Published August 24, 2010
Last Modified November 10, 2010
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