Move2Learn: Engaging Preschool Scientists through Embodiment and Technology

作为NSF推进非正式STEM学习计划的一部分，科学学习+是美国和英国基金会之间的合作伙伴关系。“科学学习+”提供的资助奖励采取变革性措施，为非正式STEM学习经验和环境的知识库、实践和设计提供信息、改进和推进。SL+的长期目标是扩大STEM的参与，更好地理解、加强和协调STEM参与和终身学习。这是一个科学学习+规划项目，将制定一项研究计划，调查如何将具身认知原理应用于非正式学习环境的设计，以支持幼儿（2-6岁）参与和理解科学主题和概念。虽然认知与身体在物理世界中的相互作用是交织在一起的这一观点已经得到了很好的证实，但将这些观点应用于有效学习环境设计的精确方法仍在出现。实验各种具身认知活动和身体学习配置，以了解早期学习者非正式学习环境的最佳条件是什么，这是本项目的主要目标。在计划拨款期间，该项目将确定更多的从业者/研究合作，并将为一系列研究制定研究计划，这些研究将由美国和英国的多个非正式学习从业者和认知科学家团队制定，并将作为第二阶段研究提交。这一规划时期的主要活动包括组织一系列研讨会，将非正式学习教育者和具身认知研究者聚集在一起，进行深入的讨论和设计实验，这将为研究问题、协议和测量工具的发展和完善提供信息。这些讨论将通过观察幼儿与“草之河”互动的过程来进行，“草之河”是一个展示原型，其设计中嵌入了具身认知原则。规划期间将由来自美国和英国的非正式学习实践者和认知科学家组成的合作团队领导。该小组还将监督非正式STEM研究新模式的发展计划，在该模式中，多个组织的从业者/研究团队将调查对非正式学习实践和研究具有重要意义的主题，这些主题有可能产生强大的研究体系，为非正式学习空间的设计提供信息。

As part of NSF's Advancing Informal STEM Learning program, Science Learning+ is a partnership among US and UK foundations. Science Learning+ makes grant awards that take transformational steps to inform, improve, and advance the knowledge bases, practices, and design of informal STEM learning experiences and environments. The long-term SL+ goals are to broaden participation in STEM and to better understand, strengthen, and coordinate STEM engagement and lifelong learning. This is a Science Learning+ planning project that will develop a research plan for investigating how applying the principles of embodied cognition to the design of informal learning environments can support young children's (ages 2-6) engagement with, and understanding of, science topics and concepts. While it has been fairly well established that cognition is intertwined with the body's interaction in the physical world, the precise means of applying these ideas to the design of effective learning environments is still emerging. Experimenting with various embodied cognition activities and physical learning configurations to understand what conditions are optimal for informal learning environments for early learners is a major objective of this project.During the planning grant period, the project will identity additional practitioner/research collaborations and will develop research plans for a suite of studies to be enacted by multiple teams of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists across the US and UK and that will be submitted as a Phase 2 research. The primary activities of this planning period include organizing a series of workshops that bring together informal learning educators and embodied cognition researchers to engage in deep discussion and design experimentation that will inform the development and refinement of research questions, protocols, and measurement tools. These discussions will be informed by observations of young children as they interact with the River of Grass, an exhibit prototype in which principles of embodied cognition are embedded in its design. The planning period will be led by a collaborative team of informal learning practitioners and cognitive scientists from the US and UK. This group will also oversee plans for the development of a new model for informal STEM research in which a constellation of practitioner/research teams across multiple organizations investigates topics of importance to informal learning practice and research that have the potential to result in a robust body of research that informs the design of informal learning spaces.