Engaging Science: Transforming Graduate Education through Public Engagement with Science

参与科学：通过公众参与科学改变研究生教育

• 批准号: 2224857
• 负责人: Angela Potochnik
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Cincinnati Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-10-01 至 2025-09-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2224857&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Engaging; Science; Transforming; Graduate; Education

Improved public engagement with science is needed to promote scientific literacy and support science-informed policies and practices to address society's critical issues. Further, scientists are increasingly called upon to engage in public outreach about their research. Many people with graduate degrees in science are employed in roles involving public outreach. For these reasons, education on conducting public engagement with science should be meaningfully integrated into STEM graduate education. This NSF Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) award to the University of Cincinnati will investigate the value of systematic instruction in public engagement with science for meaningful public engagement, interdisciplinary collaboration, and diversity and inclusion in STEM. The researchers will develop a 3-part educational sequence called the "Engaging Science" curriculum. The curriculum is innovative in its use of interdisciplinary collaboration, community partnership, and perspectives from the philosophy of science to provide graduate students with the background and skills needed to lead effective public engagement with science. This research project will rigorously examine the transformative impact of public engagement with science instruction, with the potential to advance the public reach of STEM disciplines and diversity and inclusion in STEM disciplines. The project will run three annual cycles of the Engaging Science curriculum with thirty graduate students in each cycle. The three part curriculum begins with an intensive workshop providing hands-on experience in a museum setting. A semester-long course then follows which culminates in outreach projects conducted by multidisciplinary teams. Third, and finally an internship with a community partner organization leads to an individual outreach project. A mixed-methods convergent parallel research design will be used to combine surveys, interviews, focus groups, and archival data. The study will examine the curriculum's potential to equip graduate students to engage public audiences more meaningfully. The research plan combines quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the unique and additive impact of each level of training on short- and long-term outcomes. This approach will facilitate the adaptation of the curriculum for implementation in diverse contexts.The Innovations in Graduate Education (IGE) program is focused on research in graduate education. The goals of IGE are to pilot, test and validate innovative approaches to graduate education and to generate the knowledge required to move these approaches into the broader community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

需要改善公众对科学的参与，以促进科学素养和支持了解科学的政策和做法，以解决社会的关键问题。此外，越来越多的科学家被要求对他们的研究进行公开宣传。许多拥有理科研究生学位的人受雇于与公众接触相关的职位。出于这些原因，关于开展公众参与科学的教育应该有意义地纳入STEM研究生教育。这项授予辛辛那提大学的NSF研究生教育创新(IGE)奖将调查在公共参与科学方面的系统指导对于有意义的公共参与、跨学科合作以及STEM中的多样性和包容性的价值。研究人员将开发一个由三部分组成的教育序列，称为“参与科学”课程。该课程在使用跨学科协作、社区伙伴关系和从科学哲学的角度为研究生提供领导公众有效参与科学所需的背景和技能方面具有创新性。这项研究项目将严格审查公众参与科学教育的变革影响，有可能促进STEM学科的公众影响以及STEM学科的多样性和包容性。该项目将运行三个年度周期的参与性科学课程，每个周期有30名研究生。课程分为三个部分，首先是一个密集的工作坊，提供博物馆环境下的实践经验。随后是为期一学期的课程，最终由多学科团队开展外展项目。第三，最后，在社区合作伙伴组织的实习将导致个人外展项目。将使用混合方法汇聚的平行研究设计来结合调查、访谈、焦点小组和档案数据。这项研究将考察该课程的潜力，使研究生能够更有意义地与公众接触。研究计划结合了定量和定性的方法，以检查每一级培训对短期和长期结果的独特和相加的影响。这一方法将促进课程的调整，以适应不同的背景。研究生教育创新(IGE)计划侧重于研究生教育的研究。IGE的目标是试验、测试和验证研究生教育的创新方法，并产生将这些方法推广到更广泛社区所需的知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。