Analyzing Science Education in the United Kingdom: Taking a System-Wide Approach

Increasing evidence suggests that individuals develop their understanding of science concepts in and out of school, using varied community resources and networks. Thus in contrast to historic research approaches that focus exclusively on single organizations and/or educational events, the current paper presents exploratory research in which we utilized specific community ecology analytical tools and approaches to describe and analyze the U.K. science education community as a whole. Data suggest that overall the U.K. science education community is highly interconnected, and collaborative within individual sectors and moderately interconnected and collaborative between sectors; schools and to a lesser degree universities were outliers to this pattern. An important conclusion was that management to maximize the effectiveness of science education the U.K. science education community would involve support for continued diversification of the number of science education entities in the system and encouragement of reciprocally collaborative, synergistic relationships. We posit that systemic research enables a broader, more comprehensive view of a system's strengths and weaknesses, offering useful insights into the structure and functioning of science education activities; insights that could help researchers, practitioners, and policy makers improve the overall quality of science education delivery for all

Characterising online museum users: a study of the National Museums Liverpool museum website

Museums are increasing access to their collections and providing richer user experiences via web-based interfaces. However, they are seeing high numbers of users looking at only one or two pages within 10 s and then leaving. To reduce this rate, a better understanding of the type of user who visits a museum website is required. Existing models for museum website users tend to focus on groups that are readily accessible for study or provide little detail in their definitions of the groups. This paper presents the results of a large-scale user survey for the National Museums Liverpool museum website in which data on a wide range of user characteristics were collected regarding their current visit to provide a better understanding of their motivations, tasks, engagement and domain knowledge. Results show that the frequently understudied general public and non-professional users make up the majority (approximately 77%) of the respondents

Trial-and-error, Googling and talk: Engineering students taking initiative out of class

A review of the science education literature identifies the importance of outreach in raising public awareness of science while providing students with contextually relevant and meaningful science in ways that enhance their school experiences. The National Virtual School of Emerging Sciences (NVSES) provided just such an opportunity. Established throughout 2012-2014, it enabled 429 secondary students from across Australia to engage with the emerging sciences of Astrophysics and Nanotechnology. Creation of 'virtual' science classrooms allowed small groups of students to connect synchronously twice a week under the guidance of subject specialist teachers. To prepare for this context, teachers modified their face-to-face pedagogies to suit the range of technologies readily accessible in the virtual classroom. This chapter discusses how these different pedagogies were utilised by the NVSES teachers to develop lessons that created unique experiences for students within the virtual classroom environment. Data collected from pre and post student surveys, interviews with the NVSES teachers and access to digitally-recorded lessons demonstrate that while NVSES was highly successful, there were challenges for all involved

The Ghost in the Museum Website: Investigating the General Public's Interactions with Museum Websites

Museums are increasing access to their collections via web-based interfaces, but are seeing high numbers of users looking at only one or two pages within 10 s and then leaving. To decrease this rate, a better understanding of the type of user who visits a museum web-site is required. Existing models for museum web-site users tend to focus on a small number of groups or provide little detail in their definitions of the groups. This paper presents the results of a large scale museum user survey in which data on a wide range of user characteristics was collected to provide well founded definitions for the user group's motivations, tasks, engagement, and domain knowledge. The results highlight that the general public and non-professional users make up the majority of users and allow us to clearly define these two groups