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Druger, Marvin, Ed.Science for the Fun of It. A Guide to InformalScience Education.National Science Teachers Association, Washington,D.C.

ISBN-0-87355-074-988

137p.; Photographs may not reproduce well.National Science Teachers Association, 1742Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20009 ($15.00,10% discount on 10 or more).Collected Works - General (020) -- Books (010) --Guides - Non-Classroom Use (055)

MF01 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS.Educational Facilities; Educational Innovation;Educational Media; Educational Opportunities;Educational Television; *Elementary School Science;Elementary Secondary Education; *Mass Media;*Museums; *Nonformal Education; Periodicals; ProgramDescriptions; Science Education; *Secondary SchoolScience; *Zoos

School provides only a small part of a child's totaleducation. This book focuses on science learning outside of theclassroom. It consists of a collection of articles written by peoplewho are involved with sevaral types of informal science education.The value of informal science education extends beyond the mereacquisition of knowledge. Attitudes toward science can be greatlyinfluenced by science experiences outside of the classroom. Theintent of this book is to highlight some of the many out-of-schoolopportunities which exist including zoos, museums, television,magazines and books, and a variety of creative programs and projects.The 19 articles in this volume are organized into four major sectionsentitled: (1) "Strategies"; (2) "The Media"; (3) "Museums and Zoos";and (4) "Projects, Coop2titions, and Family Activities." Abibliography of 32 references on these topies is included. (CW)

Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made* from the original document.

Sciencefor the

Fun of ItA Guide to InformalScience Education

edited by Marvin Druger

National Science Teachers Association1742 Connecticut Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20009

3

Copyright © 1988 by the National Science Teachers Association, 1742 Connecticut Avenue,NW, Washington, DC 20009. All rights reserved. This volume may not be reproduced in wholeor in part in any form without written permission from the National Science TeachersAssociation.

This book has been produced by Special PublicationsNational Science Teachers Association1742 Connecticut Avenue, NWWashington, DC 20009

Edited by Cara Young and Crystal Hamann, associate editorsShirley Watt, managing editor

D signed by Chroma Design and Communications,Takoma Park, MD 20912

ISBN Number: 0-87355-074-9

7 Preface

10 Authors

18 Strategies20 Chapter 1. A Rationale

George Tressel

24 Chapter 2. Cognitive Psychology and Science LearningLauren 13. Resnick and Michelene T. H. Chi

32 Chapter 3. Challenges in Audience Research for Informal LearningValerie Crane

38 The Media40 Chapter 4. NOVA, Television, and Informal Science Education

Thomas Levenson, William R. Grant, and Paula Apsell

45 Chapter 5. Making Informal ContactKeith W. Mielke

51 Chapter 6. Behind the Scenes of Mr. WizardDon Herbert

57 Chapter 7. Science Writing in Its Age of Yellow JournalismJon Franklin

63 Chapter 8. Dusk in the Robot Museums: The Rebirth of ImaginationRay Bradbury

68 Museums and Zoos70 Chapter 9. The Zoo as Noah's Ark

Annette Berkovits

Contents 5

78 Chapter 10

83 Chapter 11

89 Chapter 12

96 Projects,98 Chapter 13

103

107

110

120

126

132

139

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

. Making the Most of the ZooPegi S. Harvey and Debra Erickson

. The Science Museum: Object Lessons in Informal EducationMichael Templeton

. The Muse in the ClassroomJoel N. Bloom

Competitions, and Family Activities. Hearing the Music of the Spheres: Informal Astronomy Education

Andrew Fraknoi

. Westinghouse Science Talent SearchEdward G. Sherburne, Jr.

. Training Young ResearchersSol Lander

Chapter 16.

Chapter 17.

Chapter 18.

Chapter 19.

Family Math: Making the Home an Environment for Problem SolvingKathleen Devaney

Fun with Science in Your CommunityPhyllis Katz

State Academies of Science: A Partnership with Programs for the GiftedLynn W. Glass

Toys, Books, and Other Science GiftsE. Wendy Saul

Bibliography

6 Contents

1 TIrrf

School provides only a small part of our total education. We learn from everything we do, in andout of school, and everything we do becomes part of what we are. Science for the Fun of It: AGuide to Informal Science Education focuses on science learning outside the classroom. Thebook consists of a collection of articles by people who are involved intimately with informal sci-ence education. The intent is to highlight some of the many out-of-school opportunities for learn-ing science so that readers can become more aware of these resources and use them more effec-tively. Such resources include zoos, museums, television, magazines and books, and a variety ofcreative programs and projects. We could include only a small sample of existing resources, butenough variety is here to indicate the educational value and diverse nature of these opportunities.

The educational value of informal science education extends beyond mere acquisition of knowl-edge. Attitudes toward science can be greatly influenced by science experiences beyond the class-room. The Natural History Museum in New York City was a favorite place for me to visit as ayoungster. I felt comfortable among the dinosaurs and large fishes and mammals. I could not hopeto learn everythingthere was too much to observe. The museum was a warehouse full of natu-ral history treasures that could not be memorized, but could be appreciated and enjoyed. The mu-seum was a place where I could live and breathe the past and present of the natural world and

Preface 7

contemplate its future. The museum imprinted me with feelings more than with information.These feelings would later spill over into formal science education in the classroom. Similarly, theresources described in this book do not replace formal science education; they supplement andenhance it.

Informal science education resources also can provide a strong foundation for learning science.Like many of you, I have always enjoyed visiting zoos. As a youngster. I didn't visit zoos to learnabout animals. I went simply to see animals and to have fun, but I learned about animals In spiteof my nonacademic motives. I have visited many zoos around the world. I still visit zoos to see ani-mals and to have fun, but I learn more because I have a history of visiting zoos and a frame of ref-erence about animals and biology. Academic learning and zoo visits have become integral parts ofmy science education. Thus, what we experience outside the classroom contributes in a meaning-ful way to our overall knowledge and appreciation ofscience.

Informal science education resources also appeal to peoples' imagination and curiosity. The Bal-timore Aquarium is indeed a wonder. How can anyone fail to be amazed by the diversity andadaptetIness of life in the sea while exploring this aquarium? I press my nose against the glassand become part of thr world of undersea life. i fantasize about being attacked by a giant shark,and repulsing the attaL., with a punch on the nose with my bare fist. I imagine wandering theoceans with the giant sea turtles. I even see myself teaching biology to a school of brightly coloredfish and giving them exams. Anything is possible as I float through the aquarium sea, stimulatedby the unreality of reality.

Participating in informal science education may be pleasurable and exciting, but it is also im-portant to think about how such resources can be used to gain the most educational benefits. I re-call observing an elementary school teacher with her class of wide-eyed youngsters standing un-der the towering Brontosaurus reconstruction at a museum. This huge dinosaur ;Lad a very smallbrain. The teacher was intent upon making this point clear to her students Is the dinosaur'sbrain large or small?," she asked. In unison, the awed children responded, "It's laaarge!" "That'sright," echoed the teacher, "It's smaaall!"

Such misuses of informal science teaching resources probably occur more often than one wouldlike to see. 'lb help make Informal science education resources more useful, we have included"Helpful Hints" at the end of chapters, where appropriate. We hope that readers will refer tothese suggestions to help enhance informal learning.

Science for the Pun of It is divided into four sections. The first section provides reasons for andbackground information on If..arning science outside the classroom. The secondsection looks atthe media as a resource and includes chapters on television and science publications. The thirdsection focuses on museums and zoos. The last section presents a variety of special projects andcreative approaches to science learning outside the classroom.

Publishing this book would not have been possible without the competent assistance of theNSTA staff In particular, I thank Shirley Watt, managing editor of NSTA's Special Publications,and Cam Yo,mg and Crystal Hamann, associate editors. George Tressel and Michael Templeton ofthe National Science Foundation were particularly helpful in providing suggestions. George Tres-sel also compiled the bibliography on informal science education. I thank Leroy Lee, past-presi-dent of NSTA, for supporting the initiation of the project. Finally, my wife Pat deserves specialthanks for providing the personal and professional advice that only a spouse can provide, and be-cause she rarely receives recognition for all the exceptional things she does.

8 Preface

I hope you enjoy reading this bookthat it will help you become more aware of the value of sci-ence beyond school, and that such awareness and subsequent involvement will enrich your lifeand the lives of y.Jur students or children.

Marvin Druger, editor

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Preface 9

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Paula Apsell has been executive producer of NOVA since 1984. During her tenure, the serieshas won several major awards, including one AAAS/Westinghouse Seenco. Journalism Awardand two national Emmys. From 1980-1984 she was the senior medical producer for WCVB-TVin Boston, and sne received an Ohio State Award for producing the documentary Someone IOnce Knew, on Alzheimer's disease. From 1983-1984 Apsell studied at MTT on a VannevarBush Fellowship. Apsell joined the staff of NOVA in 1975, advancing from production assistantto staff producer, in which capacity she produced eight NOVA films.

Annette BerkovLa, born in the Khirgiz Republic, U.S.S.R., received her primary education inPoland. She completed her science education in the United States, first at the Bronx High Schoolof Science, and then at the City College of the City University of New York. She received a mas-ters degree in educational administration and supervision from Manhattan College in New York.

Berkovits joined the staff of the New York Zoological Society in 1972. As director of educationshe is responsible for all of the Bronx Zoo's formal and informal interpretive services. These in-clude adult education and school programs, curriculum development projects, audiovisual ser-

10 Authors

Iv

vices, consultation on deveiopment of new exhibit graphics, and international conservation edu-cation. She is also responsible for managing the Camel Rides operation and the world-famousChildren's Zoo. Since 1981, Berkovits has been projetA director/principal investigator on severalmajor National Science Foundation grants, including the nationally and internationally recog-nized Project W.I.Z.E. (Wildlife Inquiry Through Zoo Education). She serves as a panelist, grantreviewer, and consultant for agencies such as The New York State Council on the Arts, the Insti-tute of Museum Services, the National Science Foundation. and several museums. An avid worldtraveler and student of museum education, she has visited zoos in 16 countries. AnnetteBerkovitt is listed In the 1988 edition of Who's Who in American Women.

Joel N. Bloom is president and director of the Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadel-phia. Active in both national and international museum professional activities, he is currentlypresident of the American Association of Museums and past president of the Association ofScience-Technology Centers. He chairs the U.S. National Committee of the International Councilof Museums. He is past president of the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and a member ofthe Mayor's Cultural Advisory Council of Philadelphia. Under his leadership, the Franklin Insti-tute has been a pioneer in training science teachers and developing and distributing hands-onscience kit . for classroom use. Bloom was cochair of the American Association of Museums'Commission on Museums for a New Century and a member of the Museum Advisory Panel of theNational Endowment for the Arts and the National Science Foundation Advisory Committee forScience Education.

Ray Bradbury has published 23 books of stories, novels, poems, and plays since he began pub-lishing at age 20. He began writing when he was 12 years old. Perhaps his best-known book isThe Martian Chronicles, dealing with the colonization of Mars. In 1964 he created the historicalscenario for the U.S. Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. He was creative consultant onSpaceship Earth, a history of communication from ancient to modern times, at Florida's EPCOTCenter. He wrote the dramatic history of astronomy for the Air and Space Museum in Los Ange-les, and he created the oral text for an outline of the Space Age for the U.S. Pavilion in Toronto,Ontar'o, in 1986. In 1954 he wrote the screenplay for John Huston's motion picture Moby Dick.

