The Status of Research on Learning Science within Informal Settings

The Board on Science Education (BOSE) conducted and facilitated an invitational planning conference for approximately 15 experts to examine the status of research on learning science within informal education settings. The National Science Foundation awarded a conference grant to support this invitational meeting. This meeting is a promising opportunity for invited leaders in the field of informal learning to think about the current knowledge base on learning guiding informal science environment. The kind and number of informal or free-choice environments has grown exponentially over the past 15 years to 20 years to include environmental centers, science and technology centers, nature centers, botanical gardens, aquariums, zoos, and museums as well as media-based offerings such as NOVA. The last research review on informal learning was completed a decade ago in 1994. This meeting provided leaders in the field with opportunity to consider the existing corpus of research studies focused on learning across informal environments and identified a series of questions that might lead to a future study which seeks to synthesis the existing research on learning within informal settings. The meeting was held on May 13, 2005 at the Keck Center of the National Academies (located in Washington, DC) and facilitated by Alan Friedman of the New York Hall of Science.

Meetings:

May 13, 2005

Agenda

Resources

Staff: