Meeting Abstract
The Falk and Dierking 2010 report shockingly indicates that the average American spends only 5% of their time engaged in formal education and acquires most of their STEM knowledge outside of the classroom. Additionally, research shows that US public STEM literacy ranks below that of many other developed nations. With a national decline in visitation to libraries, museums and other sites of public learning, how can we utilize existing centers for informal education and tap into the other 95% of opportunities for public engagement and STEM education? Our nation’s zoos, aquaria and national parks, which still attract a large audience of willing participants may provide an answer. iSWOOP is a new, NSF-funded, pilot initiative that seeks to create a model of professional development for national park interpreters to help advance STEM learning for the more than 275 million annual visitors of America’s National Parks. iSWOOP is based on a collaboration among scientists, informal science educators and park interpretive rangers. They all work together to design engaging and informative interpretive programs on scientific topics of relevance and interest to the general public with a focus on the process of science. In this first phase of development, the project is discovering best practices that allow visitor engagement through visual storytelling, inquiry and facilitated dialog. Piloted at Carlsbad Caverns National Park, we anticipate the model to grow to other iconic park sites around the US. As the research team looks to scale up the project, we seek to address the challenges and opportunities for scientists, and education researchers to create a support framework that receives buy in from all parties for the advancement of informal STEM learning.