Michelene T. H. Chi is an associate professor of psychology and a senior scientist at the Learn-ing Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She re-ceived both a Spencer Fellowship and the Boyd R. McCandless Young Scientist Award for distin-guished theoretical contribution and programmatic research efforts in the area of the psychologyof learning. Her current research most relevant to informal science learning examines the ques-tion of how students' self-generated explanations of examples or visual displays can fostergreater understanding of domain theories, as well as revise their prior naive conceptions. Shehas served as secretary of Division C of the American Educational Research /Association, and shecurrently serves on the editorial boards of Cognitive Development and Human Development.Her publications include a volume she edited entitled The Nature of Expertise.

Valerie Crane is president of Research Communications, a company established to serve thecommunications needs of broadcasting, business, industry, and government. As president, Dr.

Authors 11

Crane brings extensive experience with a wide variety of media production agencies in both tele-vision and radio.

Dr. Crane has written a book chapter on content development in television, published by Aca-demic Press, and has recently coir.r!ztecl a book chapter on formative research for teletext. Shehas organized and conducted a series of seminars on audience research for a variety of academicinstitutions and production agencies and is listed in Who's Who in American Women, Who'sWho in the East, and the International Register of Profiles. She also serves as a member ofAAAS's Committee on Public Understanding of Science and Technology, and in 1988 she willbegin her term as representative-at-large for AECT. She was also field editor of the research col-umn cf the National Association of Educational Broadcasters from 1979-1981.

In 1975, Dr. Crane became a senior research consultant at Heuristics, Inc., a research andevaluation firm based in Wellesley, Massachusetts. In 1978, she established and directed theMedia Division Public Affairs Research Institute. As director of the Media Division, she obtainedand managed contracts with organizations, including the Agency for Instructional Television,Corporation for Public Broadcasting, WGBH-TV; Massachusetts Educational Television, Office ofEducation, WCBV-TV; and independent television producers.

After completing her bachelors degree at Bennington College in Vermont in 1966, she taughtelementary school for four years and obtained her masters in education from the University ofVermont (1968). In 1972, she completed her Ph.D. at Fordham University in New York in thefield of educational psychology and research with a concentration in social learning and motiva-tion.

Kathleen Devaney is an editor for the Holmes Group, the national consortium of American re-search universities committed to the reform of their teacher-education programs. She has been awriter, editor, and program manager ir, education for 25 years. Her experience includes analyz-ing curriculum programs and directing the Teachers' Centers Exchange at the Far West Labora-tory for Educational Development and Research in San Francisco. Devaney's chapter on FamilyMath is based on her work as a writer and consultant to the EQUALS and Family Math pro-grams at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley.

Marvin Druger is professor of biology and science education and chair of the science teachingdepartment at Syracuse University in New York. He has been active in many professional sci-ence teaching organizations. He was president of the Association for the Education of Teachersin Science (AETS) and the Society for College Science Teachers (SCST). He was director of theCollege Division of NSTA and a member of the executive committee. He also served on manyother NSTA committees. He served as chair of Section Q (Education) and Council Delegate of theAAAS, and is a member of the AAAS Committee on Council Affairs. He was program director,Science and Mathematics Education Networks Program, for the NSF. He is currently chair of theAETS editorial board of Science Education.

Dr. Druger has had extensive experience with radio and television and hosted a public serviceradio interview program called Druger's Zoo for more than 20 years. He also developed a seriesof television programs concerning careers called Druger's Working World for Newchannels Ca-ble Television Network in the Syracuse, New York, area.

Dr. Druger was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Sydney in Australia. He has received

12 Authors

1 4

numerous awards for scl. ,:e teaching, including the NSTA 1988 Gustav-Ohaus award for inno-vations in college science teaching and the first Alumni Award for excellence in teaching fromSyracuse University (1987).

Debra Erickson is an education programmer for the San Diego Zoo and has a B.A. fr ,,ologyfrom Scripps College and an M.A. in educational technology from San Diego State University.She has been involved in informal acience education for the past eight years.

Jon Franklin is a journalist, author, teacher, lecturer, social philosopher, literary theoretician,and the only writer in history to win two inaugural Pulitzer Prizes. Although he has writtenahtout a wide range of subjects, he is probably best known for his work on the sciences and theirimpact on modern life and if-Inking. Franklin spent 14 years as a science writer for the Balti-more Sun: currently he is a professor at the University of Maryland's College of Journalism,where he teaches a variety of courses including reporting, literary journalism, and science writ-ing. He has written five books: Guinea Pig Doctors (Morrow), Not Quite a Miracle (Doubleday).Shocktrauma (St. Martins), The Molecules of the Mind (Atheneum), and Writing for Story(Atheneum). His latest and most controversial book, The Molecules of the Mind, takes a pene-trating look e the new science of molecular psychology and the mechanistic view of the humancondition being generated by its discovery. A forthcoming book, America in Amber, will be pub-lished by Simon and Schuster in 1990 and deals with the American culture's fear of the futureand the need for a new American dream. He is also working on an introductory psychology text-book. a book an wilting, and a book on astronomy.

Andrew Fraknoi is the executive officer of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the editorof Mercury magazine and The Universe in the Classroom newsletter. He teaches astronomyand physics at San Francisco State University and has orgarozed and taught more than a dozenworkshops on astronomy teaching in grades 3-12. Books he has written or edited include Uni-verse in the Classroom, The Universe at Your Fingertips, The Planets, and The Universe(the last two are collections of science articles and science fiction stories published by BantamBooks).

Lynn W. Glass received his Ph.D. in science education from the University of Iowa in 1970. Dr.Glass is a professor of secondary education at Iowa State University. Much of his professional ef-fort in the past decade has focused on developing networks to support scierze education at thelocal, state, and national levels. He is director of the Iowa Alliance for Science and the Iowa Ju-nior Academy of Science. Through these organizations he has helped develop and implementseveral science education projects involving members of both the public and private sectors.

William R. Grant has served as the executive editor of NOVA since 1985. From 1983-1985.'1,rant was the managing editor and series editor for FRONTLINE, the public affairs documentaryseries produced by WGBH-TV. Grant began his career in print joiirnalism, and he served as areporter and editor for the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Detroit Free Press, and the SanFrancisco Chronicle. He has published many award-winning articles, and was a Ni'man Fellowat Harvard University in 1979.

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Authors 13

Pegi S. Harvey is director of education for the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park, where shehas supervised educational and interpretive activ!ties for the past eight years. She holds a B.A.with Honors in Education from Arizona State University and a Certificate of Studies from OxfordUniversity in England. She has been involved in zoo education for 15 years.

Don Herbert, of the Mr. Wizard television shows, has branched into other areas, including de-signing science kits on such topics as chemistry, ecology, crystal growing, and electronics. Healso has written a series of books featuring experiments that children can do. His latest book,Mr. Wizard's Supermarket Science, was published in 1980 by Random House. He has re-searched, written, and produced 20 classroom films designed to stimulate students' interest inscience by having them respond in some way while they watch the films.

Born in Waconia, Minnesota, Herbert spent his childhood in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Trained tobe a science teacher at the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, Herbert instead chose a careerin communications that began with six years of acting and writing in Chicago radio. As a captainduring World War II, he flew 56 missions as a bomber pilot and was awarded the Air Medal withthree Oak Leaf Clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

"Television viewers think of me as a scientist, and scientists consider me a television person-ality," Herbert explained. "But I'm actually an interpreter who enjoys the challenge of makingscience and technology enjoyable, appreciated, and understood by the average person of any age.I concentrate on the production, and my wife Norma handles the business side. We enjoy work-ing as a team."

Don Herbert is president of Prism Productions, Inc., and Norma Herbert is executive vice presi-dent. They work out of the Mr. Wizard Studio in Bell Canyon, California.

Phyllis Katz left her career as an English teacher in New York City to pursue her interest in lan-guage development and the sciences. She created and continues to develop the Hands-On-Sci-ence Program with a very dedicated staff in Rockville, Maryland. Her role includes research,writing and teacher training. She has administered the program's growth from a local PTA ex-periment to national distribution with the help of National Science Foundation funding. Her hus-band Victor a mathematics professor, and their three children sustain the inquiry method dur-ing extracurricular hours.

Sol Lander contributed to informal science education by developing "city street" ecology with Bi-ology Regents classes in New York City. After obtaining his bachelor of science degree fromFlorida-Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, and his masters degree from Brigham Young Uni-versity in Provo, Utah, Lander embarked on a career of science teaching and supervision in NewYork City that spanned 33 years. He taught high school biology and general science, then heldthe positions of assistant principal, biology and general science; director of science, K-12; andassistant examiner, New York City Board of Examiners.

As director of science, Lander promoted training of elementary and junior hign school scienceteachers. He also developed afterschool precollege training for minority students and supervisedextracurricular biology clubs. Lander currently serves as a parttime consultant to the New YorkCity Board of Examiners.

14 Authors

Thomas Levenson is an associate producer of NOVA. From 1986-1988 he was thc science edi-tor for NOVA, and before that he was a Macy Fellow in Science Broadcast Journalism atWGBH-TV. Before becoming a television journalist, Levenson worked for Time and Discovermagazines. He published an article on a related subject to the chapter in this book called "Com-municating Science, a Media Dilemma" in the January 1988 issue of the journal ClimaticChange. His first book, Ice Time: Climate, Science, and Life or Earth, will be published byHarper & Row in April 1989.

Keith W. Mielke is vice president for research at the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) inNew York City. His responsibilities include supervising formative research for all of CTW's edu-cational series, Sesame Street, 3-2-1 CONTACT, and Square One TV, as well as other projectsnow under development. Before coming to CTW in 1977, he was a professor at Indiana Universi-ty's Institute for Communications Research and the Department of Telecommunications. A na-tive of Oklahoma, Dr. Mielke's graduate studies include an M.S. in television and radio at Syra-cuse University, and a Ph.D. in communication research at Michigan State University.

Lauren B. Resnick is professor of psychology and education and director of the Learning Re-search and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. ProfessorResnick's primary interest is the emerging field of the cognitive psychology of instruction, andher major current research focuses on mathematics and science learning. She has publishedwidely on these and other topics, including reading, intelligence, and the social functions of test-ing. She is the founder and editor of Cognition and Instruction, a major new journal in the field.

E. Wendy Saul teaches in the Education Department at the University of Maryland, BaltimoreCounty. Her book Science Fare: An Illustrated Guide & Catalog to Toys, Books and Activities

for Kids (Harper & Row, 1986) was named as one of the outstanding books of the year by theeditors of Booklist. She is currently completing work on an edited volume entitled Vital Connec-tions: Children, Science and Books, which the Library of Congress will publish in 1989.

Edward G. Sherburne, Jr., is director of Science Service, a nonprofit corporation founded in1921. Its major activities are the publication of Science News, a weekly m- lazine with a circula-tion of more than 200,000, and a Science Youth Activities program for precollege students,which includes the International Science and Engineering Fair, the Westinghouse Science TalentSearch, and the Directory of Student Science Training Programs for High-Ability PrecollegeStudents.

Michael Templeton is program director of the National Science Foundation's Informal ScienceEducation program, which supports out-of-school education projects in science and mathematicsfor both children and adults. The program received more than 313 million in awards in fiscalyear 1988. Before joining the NSF, Templeton served successively as director of scienc: at thePacific Science Center in Seattle, executive director of the Association of Science-TechnologyCenters in Washington, D.C., and executive director of the Oregon Museum of Science and In-dustry in Portland, Oregon.

He holds a B.S. in mathematics from Portland State University and an M.S. in physics from

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Authors 15

the University of Washington. His long-standing interest in science communication in museumsand informal settings is reflected in service on board and advisory committees for several na-tional orgenizatious and projects, extensive experience as a museum consultant, and service onthe editorial board of the Museum Studies Journal.

