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+使赠款奖励采取转型步骤，以告知，改进和推进知识基础，实践和非正式STEM学习经验和环境的设计。SL+的长期目标是扩大对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的原则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。虽然它已经相当好地建立了认知是交织在一起的身体在物理世界中的相互作用，应用这些想法的有效的学习环境的设计的精确手段仍然是新兴的。本项目的一个主要目标是通过实验各种具身认知活动和物理学习配置来了解早期学习者的非正式学习环境的最佳条件。该项目将确定更多从业人员/研究合作，并将制定一套研究计划，由非正式学习实践者和认知科学家组成的多个团队制定在美国和英国，这将作为第二阶段的研究提交。这一规划期的主要活动包括组织一系列研讨会，将非正式学习教育工作者和具身认知研究人员聚集在一起，进行深入讨论和设计实验，为研究问题、协议和测量工具的开发和完善提供信息。这些讨论将通过观察幼儿与草河互动而进行，草河是一个展览原型，其中体现认知的原则嵌入其设计中。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研究新模式的开发计划，其中多个组织的从业者/研究团队的星座调查对非正式学习实践和研究具有重要意义的主题，这些主题有可能导致一个强大的研究机构，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.