George INT.Arel, manager of the National Science Foundation's precollege research and develop-ment efforts, is responsible for inschool curriculum and informal learning from such channels asbroadcasting, journalism, and personal experience in museums and other activities.

As director of the Pub' tic Understanding of Science Program, he helped to de.elop such pro-grams as NOVA, 3-2-1 CONTACT, Square One TV, The Brain, and National Public Radio's sci-ence news coverage, as well as How About, NSF's successful venture into science news report-ing on con-nercial television.

He played a significant role in establishing the Association of Science Technology Centers(ASCT), the first organization of science centers, and has instituted innovative programs of cost-sharing, exhibit replication, and traveling exhibits. He is an honorary Fellow of the AmericanAssociation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and ASTC, and chairs the AAAS's PublicUnderstanding of Science and itchnology Committee and the Steering Committee of theFernback Museum of Natural History.

In his many years of film and television production, he has received numerous awards fromworld film festivals, including Chicago, Atlanta, Edinburgh, and Brussels. In 1964 he directedthe U.S. film program for the Atoms-for-Peace Conference and has designed numerous pieces oftelevision and film production equipment.

16 Author:,

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1A RationaleGeorge TresselNational Science FoundationWashington, D.C.

In a wish-list world, our children would come toschool ready and eager to learn, prepared with abackground of experience and basic concepts,supported by encouraging parents and friends,and confident that they can learn and succeed ifthey work hard. Schools would then encourageand reinforce these attitudes and habits, addingskills and knowledge to produce adults who arediligent and prepared for continued learningthroughout their lives.

20 Science for the Fun of It

In their earliest years, children should learn toexplore the world and how it works, developingself-confidence and zest for thinking and learning.In their middle school years, they should begin totransfer this zest into skills and abilities to articu-late questions and to design experiments. Grad-ually, they should encounter increasing demandsin content. skills, problem solving, and integratingand interpreting new knowledge.

However, little of this really takes place. Most

1

children hay., almost no formal exposure toscience until middle or high school when theyhave "opportunities" to take subjects like botany.zoology, chemistry, and physicsfor which theysometimes have almost no preparation. By age 10most children decide that science is not for them:it is too "difficult" and "dull." Science has no realmeaning for them. It is something that other peo-ple dopeople who look like Einstein. Science isfor men with long hair and white coats who do dif-ficult and dangerous work. Consider these essaysby young children (part of the formative researchfor 3-2-1 CONTACT).

I would not like to be a scientist because Iwould not like to do what they do. They getup early in the morning. I can't get up earlyin the morning ... I would not like to be ascientist because I would not like to have tolearn all the chemicals. Learn them the waythey write them like this: CO2. H2O. C06. Howwould you like to write all of them and mem-orize them too?

Michael. age 11

I am a scientist. I wake up in the morningvery tired. I get dressed. I eat breakfast. I go tothe laboratory. I park the car and push a but-ton so my boss can tell I am here. I go to myoffice and do some paperwork. I have ameeting at 9:30. My friend and I have dug upsome. dinosaurs bones. After that I eat lunchand then go to work. After a hard day's work,Igo home!

Cynthia, age 8

This discouraging picture need not be. Youngchildren enter school eager and curious aboutscience: if we fail to cultivate these qualities. theychange. Children come to dread the demands oftaxing formal studies, memorizing facts that seemdifficult and irrelevant. They take only sciencecourses required for high school graduation or col-lege entrance.

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Obviously. this is not true of all children. Whichchildren go on to succeed? The ones who chosethe right parentsparents who bought thembooks and toys. who took them to museums andencouraged their curiosity. who praised themwhen they showed zest and talent. who constantlyprovided stimulus. information. resources. andpraise.

Our educational system selects and rewardschildren who are eager. enthusiastic. and well pre-pared by their parents outside of school. Often.these children are the sons and daughters of thesocially and culturally affluent. We must changethis. We cannot afford a system that simply selectsand cultivates. We must build a well-planned and .

well-rounded system. both in school and out. Par-ents are important. but the quality of educationand the potential for success should not dependso much on their insight and effort.

We must provide stimulating and rewardingopportunities outside of school for all children:television programs that capture the imaginationand introduce the exciting puzzles. concepts, andfacts of science: museums where children canexplore. discover. and experience the joy of learn-ing in a "no fail" environment: books and toys thateducat- ad entertain at the same time: excitingclubs and competi dons that prove "I can do it if Iwork hard." Supported by a consistent and coher-ent pattern of formal education. a rich environ-ment of informal learning can help make our sys-tem truly one of education instead of selection. Ifwe are successful. all children will share the atti-tude of this 11-year-old girl:

I would like to be a scientist who tries to curediseases. I know it would be very hard andtake a lot of work, but I am willing to do it ...Our science teacher said that all a scientistfinds out in his lifetime would take about abillion pages if you put it in a book.

This book is a tribute co the progress we aremaking in pursuing these goals. The institutions

A Rationale 21

of informal education are some of the brightestassets of -nerican education. Clubs, activities,competitions, and mentors encourage and culti-vate the growth of talent and genius. In the pastdecade, museums, media, and science organiza-tions have made enormous gains. They havebecome leaders in using recreation for teachingand learning, both by children and adults.

Science on IblevisionThe model established by Sesame Street has

been developed and replicated in series like Elec-tric Company, Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1 CON-TACT, and Square One TV. Today, substantialnumbers of young people watch these series andlearn to enjoy reading about science and solvingproblems. Parents are learning too, as they watchover their children's shoulcic.rs. Currently, 50 per-cent of all 4- to 12-year-olds watch 3-2-1 CONTACTperiodically; 13 percent watch twice a week (Crane,1987).

Gradually, we are accumulating very encourag-ing information on the effects of such recreationalviewing. Ideally, we would like to see televisionviewing followed up with direct hands-on expe-rience and activities in places like science muse-ums and clubs. Fortunately, this pattern doeshappen. More than half of the consistent viewersof 3-2-1 CONTACT engage in some specific activityafterwards; most often, they go to a sciencemuseum with their parents.

Science in Museums and CentersIn the past few years science museums have

grown in 'lumber, sophistication, and importance.The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicagoplanted the seeds of this trend at the turn of thecentury when it emulated the hands-on style andphilosophy of the Deutches Museum in Munich.Since then, places like Frank Oppenheimer's SanFrancisco Exploratorium have raised recreationallearning to a new art form. Today, people fromaround the world look to the United States forexamples of the most creative, innovative, and


sophisticated examples of informal education.Almost every science center has a "discovery

room" where young children can explore and playscientist. The Boston Children's Museum has car-ried this concept to a grand scale. The entiremuseum is planned to deal with children's mostimportant interests and concerns, such as howthings work, how things grow, how different peo-ple live--even sensitive topics such as dying. Herethe serious business of learning is presented asplay. Children play together on an "assembly line"to make toys and learn the abstract concepts ofcooperation and planning. They learn a tenderrespect for real American Indian artifacts and thestyle of life in a Japanese tea room. Or they takehome fascinating scrap material donated by localmanufacturers, so the experience of experiment-ing and discovering will continue.

When a museum like the Center of Science andIndustry in Columbus, Ohio, invents a new tech-nique, such as a weekend "science camp-in" forGirl Scouts, the idea is instantly copied and embel-lished. For example, The Lawrence Hall of Sciencehas now developed materials for Boy Scout andGirl Scout leaders to teach outdaor biology. In Phil-adelphia. the Franklin Institute Museum adaptedthe concept, and now area teachers bring theirsleeping bags for an exciting weekend in the class-room where nobody fails. Perhaps the best com-plement to this pattern is the flow of discovery-learning techniques into more traditional institu-tions. Staid and old-fashioned natural historymuseumseven zoos and aquariaare beginningto find ways to challenge the visitor to becomemore involved, and to learn "by accident." Today, ahealthy network of talent is working in this area,and new ideas spread overnight.

Science in Clubs and CommunityToday, we are extending this pattern through a

variety of activity and hobby groups. More than ahalf-million Girl Scouts have participated in camp-ins and similar programs sponsored by theColumbus Center of Science and Industry and 16

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other museums. The Chicago Urban League con-ducts "Math Counts' competitions to encourageeconomically disadvantaged students in mathe-matics. Two years ago, the Girls Clubs of Americainitiated "Operation S.MART." (Science, Math,and Relevant Technology) to encourage girls'interest and ultimately, to integrate math andscience into all Girls Clubs programs.

These programs are especially important forwomen and minorities whose involvement isincreasingly critical to our technological future.They are the ones who tend to be ignored. to nothave the "right parents," and who are subtly led toexpect failure. Too often the expectation isself-fulfilling.

We cannot afford to let this happen. By the year2000, one-third of the U.S. population will benonwhite. Even today, the 100 largest school sys-tems enroll almost half of all the minority studentsin the country, and 23 out of our 25 largest schooldistricts comprise primarily minority students(Association of Science-Technology Centers,1987).

Lifelong LearningThe changes during the past decade or two are

heartening in view of the growing concern aboutthe quality of education. It is encouraging to seegrowing acceptance of the view that education is asystem that includes both inschool and out-ofschool experiences. In little more than a decade, wehave seen more science on television and radio, innewspapers and magazines, in museums andhobbies. All of these changes mean a richer envi-ronment for both adults and children, and a better

understanding of the role of science in our lives.Most importantly. these changes reflect a grow-

ing recognition of the importance of informallearning. Words like "hands-on," "experiential,""inquiry," **discovery," and "unintentional learn-ing" have become part of the nation's science edu-cation lexicon. The tools and methods of informaleducation are being recognized as an importantcomponent of the educational environment.

Informal learning is important before school,during school, and as a major part of a pattern oflifelong learning. Informal education is a majorcomponent of the overall science educationpatternnot as a substitute for formal education,but as an important contribution to the prepara-tion for classroom learning and an importantinfluence on enthusiasm, curiosity, and eagernessto study. Equally important, early informal educa-tion helps to set a pattern of exploring, self-education, and recreational learning.

After all, our ultimate goal is to have a curious.eager, and thoughtful adult. In the end m et of us,most of the time, learn most of what we k ANT out-side of school. We can all help to build an envi-ronment where lifelong learning is commonplace.

ReferencesAssociation of Science-Technology Centers.

(1987). Involving minorities, women, anddisabled persons in science-technology muse-ums: Washington, DC: Association of Science-Technology Centers.

Crane, Valerie. (1987). An exploratory study of 3 -2-1 CONTACT viewership. Final report. ChestnutHill, MA: Research Communications, Ltd.

A Rationale 23

Cognitive Psychology andScience LearningLauren B. Resnick and Michelene T. H. ChiUniversity of PittsburghPittsburgh, Pennsylvania

For many years new, Piaget's theory of cognitivedevelopment has provided the major frameworkfor science educators seeking guidance from psy-chological research. In recent years, a new wave ofresearch on human cognition has enriched andexpanded our understanding of how people of allages think and learn. Some of this research exam-ines specific forms of science learning and think-ing. Together, Magellan and Post-Piagetiancognitive research provide a framework for design-


ing informal science education activities that willhelp people learn science.

Piaget's WorkPiaget's work on children's knowledge of scien-

tific phenomena began early in his career. In the1920s he conducted a series of studies that educa-tors sometimes overlook in focusing on his muchbetter known "stage theory" of cognitive develop-ment. In these studies, Piaget (1930) traced the

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development of children's ideas about natural andmechanical phenomena, such as winds, clouds,floating and sinking boats, bicycles, and steamengines. Piaget concluded that yoi:ng children donot believe in the necessity of physical causes, butinstead believe that things happen because of theintentions and desires of objects. They believe, forexample, that clouds mow by themselves; themoon follows people as they walk; the pedals of abicycle do not have to be attached to the wheel tomake it turn. Several decades later, Piaget (1974)focused on children's ideas about force, energy,and transmission of movements. He found thatyoung children attributed movements to forcesand energies inside objects and believed that peo-ple could move objects without touching themdirectly.

Children also could not coordinate the effects ofseveral variables. For example. when Piaget askedyoung children to predict the distance that a ballwould travel when shot into motion by a spring-powered plunger, their answers were based ononly one dimension of the physical situation, suchas the size of the ball. Both the early and later stud-ies showed that children gradually outgrow mis-conceptions and limitations of these kinds as theygrow older. They come to assume and search forphysical causes; they combine or systematically"factor out" multiple variables: and they no longerattribute intentions and independent actions toinanimate objects. As the children mature frompreschoolers to adolescents, their ideas becomeprogressively more like proper scientific ones.Piaget used these and related findings of mathema-tical and logical performances of children as theempirical foundation of a complex theory of men-tal development. That theory has two fundamentalaspects--constructivism and logical determinism.

Constructivism expresses the idea that peoplemust build their knowledge for themselves. What aperson knows is not a simple reflection of what heor she has seen, heard, or been told. Rather,knowledge is a complex result of a long process ofpersonal construction and interpretation. All

knowledge, from apparently simple and obviousideas about number to the most complex theoriesof motion, energy, and force, must be builtthrough a laborious process in which new andmore powerful ideas gradually challenge andreplace earlier ones. This is done by assimilation.interpreting new information in terms of alreadyestablished conceptions, and accommodation,adjusting and restructuring initial conceptions totake account of challenging data or ideas proposedby others. Assimilation and accommodation coex-ist in a nearly continuous interplay in all thinkingpeople, resulting in successive stages of equilib-rium, or states in which people use current con-ceptions to interpret and explain experience.

Recert research confirms and elaborates on thebasic principle of constructivism. Cognitive scien-tists describe the role of schemas established,organizing mental conceptionsin understandingand learning about new phenomena. Muchresearch shows that what we already know deter-mines what sense we will make of new infor-mationas we read, as we experiment, and as wetalk with others. Two major implications of theconstructivist principle are that even 'low- level"learning involves inferences that go beyond whatis actually stated, and subsequent reasoningdepends on being able to create "mental models."

Piaget's theory of logical determinism claimsthat as children mature and engage in normalsocial interchange, they acquire a set of universallogical structures. Although these logical struc-tures are not specific to any domain of knowledge,they determine the kind of reasoning and, there-fore, the kind of mental constructions that peoplewill be capable of in any field of science. Piagetclain,ed that children's prescientific conceptionsare primarily a function of the undeveloped logicalcapacities of children. Their ideas are unscientificbecause they have not yet deveiuped the generallogical structures they need to reason scientifi-cally. According to Piaget, these logical structuresdevelop gradually. in a fixed sequence.

Piaget's three main stages of logical develop-

Cognitive Psychology and Science Learning 25

ment are well-known: the preoperational, in whichchildren can reason only about physically presentrelationships: the concrete operational, in whichthey can imagine certain key actions and effectsand thus overcome their dependence on the actualvisible environment; and the formal operational, inwhich they can generate a logically possible com-binations and thus engage 11 fully scientific"logico-deductive" reasoning. Until this logicaldevelopment is complete, children cannot appre-ciate or use key scientific processes (such as con-trolling variables in experiments or combiningvectors) and cannot understand complex scientificconcepts (such as physical causality). Piaget usedthis theory of logical determinism to account forthe recurrent finding that scientific misconcep-tions are resistant to training and yet tend to dis-appear with cognitive maturity. However, fivekinds of evidence show that age-related logicaldevelopment is not an inflexible prerequisite forunde' standing advanced scientific concepts.

Recent ResearchPerformance Varies Within a Stage. Many studiesshow that "stages" of logical development cannotaccount adequately for the variety of performancesseen in children. Children can perform one task(e.g., number conservation) at the level of concreteoperations, but still seem preoperational on anumber of other conservation tasks (e.g., conserva-tion of weight or mass). Piaget recognized thisphenomenon, which he called decalage, theFrench word for time displacement. He explaineddecalage by proposing that a child can reasonoperationally when he or she reaches a given levelof logical competence, but has to exercise anddevelop this ability separate.; for each subject.Piaget thus recognized that specific knowledgeplays a role in people's ability to demonstrate logi-cal competence, but he did not admit that knowl-edge actually helps people to develop their logicalcompetence.

Young Children Reason Logically. Children can


also reason operationally well before the Piagetianstudies had claimed (Gelman & Baillargeon.1983). For example, when researchers asked pre-school children to decide which of two rows ofcandies they would like to eat. rather than someabstract (to them) question about whether thenumber of candies has changed, the childrenrecognized that the number of candies does notincrease when the row is spread out Childrenrecognize that smaller classes of objects (e.g., pinetrees) are included in larger classes (e.g., forests)when the wording of the question does not "mis-lead" them into paying attention to individualobjects rather than collections. Children muchyounger than adolescents can design experimentsthat systematically vary only one dimension at atime if they know something about the dimen-sions that are likely to affect an outcome. Furth-ermore, young children are not necessarily animis-tic in their judgments of natural and artificialobjects, and they reason in terms of sensible phys-ical causality if they have been exposed longenough to a particular physical system to havehad time to figure out the causal relations. Thesefindings do not prove that no general cognitivegrowth occurs, but they do force us to doubt thatage-related logical stages strongly limit children'spossibilities for learning. They also point to thepower of specific knowledge in producing abilitiesto reason--perhaps even in developing the abilityto reason well.

Scientific Misconceptions Persist. Recentresearch shows that misconceptions about thephysical and biological world persist even intoadulthood. For example, if co'lege students areasked to draw the trajectory of a ball going off africtionless cliff at 50 miles per hour, many ofthem draw trajectories that have either a straighthorizontal or a straight vertical component ratherthan the continuous parabolic curve that wouldresult from the combination of the horizontal andvertical motions. They show the ball moving eitherhorizontally in a straight line off the cliff and only

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then beginning to fall or curving downward fora while and then dropping straight down. Studentsexplain these drawings by saying that the forcecausing the horizontal motion eventually dissi-pates and is "taken over" by gravity, an explana-tion incompatible with Newtonian inertial theory.

Such misconceptions persist even with excellentformal instruction. For example, many of the stu-dents who drew the erroneous trajectories of theball had taken a formal college course thatincluded Newtonian mechanics. The fact that mis-conceptions are so persistent suggests stronglythat logical development alone cannot ensure goodscientific development On the oLner hand, theexistence of misconceptions shows that peoplemake sense of th? world as best they can with theinformation they have at hand. When their scien-tific information is incomplete, people developexplanations of their own that may conflict withcanonical scientific theories. Once people formsuch misconceptions, they use them to interpretnew information, which makes the misconcep-tions very resilient A fascinating example comesfrom a study by Vosniadou and Brewer (1987),"ho showed that young children commonlybelieve that the earth is flat When they are toldthat the earth is round, they do not envision it asa round ball, but as a round, flat pancake. Thechildren assimilate the new information that theearth is round into their established idea that it isflat Studies show that adults also assimilate newinformation into establi-aed conceptions.

Knowledge Changes Scientific Conceptions.Recent research shows that knowledge, ratherthan logic, changes scientific conceptions. Accord-ing to this view, children fail to think scientificallynot because they cannot reason logically, butbecause they have not acquired the main organiz-ing principles for some field of knowledge. Carey(1985) showed, for example, that young childreninitially decide that an object is alive if the objectis similar to humans. Researchers asked four-year-olds if an aardvark, bird, worm, cloud, and tools

have babies, sleep, breathe, or have bones. Chil-dren did not attribute certain properties that allanimals share to animals that are very unlikehumans, for example, worms. By age 10, however,children knew enough biology to infer more gen-erally that if something is an animal, it must eat.breathe, and reproduce.

Apparently, children learn about biological prop-erties that define life through a mix of formalinstruction and informal reasoning. They do notlearn other fundamental scientific concepts aseasily. To make consistently correct (Newtonian)predictions about projectile motion, for example,children need to undergo a fundamental ontologi-cal shiftfrom believing that motion is a changein state and, therefore, must be explained by somecause (such as an external force or an internallystored impetus) to believing that motion is a stateand, therefore, need not be caused. This is a fun-damental principle of inertial physics. Recentresearch (Ranney, 1987) shows that college stu-dents do not induce this principle even when theyreceive lots of empirical feedback on their incor-rect predictions and even generalize to similarsituations, but show that they have not induced ageneral principle by not generalizing to more "dis-tant" problems (e.g situations where there is nogravi ty).

Knowledge Produces Reasoning Ability. Knowl-edge may produce or release reasoning abilityrather than the other way around. Children of thesame age, but with very different familiarity with acontent, are differentially able to reason logicallya:-.out that content. For example, seven-year-oldswho know a lot about dinosaurs infer that a newlypresented dinosaur is not a meat eater from theabsence of certain features. By contrast, lessknowledgeable seven-year-olds can only infer thata dinosaur is a meat eater by observing thepresence of certain features such as sharp teeth(Gobbo & Chi, 1986). Inferring from the absence ofa feature is a much more cognitively advancedform of logical reasoning. Children who know


more about dinosaurs can reason in thatadvanced form more than children of the sameage who do not have comparable km viedge.Similar studies suggest that how much knowledgea person has strongy affects the quality of reason-ing skills.

How to Help People Learn ScienceConstructivism tells us that people have to build

their own scientific knowledge and understandingand that, at each step in science learning, theyhave to interpret new knowledge in the context ofwhat they already understand. What people cur-rently understand, however, is often scientificallyill-formed and sometimes even fundamentally atodds with proper scimtific conceptions. Informalscience educationindeed all science educationmust address two paradoxes:

We cannot teach directly, in the sense of puttingfully formed knowledge into people's heads, yetit is our charge to help people construct power-ful and scientifically correct interpretations ofthe world.We must take into account learners' existingconceptions, yet at the same time help them toalter fundamentally their scientific misconceptions.We know that misconceptions are grounded

largely in lack of knowledge rather than in failuresof logic. We can show how the process of assimila-tion works. But the questicn of how to produceaccommodationfundamental change in currentconceptionsremains a difficult one on whichcognitive science has not ye# -lade significantprogress. Although we cann-,. offer clear prescrip-tions for how to help people construct powerfulnew scientific conceptions, we can point to a fewtested principles that can guide educationalefforts. These promising possibilities for newapproaches to science learning are particularlysuited to informal education settings.

Organize Knowledge. A diet of intriguing factsabout this or that scientific phenomenon (as issometimes offered in films and museum di-plays)


is unlikely to produce the powerful knowledgestructures that constitute good science under-standing. We know that people simply will notremember isolated facts very easily. To remember,people need to incorporate new information intosome organizing structure. In any given field,"experts" (people who already have quite a bit ofknowledge about the field) can remember signifi-cantly more new information than can "novices"(deo-pie with little or no knowledge of the field). Anexpert chess player can remember a chessboardposition much better than a novice player, andchildren who know a lot about dinosaurs willremember more members of a list of dinosaursthan other children. The reason? Experts canassimilate new information into an existing con-text They have a coherent body of knowledge, notmerely a collection of interesting separate facts.Lots of facts, even on the same topic, do not auto-matically organize themselves into productivescientific prir.ziples. The knowledgeable person'sorganized concepts can "explain" and "elaborate"the new information to be learned. To use thedinosaur example again, highly knowledgeablechildren generate many pieces of meaningfulinformation about a new dinosaur that allowsthem to classify the new dinosaur. Then they candraw upon what they already know about theclass rather than learn a list of separate featur 3.

Those who know more, then, learn more. Theylearn more easily because they use organizingprinciples to lighten the new learning load. A chal-lenge for educators is to find ways to helpbeginners in a field quickly acquire the organizingprinciples that will "bootstrap" them toward thekind of knowledge-based learning capabilitiescharacteristic of people more expert in the field."ducators must find ways to highlight key orga-nizing principles for beginners and invitebeginners to use these principles to interpret par-ticular facts and phenomena. These principles, ofcourse, will be specific to each field and subileld ofscience.

Making printApies explicit for learners probably

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helps, but well-organized presentations andexplicit statements do not guarantee that everylearner will use the ideas exactly as they are given.The educator must think not of providing everydetail of a scientific structure for some field ofscience, but of providing the scaffolding on whichlearners will be able to elaborate their own ver-sions of a basic structure. This notion of providingthe scaffolding is particularly appropriate forinformal education settings. Informal educatorscan take advantage of the special media and dis-play opportunities at their disposal, along with thegenerally high motivation that people bring toinformal environments. to highlight a smallnumber of powerful organizing principles forlearners.

Give Time and Repeated Learning. Acquiring aneffectively organized body of knowledge takes con-siderable time. People need to be exposed to anidea more than one time, and each time mustelaborate on prior information. People need tohave the opportunity and must be encouraged toply deeply into some topics. A special challenge forinformal educators is to provide learners with thatopportunity, because informal educators cannotimpose a formal curriculum with fixed sequencesof activities. Series of films or exhibits on differentaspects of the same topic or on closely related top-ics, with carefully planned adjunct activities, cando much to meet learners' needs. The key is toavoid the temptation to substitute broad "cover-age" of topics for depth of treatment.

In this process, providing multiple contexts forany given topic is essential. Exposing learners to atopic more than one time does not guarantee thatthey will construct organized knowledge. If a topicis repeated but the context is unvaried, a form ofencapsulation of concepts may occur. Learnerswill accept new principles or theories but keepthem so separate from other conceptions that theyhave a minor influence on the learners' total men-tal picture of the world. For example, physicsstudents learn to solve quantitative textbook prob-

lems involving Newton's laws correctly, yet behaveas if they know nothing about inertial mechanicswhen asked to think about everyday qualitativephysics problem& Educators can counter theeffects of encapsulation by showing learners hownew principles and concepts relate to manyaspects of their existing ideas.

Include Laboratories That Invite and SupportElaboration of Ideas. People learn by personallyelaborating on material they are given to study.Students who are passive, whether they are read-ing a textbook or looking at a lively museum dis-play, do not learn much. Successful learners fromphysics textboolcs, for example, are those whoelaborate a lot when they study (Chi et al., inpress). In other fields, too, successful studentsactively relate new, to-be-learned information totheir previous knowledge or experiences. Less suc-cessful learners, however, are more likely to rereadwithout elaboration when they study (Bransford etal.. 1982). In other words, to learn successfully.people must elaborate so that they can incorporatethe new materials into their existing knowledge.

Educators can encourage and support theactive, elaborative engagement that characterizesgood learning. Educators should include ques-tions and problems for learners when they seefilms, television, or museum exhibits. Museumeducators could pose a problem in an introductionto an exhibit, and visitors could then treat theexhibit as a resource for solving the problem. Edu-cators could have their students discuss theexhibit with other visitors and with the museumstaff.

Similar activities for informal learning from filmand television are essential. Interactive video-based activities might be linked to prepared videomaterials. Educators can provide laboratories withtools for gathering, reducing. and interpretingdata. These ideas are not new to science educa-tors, but cognitive research suggests that theyshould become increasingly central to informaleducation efforts.


Promote Discussion. Discussion can helplearners to elaborate on their scientific knowledge.People learn better when they discuss and debateideas with one another. Informal education isideally suited to capitalize on this natural learningstyle; people who are captivated by what they seeor hear are highly likely to talk among themselves.But just permitting conversation is not enough.Appropriate forms of social interaction need to be"designed into" museum exhibits and into plansfor television and other media presentations.

Provide lbols That Help People Construct Men-tal Models. Much scientific reasoning is morequalitative than quantitative, and scientists andengineers often solve problems as if they werementally running models of a system in theirheads. Many scientific misconceptions arisebecause of either an absence of a model or aflawed modelone that lacks key constraints andrelationships that scientists know about. Simplyconfronting people with data that contradict theirtheories is not enough to cause them to reor-ganize their conceptions. Learners often reject orignore data that crntravene their current views.One reason for this is that, by themselves, learnersoften cannot construct a mental model of a systemthat would behave so as to produce the data Edu-cators can. however, provide learners with thetools for envisioning physical and natural systemsand thus developing new and more appropriatemental models.

Film and animation, when presented on comput-ers, can provide models of natural or physical sys-tems that learners can actually manipulate and.therefore, appropriate mentally. Representationaltools can help students understand theoreticalelements and relationships that they cannotobserve directly in nature. Such tools make visiblethe "hidden structure" of the physical and naturalworld. For example, White and Horowitz (in press)developed a set of computer-based microworids forforce and motion problems that make vectors andforce into physically visible and manipulable


objects that behave in accordance with Newtoniantheory. The microworids serve as physical embod-iments of the elements in a scientific theory,rather than a display of raw natural objects. Theserepresentational tools are powerful because theyhelp people to overcome natural limitations intheir ability to visualize and manipulate complexinteractions and relations. As a result they allowpeople to construct strong mental models of scien-tific theories.

The Challenge of Informal EducationWithin the broad spectrum of science education,

informal educatcrs face special challenges but alsocommand special opportunities. In informal edu-cation, where a required syllabus and examina-tions cannot be used to keep people studying, theneed for depth is probably the biggest single chal-lenge. Informal educators need to provide deptheven at the expense of coverage. Informal scienceeducators should invite people to delve deeply intoscientific domains and to build organized bodiesof knowledge. Only in this way will people be ableto remember what they have encountered ininformal science settings and use it to developfurther knowledge. Repeated exposure and multi-ple contexts for exploring any topic are also cru-cial. Otherwise. the new science learned will notpenetrate the main body of learners ideas.

Informal science education requires far morethan attractive exhibits or engaging media presen-tations. Informal educators must invite learners tosolve problems and otherwise go beyond the mate-rial presented. Knowledgeable persons must beavailable to help guide novices as they elaborate.Informal educators need to invite and supportsocial interaction explicitly and not just permit itto happen passively.

The different types of informal education canhelp learners apply and elaborate their knowledge.Informal settings offer ideal environments for col-laborating and debating. Learners can acquireknowledge and ask questions. Media and museumexhibits provide ; articularly attractive opportuni-

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ties for using representational and envisioningtools. Educators who supply their students withthese kinds of informal learning activities andadapt their teaching methods accordingly willgreatly enhance the effectiveness of their work.

ReferencesBranford, J.D., Stein, B.S., We, NJ., Franks, J.J.,

Auble, P.M., Mezynski, KJ., & Perfetto, GA(1982). Differences in approaches to learning:An overview. Journal of Experimental Psychol-ogy: General, 111, 390-398.

Carey, S (1985). Are children fundamentally dif-ferent kinds of thinkers and learners thanadults? In S.F. Chipman, J. Siegel, & R Glaser(Eds.), Thinking and learning skills: Vol. 2.Research and open questions (pp. 485-517).Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Chi, M.T.H., Bassok M., Lewis, M., Reimann. P., &Glaser. R (in press). Self explanations: Howstudents study and use examples in teamingto solve problem( '-

Gelman, R, & Baillargeon, R (1983). A review ofsome Piagetian concepts. In J.H. Flavell & E.M.Markman (Eds.), Handbook of child psychol-ogy: Vol III. Cognitive development (pp.167-230). New York: Wiley.

Gobbo, C., & Chi, M.T.H. (1986). How knowledge isstructured and used by expert and novice chil-dren. Cognitive Development, 1, 221-237.

Piaget, J. (1930). The child's conception of physi-cal causality. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Piaget, J. (1974). Understanding causality. NewYork: Norton.

Ranney, M. (1987). Restructuring naive concep-tions of motion. Unpublished doctoral disserta-tion. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh.

Vosniadou, S. & Brewer, W.F. (1987). Theories ofknowledge restructuring in development.Review of Educational Research. 57.51 -68.

White, B., & Horowitz, P. (in press). Thinker tools:Causal models, conceptual change, and scienceeducation. Cognition and Instruction.


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Challenges in Audience Researchfor Informal LearningValerie CraneResearch Communications, LtdChestnut Hill, Massachusetts

Visiting a museum exhibit, watching a localnewscast, viewing a talk show or public televisionprogram. and listening to a radio program are allinformal learning activities. Although varied.informal learning activities have a common goal:to communicate specific information to targetedaudiences in an entertaining or interesting way.Many alternatives compete for the public's leisuretime. making the job of producing entertainingeducational programs or activities difficult and


often expensive. Research Communications Ltd.(RCL) was established in 1980 to help producersof informal learning activities attract targetaudiences and increase the audience's apprecia-tion and understanding of the messages conveyed.RCL uses a range of audiences, including pre-schoolers. elementary age children, teenagers. andadults, to evaluate the entertainment and interestvalue of informal learning activities. Some projectsrequire us to analyze audiences in a single local

market other projects have nationwide or world-wide audiences.

The method of audience analysis combinesquantitative and qualitative research methods toprovide project developers with diagnostic infor-mation about the program or exhibit being tested;data that indicate performance potential after theprogram or exhibit is broadcast or shown; andcomparisons of reactions among differentaudience segments.

Because producing a television program ordeveloping a museum exhibit is relatively expen-sive, we often conduct formative research in thedevelopment process to assist the design team.Formative research involves ongoing testing ofcontent and prototype materials as they arecreated. If a wrong step is detected midwaythrough the project, it is much easier to correctthan after the project is complete.

Formative research in television was first con-ducted at the Children's Television Workshop inthe late 1960s. Their ongoing testing of segmentsshaped the development of Sesame Street. alegendary success in informal learning Children'sTelevision Workshop established an inhouse team4 researchers who performed the audienceresearch each project required for development.However, most organizations cannot support aninhouse team of researchers in the way Children'sTelevision Workshop did, because many produc-tion efforts are not ongoing and therefore cannotsupport a fulltime, inhouse research staff. This iswhere independent companies that provideaudience research play a role in informaleducation.

The target audience and the learning activityare not the only determinants of what gets pro-duced in informal education. The source of finan-cial support also plays a role. In the past decade.sources ie public money have shifted their priori-ties from content to audience. This shift meansthat financial supporters are not concerned withmerely "correct" content. They want to increasethe public's interest, appreciation, and under-

standing. While this shift might seem subtle, it isdramatic because it affects how informal learningactivities are designed and produced. As the publicbecomes the focus of informal learning, how tocommunicate content effectively 1-ecomes increas-ingly important, particularly during the earlystages of project development. Designers of info!mar learning activities not only need to be con-cerned that they send accurate messages to theaudience, but also that the messages are received,understood, and interesting to the audience.

Involving the audience in the development ofinformal learning experiences may sound like alaudable goal, but an obvious question is "How arethe needs of the project and audience met?"

Challenges in Evaluating InformalLearning

Audience research for television and museumprojects presents unique challenges. The first taskin research is to define the target audience for theinfonnal learning activity. This includes targetingdemographics such as age, gender. education, andincome, as well as relevant background informa-tion such as level of news viewing or frequency ofmuseum visits. The ability to generalize the datawill be based, in part, on how representative theaudience is of the actual targeted audience for thematerial. Testing prototype science exhibit mate-rial with individuals who report they would nevervisit a science museum will render useless infor-mation. Testing a morning talk show with viewerswho are only available to view television in theevening also has obvious problems. Evaluating ascience series with students enrolled in sciencecourses will provide good information about thepotential use of the series for formal learning, butunreliable information about potential for homeviewers who are not enrolled in college-levelscience courses.

The second step is to convert specific objectivesinto a set of questions that reveal the interest andinformative value of the materials being tested.Questions can be divided into two general areas.

Challenges in Audience Research 33

The first is the affective areadetermining inter-est and attitudes toward the subject as well assatisfaction with the materials. The second impor-tant area relates to cognitive variables that includeprior knowledge of the subject and learning out-comes. Both affective and cognitive variablesinclude perceptions of informative value andexpectations for and satisfaction with learning.

Our research shows that prior interest in thesubject is one of the most powerful predictors ofparticipating in informal learning activities. Whiletelevision producers, news directors, and exhibitdesigners must not limit themselves to thoseareas in which the public is highly interested, theyshould know levels of interest for two reasons.First, the public wants information that intereststhem and that will help them understand theirworld. It behooves informal educators to servethose needs. On the other hand, sometimes newsstories must be told, and unfamiliar and difficultscience content must be presented as part of edu-cating the public. It is even more important tounderstand why the public lacks interest in lesscompelling subjects, and to find ways to help thepublic understand and become interested in thesubject&

Attitudes about subject matter also are impor-tant. On one project, we measured how theaudience felt about aging. Using a series of agreedisagree statements, we found that the audienceheld certain misconceptions about aging. Sincethe misconceptions seemed fairly straightforward,the design team presented personal stories thatcountered the misconceptions. However, the mis-conceptions persisted even after audiencemembers viewed the program. The design teamthen added more explicit statements to counterthe misconceptions and found that the stereo-types were effectively overcome.

Another area related to the affective domain ofinformal learning is satisfaction with material. Forexample, by using slides that depict different ele-ments in an exhibit, we can effectively measurevisitors satisfaction by tracking their responses.

34 Science for the Fun of it

We can measure specific elements within thelearning activities, such as types of exhibit dis-plays or a host of a television series. These factorsrelate significantly to overall satisfaction withinformal learning activities and, hence, the likeli-hood that audiences will participate in them.

In the cognitive area, we look at prior knowledgeof the subject matter, comprehensibility of thematerials, and perceptions of the informativevalue. Looking at knowledge of the subject isimportant in designing materials at the appro-priate level. If the learner's knowledge does notmatch the targeted level of the materials, theinformal learning activity risks failure.

Comprehensibility may or may not be stronglyrelated to subsequent participation in informallearning. If informal learners repo* that the mate-rials are uninformative or incomprehensible, thelikelihood of sampling a program or exhibit isgreatly diminished. However, if a comprehensiontest ,:em rev :Ws that the exhibit or program actu-ally misinforms the audience, but the audiencedoes not realize they're being misinformed, thetest item does not effectively predict overallsatisfaction.

However, learning perceptions and informativevalue coi relate strongly with a learner's continu-ing participation. If viewers rate a newscast ormuseum exhibit highly for its informative value,they are more likely to view that newscast again orreturn to the museum.

The greatest limitation in conducting formativeresearch on programming and exhibits is in dis-covering how much long-term learning has beenacquired. We cannot predict what audiencemembers have learned from the entire series orfinished exhibits that have limited exposure. How-ever, we can demonstrate that cognitive learningoccurs from a single exposure, and designersshould not be reluctant to demonstrate this learn-ing, however limited. Equally important. we mustkeep in mind that the goals for the informal learn-ing activity may differ markedly from formal learn-ing in this regard. The activity may not result in

higher standardized test scores, but it will sparklearners' interest in a subject and increase theirawareness and appreciation.

Severs: methods are used to measure audienceresponse to informal learning. Telephone surveysare probably the most common approach to gath-ering quantitative data on large-scale samples ofthe public. They can provide tracking informationon attitudes, preferences. and actual habits andbehavior. However, when testing materials in thedevelopmental stages, it is necessary to bringgroups of the target audience together to test thematerials. News viewers can recall very little spe-cific information over the telephone, even afterviewing a particular newscast. A sensitive andcommonly used research method is to have agroup watch a newscast, answer questionnaires,and participate in indepth interviews. Thismethod shows the diversity of an audience and, atthe same time, shows trends that are useful fordecision-making as materials are developed. Crit-ics of the method claim that the group envi-ronment differs too greatly from the naturalinformal learning envi.-onment, that group discus-sions contaminate individual responses, and thatthey cannot predict how well a program or exhibitwill perform once completed.

A recent study of a museum exhibit illustrateshow predictive group testing can be used. Ourresearchers used a series of slides of the actualexhibit to test visitors' satisfaction. Theresearchers sampled visitors as they left theexhibit, which was considered successful becauseof high attendance. To determine whether or notpotential visitors would respond in a similarmanner, researchers used this set of slides at thenext location of the exhibit. On all but 2 out of 25slides, the potential visitors' interest levels werecomparable to those actually visiting the exhibit.In the group discussion, the potential visitorscited many of the same criticisms, both positiveand negative, about the exhibit as had the actualvisitors. These findings suggest that the "forma-tive" methodology of showing only slides before

visitors see an exhibit can be a very effective toolfor determining how to refine traveling exhibits.

Does Audience Research Make aDifference?

In the past. many educators considered informaleducation to be a trivial undertaking comparedwith the challenge of providing high-quality for-mal education 3ut in today's changing environ-ment, particularly in the field of science, informallearning activities actually occupy a greater placein our lives because we continue to learn infor-mally long after our formal education has ended.

Another destructive attitude that emerges indiscussions with both formal and informal educa-tors is a disdainful attitude about the public. Proj-trt developers comment often on a poorlyeducated public, who, they say, can't decide forthemselves what is best for them. This elitist viewhas prevented educators from using audienceresearch for informal (or formal) learning. Perhapsone of the most positive, unexpected outcomes ofour research efforts occurs when a project teamobserves a group test session and realizes that thepublic can talk intelligently about how well infor-mal learning activities meet their interests andneeds.

But the challenges for providing systematicinformal learning are great. When we talk aboutformal learning we are talking about relatively tar-geted populations. When we talk about informallearning we are talking about unlimited targetaudiences. The challenge is co serve a range ofaudiences effectively.

Formative research brings the public into theprocess, and -Trying the public is what informaleducation is all about. Increasing the public'sappreciation and understanding of science is pos-sible only if the intended message reaches thepublic. And the intended message will only reachthat audience if it captures their attcntion, main-tains their interest, provides a compelling expe-rience, and fosters satisfaction. Audience researchis merely a roadmap toward these goals.

Challenges in Audience Research 35

Helpful HintsBegin by setting goals for your informal scienceeducation activity. That activity may be a club,workshop, television program assigned ashomework, or a field trip to a museum or zoo.

Develop a simple evaluation tool to providefeedback that will determine whether or not youhave met your goals. The following quantitativeand qualitative questions may help you evaluatethe activity and teach your students to evaluatetheir own experiences.

How would they rate the experience on a scale of0 to 10, where 0 is the lowest and 10the highest?

Why did they give it that rating?What did they like b 't about the experience?What did they like least about the experience?Did they feel that they learned something?What did they learn from the experience?How clearly was the information presented?How might the information have been presented


more effectively for the target audience?Would they repeat the experience (watch

another program in the series, visit themuseum again on their own)?

Why or why not?

Process this information by computing simplefrequencies and percentages for the quantitativequestion and compiling 'he open-endedresponses.

Share and discuss the findings with your class.Consider having the students prepare a simplereport on their findings, and either send thereports to the producers of the television pro-gram or to the museum.

Keep a record of the different activities that youschedule from semester to semester and year toyear to see how effectively you providL informalscience learning as part of your overall scienceeducation program.

1'1NOVA, Television, and InformalScience EducationThomas Levenson, William R. Grant, and Paula ApsellWGBH-TVBoston, Massachusetts

The first task of any prime-time television showis to entertain; if it founders there, it will fail anyother mission. NOVA is fully aware of that fact.and has chosen to complicate its mission by opt-ing not only to entertain but to educate.

In fact, that double imperative defines NOVA'smission and marks its usefulness as a vehicle foreducating the American public about science. Wereach an average of 11-12 million people eachweek, which pales by comparison with the


audiences of top-rated commercial television se-ries like Dallas and The Cosby Show. But ouraudience is large in public television terms, rival-ing that of dramatic shows like MasterpieceTheater. Demographic studies of NOVA's audiencereveal they are somewhat older, better educated,and better off economically than the nation as awhole. NOVA has an audience of curious grown-ups rather than the stereotypical, average televi-sion viewers.

ThIliag a StorySuch an audience confronts NOVA with several

programming problems. We must ensure thateach program and the mix of programs in a sea-son contain enough startling information andvisual images to capture the attention of 12 mil-lion viewers. We also must ensure that the seen-tists concerned with each program have nochance or cause to complain about our treatmentof their ideas. We don't always succeed. In a 1985show that covered the especially troublesome sub-ject of genetic manipulation's potential to preventor cure inherited diseases, the technical accuracyof the facts was much more apparent than theentertainment value of the program. By contrast.from the same season, the program "The Case ofthe Frozen Addict" derit with an equally difficultsubjectit described the progress in understand-ing Parldnson's disease. We feel that it was a farmore successful film. The reason? It was a goodstory. interestingly shot and well told.

We learn and relearn with each project that thesubject does not make NOVA work, the storydoesa discovery that provides endless frustra-tion for our scientist/advisors. Recently, a majorchemical journal published a letter complainingthat NOVA produced shows on chemistry far morerarely than it did on physics. That's true, but itmisses the point. We don't see ourselves doing"physics" programs or "chemistry" lessons. We seeourselves doing stories that demand an explana-tion of the science involved in order to makesense.

For example. NOVA's film "Sail Wars" was notspecifically about physics. But it did succeed indemonstrating some basic Out difficult physicsprinciples while describing how researchersdesign world -class racing yachts. This film wasamong the best NOVA has produced over recentyears. Our confidence in making that judgmentillustrates another fact of broadcasting informa-tive shows to the public: Because we are a publicbroadcasting endeavor, we have a certain cushionor leeway that enables us to use intelligence in a

way that isn't possible on the commercial net-works. Public broadcasting lives by the ratings.but in a far more indirect way than any commer-cial effort. A program on PBS that attracts noaudience will eventually die, but it will usi pallyhave time to prove itself. This means that ulti-mately we make decisions based on each pro-gram's meritsthe years have shown we can relyon our audience to give us the benefit of thedoubt.

That way lies hubris. However, it is startlingthat our judgments about what is good and badare almost entirely unrelated to the ratings wegain on each program. It is not that we thinkunpopular shows are good and popular ones arebad; we just can't find any consistent patternwhen we eliminate the most popular programsfrom the discussion. For example, our complicatedgenetics program, despite all our efforts, was seenby four percent of the people watching televisionat that timeslightly worse than the averageNOVA share of five percent of the nationalaudience. A 1985 robotics program drew a slightlyabove average six percent of the viewing audience.and yet ranks in our minds as one of our less suc-cessful efforts. With a slightly more positive out-look, we cite the first film of the 1986 season. 'TheSearch for the Disappeared." a program aboutforensic medicine and genetic screening at workin postdictatorship Argentina, which drew a fourpercent share of the audience. "High Tech Babies."another excellent film from the 1986 season, didthe same.

Playing the numbers game, of course, is a nskybusiness. Interpretation is always a problem. "TheSearch for the Disappeared" aired opposite thebaseball pennant playoffs. Does a IR -a- percentshare represent a falling off or a triumph in theface of overwhelming competition? We don't know.The second highest NOVA of all times, "Nomads ofthe Rainforest." drew 10 percent of the audiencewhen it aired against the three commercial net-works' report of Ronald Reagan's landslide victoryover Walter Mondale, a story that had lost its cliff-

NOVA, Television, and Informal Science Education 41

:3,

hanger element by our 8 p.m. airtime.But what about that handful of NOVA programs

that attracts an unusually large audience? Theseprograms, like "Nomads," tend to be aired at anespecially fortunate moment, or to be films whosesubject matter alone attracted an audience muchlarger than NOVA's regular set of viewers. Thehighest rated NOVA, the 1985 "Case of the Ber-muda Mangle," attracted slightly more than 11percent of the national audience. Generally, ournatural history and wildlife films also performabove the NOVA average; "The Crucible of Life," afilm about the natural world within a Hawaiianvolcanic region, gained 10.7 percent of thenational audience on its broadcast date.

The imperative would be to craft a NOVA seasonof programs about sharks, whales, volcanoes, andstrange stars and planets. Clearly we have resistedthis temptation, which leaves us with the uncom-fortable sense of being unable to use the ordinarytools of television programmers as our guide. Sowe have tried to come up with a set of criteria ofour own. These criteria generate a series that per-forms something of an educational role, the deci-sions we make on each film. however, do not beginwith any sense of the film's value as pedagogy.First, we look for something that will be a goodmovie.

To a certain extent, that judgment is dictated bythe demands of our format The definition of whatour format requires is also a definition of whatour format prohibits. A NOVA story has to hingeon science, somehow or otheralthough we definescience as broadly as possible. The story must fillan hour. It must have a strong visual component,or failing that, a producer who can transform anapparently unvisual story into a tale in pictures.(The best example of this technique is a wonderfulfilm we coproduced with the BBC, "It's AboutTime." In this film, Dudley Moore encounters StAugustine and the mysteries of jazz piano whiletrying to explain the extraordinarily slippery con-cept of time. You can't see time, but the programworked.)


Choosing a lbpicHappily, some stories that fall out of NOVi.'s

format can be done in other venuesespeciallysuch programs as Newton's Apple or 3-2-1 CON-TACT. But U.S. television does not have a sciencemagazine program for curious grown-ups thatbreaks news in the sciences as effectively as Nightline deals with public policy issues or Entertain-ment Tonight deals with show business. This lackleads to the next imperative for NOVA: to chooseeach season's mix of shows with some sense of thejournalistic demands of covering contemporaryadvances of science.

For some time, we have discussed the need to doa film about quantum mechanicsthe field ofphysics that introduced the notion of probabilityto understanding the material universe. The dis-cussion has always chilled our collective bones. Wehave come up with sketches for films on quantummechanics and changing notions of reality; quan-tum mechanics and applications in other scien-ces, especially chemistry, materials physics, andsome arcane biochemistry; quantum mechanicsand the structure of matter, and so on. All are sub-jects, not stories. Not one has an obvious -Isualhook. All hinge on science, but that alone can'tmake a NOVA. As for lergth, any of these couldexpand to an hour or longer; our hapless produc-ers could try to explain arcane concept after con-cept And yet, America's only science documentaryseries cannot forever ignore the most fertile theo-retical tradition in what is considered the queen ofthe sciences. What to do?

In this case, turn to the distinguished Scandina-vian film industry. By the time this book appears,we will have either completed or nixed a NOVAthat originated as a Danish film about theEinstein-Bohr debate over one of the core predic-tions of Bohr's quantum theory. The Danish pro-ducers used some graceful techniques, such asstill photographs, to tell the story of Einstein's dis-tress at the idea of a universe governed by proba-bilities. The film counters with Bohr's belief thatreality is a relationship between the observer and

40

the world at large, and shows Einstein's efforts toimme up with a paradox that would doom Bohr'sconstruction. It conchtft.--2 7.-1t,i a nesception ofthe rei..ently completed experiment that demol-ished Einstein's paradox and confirmed Bohr'stheory, and hence, the validity of quantummechanics.

A number of cinematic features attracted us tothis film. The Danish producers mixed photo-graphs of Einstein, Bohr, and their circle ofcolleagues with elegantly shot and conceivedinterviews of men involved in the debate. Theresult is a film that gives a sense of Einstein andBohr moving through the years to their ultimateargument. without any actual moving footage ofthe two scientists. But more important, this filmmeets the main criterion for success as a NOVA. Itis a clearly defined story that examines the largestintellectual concerns is dr. ,ilstory of twentieth-century physics.

Findiug Perspective; Giving PerspectiveAssuming we are able to adapt the Danish work

to our needs, the film will, for a time, ease thepressure to produce a theoretical physics film. Itisn't just that certain fields in science keep evolv-ing and need periodic re-examination. Science isembedded in a host of public issues, from environ-mental ones like toxic waste disposal to problemsof national defense. Perhaps the most compellingexample is Ronald Reagan's proposed StrategicDefense Initiative (SDI), commonly known as StarWars. In the popular media. t' debate seems tobe about whether or not to build the system.Impressive drawings of space-based weaponsshow what the system could look like, and elabo-rate schema have been proposed to show howsuch a defense could be organized; in effect, theargument seems to be a reprise of a hundreeother large procurement debates.

In fact, the argument is a scientific and a tech-nological one that is confused but not resolved bythe politics of appropriations on Capitol Hill. Onone hand, a large body of American scientists

argues that Redgan's vision of strategic defense isimpossible or unrealizable for reasons fundamen-tal to the physical principals involved aild becauseof facts of technological life. On the other hand, asmaller but quite expert group of scientists, mostlyin national labs, oncedes that SDI is impossiblenow but that give, enough money, the group canfigure out the whole problem.

NOVA joined the Frontline series to produce atwo-hour film on SDI to address this debate. SDIraised a dilemma for us. Although SDi is a techni-cal project and should be analyzed on its merits, itis perhaps the most significant political debate ofthe last few years. SDI, after all, is Reagan'sanswerto critics who claim his stand on arms control hasmade the United States less safe than it wasbefore he came on watch. Even a perception ofcriticism may appear as a direct attack onnational policies, and NOVA has no particulardesire or mandate to produce that kind -4-editorial.

Yet SDI is the largest scientific and engineeringinitiative mounted by the U.S. government, and itraises a number of questions that are clearlywithin our ordinary set of interests. Ultimately, weconceived the mission of our film as one thatraises tree level of discourse on the subject th1.tenables people to evaluate specific claims for SDIbut that won't be seen as an attack on Americansecurity. Explicitly, we hoped to raise the level ofcompetence in the political press about SDI, aswell as in the larger audience that watches us andreads the newspapers. The film described howproposed weapons function; why they might ormight not be able to fulfill proposed missions; howsystems function; what particular problems resultas the scale of ti complex system grows; and finally,whether or not countermeasures to proposeddevices and systems pose a major threat toReigan's proposal. We hoped that both the publicand the press would use this beginner's guide tostrategic defense to evaluate claims made by eitherside.

Call this a straightforward effort at public edu-

NOVA, Television, and Informal Science Education 43

41

cation if you will. A- ach, one has to acknowledgethat it was pretty ..ch a failure. Even a cursoryread of press reports of arms control negotiationsindicates that diplomatic and White House report-ers continue to portray SDI as a sort of scientificmagic shield. They only ask if it is diplomaticallywise, not whether it is even scientifically possible.

Given that we occasionally produce an almostpurely educational film, and that we don't feelthese flirts have a great impact. how do we see ourrole in bringing science to the American public?We like to think that an entire season or more ofNOVA represents a fairly high level of science edu-cation and that as a result, the scientific literacy ofour audience steadily increases. But even if wecould test this thesis, it's dear that our educa-tional impact is incremental at best. The impor-


tant issue is not that our audience retains specificfacts from any given program. Instead, they shouldunderstand that science is a human endeavorthat we use to order our material world. If ouraudience gets a sense of the method and power ofscience and the hints to that power, then we havedone a good job.

We find ourselves in the same predicament asthe nightly news. We write "headlines" about whatis important in science in a given year: to really geta handle on the whole story a viewer must go wellbeyond what we can give them. And so, we returnto where we began: Successful television has torecognize that the medium is better suited toutertainment than to pure pedagogy. We canarouse someone's curiosity, but the rest is up tothe viewer, and perhaps to you.

44

111101/

Making Informal ContactKeith W. WelkeChildren's television WorkshopNew York, N.Y.

Picture yourself walking into an elevator to find,to your surprise, a young man standing on a scale,weighing himself as the elevator mows up anddown. You are intrigued. You wonder where he gotthe idea to try thisand why? A Red Producerfor 3-2-1 CONTACT actually found herself in thissituation. Although suspecting the impetusbehind the youngster's activity, she asked himanyway. He said that he had just watched an epi-sode of 3-24 CONTACT in which Paco, one of our

cohosts, modeled this activity and pointed outscientific principles pertaining to gravitationalforces and weight

3-2-1 CONTACT, a science series produced byChildren's Television Workshop for 8- to-12-year-olds, airs daily on most PBS stations. We continu-ally encourage our viewers to try out experimentson their own, and whenever we hear anecdoteslike "the elevator story," we rejoice, for thisanecdote is yet another testimonial to the power of

Making Informal Contact 45

television used in the service of informal scienceeducation:

Thlevision's Potential for InformalScience Education

What can we offer in the way of science educa-tion for young people outside the classroom?

"Outside" the classroom does not mean "incompetition with" the classroom, or a "substitute"for what teachers can do. The goal is to comple-ment the classroom experience. The face-to-faceenvironment of the classroom takes maximumadvantage of what the teacher can do within theimmediate range of the senses. A complementaryform of education with television offers somethingthe teacher cannot, such as a "field trip" to arubber factory in Malaysia or a "chat" with a fa-mous scientist. It is not necessary to build thecase for one medium such as television at theexpense of some other medium. All media can dosome things better than others, and so it makessense to use various media in concert, exploitingthe strong features of each.

For 3-2-1 CONTACT, informal education meansthat success is not defined as some single, tightlydefined outcome: instead, successfL1 outcomes cantake many forms, including, as noted previously,taking the bathroom scales for an elevator ride.Not everything has to be explained until compre-hension has reached some criterion level. Peoplebring enormous differences in background andeducation to the screen. We do not attempt to iso-late subcategories of content in a structured andsequential way. On the contrary, we attempt toportray sciencL In a broad contextas part of life.

Low of science starts ivith activities that are funand phenomena that are interesting. No ity,wonder, and imagining "what if" can stimulateyour` -uriosities. After this "hook," the intrinsicreward and motivation of formal study can takeover. From interviews with scientiats, we know theeffects of informal science education are not re-stricted to semester-length periods, but insteaddevelop over many years.


For example, we interviewed a scientist bornjust after the turn of the century. He recalls vividlyhis first informal lesson in applied mathematicsas a young boy in a small Oregon town. He hadjust received a jackknife as a present and was try-ing unsuccessfully to sharpen a pencil with it. Acowboy sauntered by and stopped to explain aprinciple: If you first establish an angle of cut andthen follow that angle as you rotate the pencil, youcan neatly sharpen the pencil. The name of thecowboy is lost to history, but the name of theyoung boy is Linus Pauling, and the effect of theinformal education incident was long-lived andfruitful.

Another scientist 3-2-1 CONTACT interviewedrecalls that as a young boy he noticed a very largebook in the library with the simple title Heat. How,the boy wondered, could anyone possibly writesuch a large book about such a simple subject?Things are either hot or cold, and that's about it.The boy opened the book, wondering what it couldpossibly contain. He saw a symbol he didn'tunderstand, but recognized it as some form ofhigh-falutin' mathematics. A prescient insightoccurred: If there was this much to know abotheat, and if higher mathematics was needed todescribe it, then an entire set of relationshipsexisted that lie had never suspected, and highermathematics would be useful for understandinglots of things. You may protest that this is notyour typical boy in your typical library, and youmay be righthis name is Steven Weinberg, whonow is a Nobel Laureate in physics.

But what about the many, instead of the few,and what does a mass medium such as televisionhave to offer? Some people have trouble thinkingof television in the same category as serious edu-cation. Those who concentrate only on the "darkside" of televit- In--violence, passivity, escapism,superficiality, and the likecan easily find plentyof examples to illustrate their case, of course. Theother side, however, is the positive and construc-tive use of the, same powerful medium.

What are some of the positive features of televi-

sion? First and foremost, kids like television andwatch it a lot. When they aren't in school, whereformal science education takes place, televisionexcels in retching kids at home, where there'senormous opportunity for informal education.Children watch about 25 hours a week. and byhigh school graduation. they will have spent moretime watching television than attending classes.Regardless of one's personal opinions about televi-sion. these powerful statistics are a fact of life andan educational opportunity to be reckoned with.

Television is well suited in other ways to servemany needs of informal science education. Televi-sion is a democratic technology, offering identicalprogramming to all children, regardless of wherethey live or how much money the local school canafford for science instruction. We know classroomopportunities are not equal across the country,but essentially. access to tel.:vision is Television issuperb for telling stories and communicating thehuman dimension of feelings. Television caninduce great mental involvement. In the hands ofa skilled production team, television can stimulateand enhance thought processes with visuals andgraphics. Through its ability to provide "eyes-on"experience, television expands a child's worldbeyond the hands-on, immediate level.

Television is an extremely information-densemediummore content is presented than receivedand interpre,ed. Different people extract differentmeanings anl information from it, and moreinformation always remains. The content of abook about volcanoes, for example, can presum-ably be defined as its verbal content. However, ate vision segment on volcanoes, such as 3-2-1CONTACT featured, is endlessly rich in what canbe perceived, because of its verbal and non-verbal content. Dc the shades of color in the lavaflow correlate with different temperatures? Howhot was the lava when a tool, accidentally dropped.burst into flame? How do you feel as the helicopterpulls away, leaving two people close to an activeeruption? A serious attempt to describe the con-tent of the segment would 1111 many pages, take a

ver long time, and ultimately fall short of beingcomplete. This richness of content in televisionprogramming serves diverse audiences particu-larly well when it is applied to informal scienceeducation. Very young children extract one Levu ofmeaning, older children another, adults another,and professional scientists yet another.

Television's home environment presents uniquedemands along with its opportunities for teachingand learning. The audience must be attracted andentertained as well as taught. for turning off theset is just as easy as turning it on. No rule statesthat one must watch television; other activities viefor children's time and attention as well. Viewingis voluntary. Audience members must choose toturn the dial to 3-2-1 CONTACT. The series' crea-tive team of producers. content experts, and childresearchers combine talents to produce a programthat attracts attention, educates, and entertains.

What we deal with ultimately, however, is not anabstract theory of what television can do, but areal-world application of what a team of producers,researchers, and content specialists can do, andhave done, in a specific case, such as 3-2-1CONTACT.

3-2-1 CONTACT3-2-1 CONTACT uses the power of television.

Designed primarily for home viewing andsecondarily for school and community use. theseries has three major purposes:

to help children experience the joy of scientificexploration and creativity and the satisfaction ofaccomplishment to motivCe them to pursuefurther scientific activities;to help children become familiar with scientificthinking and to stimulate their v... thinkingskills so that as they grow, they can h Ilyzeimportant social issues related to science andtechnology; andto help children, especially girls anorecognize science and technology as a coopera-tive endeavor, relevant and meaningful to their':yes and open to their participation.

Making Informix: Contact 47

The series is designed to function as informaleducation, but that does not imply the content isassembled casually. A careful planning process isconducted for all shows, which are organized intoweekly themes, to ensure the result is good tele-vision, good science, and good programming interms of appeal and comprehensibility for ourtarget audience. 8- to 12-year-old kids. The thy-to-day management of the project reflects these prior-ities with coordination among the departmentsresponsible: Production. Content. and Research.

Some theme weeks, such as "Stuff' (materialsand their properties), "Flight" "Signals," and"Water," reflect broad categories of phenomena.Others, such as "The Tropics" or "Japan " areorganized around geographic location& Eachtheme is features in five related shows broadcastdaily after school (Many stations also make theseries available for inschool use by airing the se-ries during school hours.) Each program isdesigned to stand alone. but children who watchseveral programs within a theme week shouldgain a more detailed perspective on the programs'unifying scientific principles.

3-2-1 CONTACTs magazine format combineslive-action sequences, on-location documentaries,animation, and stock footage assemblages. Manyprograms contain a mini-mystery serial (anaudience favorite) that features the adventures ofThe Bloodhound Gang, whose protagonists solvemysteries through scientific reasoning andknowledge.

From inhouse interviews and studies we haveconducted with target-audienc: children, we knowthat viewers retain a large amount of informationpresented on the show. Furthermore, an NSF-sponsored study of how 3-2-1 CONTACT functionsas informal science education found that morethan half of the viewers went on to do somethingas a result of watching the show.

The longer term goals and the idiosyncraticeffects are more difficult to assess, understand-ably, particularly with quantitative measurements.We therefore rely a great deal on guidance and


feedback from our National Advisory Committee,composed of distinguished scientists, science educators, and public broadcasters. We also find goodanecdotes to be rewarding and informative,regardless of their scientific status. For example,one of our young viewers was depressed by thenews that he needed heart surgery, specifically theimplantation of a pacemaker. However, after coin-cidentally viewing an episode of 3-2-1 COIVT.c,CTthat presented and discussed pacemakers, boththe child and his parents were relieved anduplifted. Sometimes children write to us, suggest-ing their own story ideas. One child asked for ashow on interspecies communication, and anentire fifth-grade class requested a show aboutsilkworms and the production of silk thread.

Nor are these anecdotes restricted to the UnitedStates. Over the years, 3-2-1 CONTACT has beenbroadcast in 33 foreign countries, including tech-nologically advanced and underdeveloped areas.Professor Mary Budd Rowe, 3-2-1 CONTACT Advi-sory Committee Member, once spotted agroup of children running excitedly down thestreet in Katmandu, Nepal. Curious about theirdestination and purpose, she followed them to astorefront, where the youngsters went to view 3 -2-1 CONTACT. Similarly, two of our 3-2-1 CONTACTinhouse staff members were in Malaysia to scoutstory ideas. They were in a rather remote area, andstopped to ask directions. There, a mother andnine children, sitting on the dirt floor of theirmodest hut, were viewing 3-2-1 CONTACT ontheir small black-and-white television.

One young viewer paid us what might havebeen his ultimate compliment: He said he likes3-2-1 COlVTACT"even better than cartoons."

Other Uses of 3-2-1 CONTACTSo far, we have been discussing the informal

use of 3-2-1 CONTACT only for voluntary homeviewing. However, other opportunities exist out-side the school setting. Community EducationServices (CES) is the Children's Television Work-shop department that specializes in this category.

In cooperation with concerned adults andfinancial sponsor% CES has organized hundredsof 3-2-1 CONTACT Science Clubs around thecountry. These clubs ust. meet at schools, butthey are not part of the formal science curriculum,A typical club consists of approximately 10youngsters and an adult leader who use 3-2-1CONTACTs weekly themes to generate ideas andto structure activities. For example. during -Waterweek. club members might perform the "ThreeFaces of Water' experiment that shows how waterlocos as a solid liquid and gas. They might alsoset up an aquarium, make a water wheel, or visit alocal weather bureau office. These activities moti-vate children and help them find understand, andappreciate science and technology in their dailylives. Science museums, the Girl Scouts of Amer-ica (which uses 3-2-1 CONTACT-based activitiesas part of its merit badge program). Girl's Clubs,Boy's Clubs, 4-H Clubs. and YMCAs have all spon-sored 3-2-1 CONTACT clubs.

3-2-1 CONTACT: The kiagazine3-2-1 CONTACT is also in print 375.000 house-

holds subscribe to the award-winning 3-2-1 CON-TACT magazine. The magazine contains articleson current science-related topics, as well as games,

puzzles, and activities to motivate and interest 8-to 14-year-olds. In addition, it has a special sectionthat concentrates on computer-related subjects.

Although issues of 3-2-1 CONTACT magazineare not tied to specific 3-2-1 CONTACT Shows, themagazine's philosophy parallels that of the seriesand, therefore, reading the magazine complementsviewing the show.

All Work lbgetherTelevision can be a powerful ally of informal

education. Over the years, we have learned a greatdeal about how to reach large. voluntary, homeaudiences with quality educational materials. It'snot easy. Carefully planned uses of television areteam efforts, requiring expertise not only inproduction but also in content, curriculum, educa-tional research, evaluation, and local utilization.When a television show can succeed in reachingavoluntary audience with quality materials, thechances are good that those materials .an be usedin additional settings, such as schools, museums.science dubs, and other community organiza-tions. The Children's Television Workshop isproud of what 3-2-1 CONTACT is accomplishing.both on its own and in combination with othermedia and other organizations.

Helpful HintsThe following list of action-oriented ideas offers

teachers a few suggestions for getting the mostout (43-2-1 CONTACT. We recommend thatteachers use their creativity and knowledge oftheir classes to develop original ideas and to tailorthe suggestions to the unique needs of theirstudents.

II Use the 3-2-1 CONTACT Teacher's Guide. TheGuide features daily show information, discus-sion questions, science vocabulary terms,elementary science bibliography, curriculumcorrelation chart, and reproducible activitypages. Guides are available for $5 each, or $2.50

each for 50 or more. Write to 3-2-1 CONTACT.C1W. One Lincoln Plaza, New York, NY 10023.

Consider alternative audiovisual formats for irl-c:ass use. 3-2-1 CONTACT offers free three-yearLpe and erase rights for in-class audiovisualuse. Additionally, Guidance Associates, ir.cooperation with the Children's TelevisionWorkshop. produces audiovisual programsbased on 3-2-1 CONTACT for schools. Theseprograms. organ tzed for classroom use. areavailable in sound filmstrip, videocassette, and16-mm film formats. Call 1-800-931-1242, toll-free, for information.

4 Mw

Making Informal Contact 49

Encourage students to write scripts for 3-2-1CONTACT segments. This assignment places3-2-1 CONTACT in a multidisciplinary program,because scriptwriting require:: students to applytheir understanding of science content whilesharpening their creative writing skills.

Devote a day to careers in science and technol-ogy, as seen on 3-2-1 CONTACT. Show and dis-cuss segments that include role model scientistsin their varied environments.

Help students to organize a science fair rr ohr-ing around 3-2-1 CONTACT themes. Students


witch assorted theme weeks, choose a topic,and design related sc' once projects.

Assist students while they create their ownscience viaeo modeled after 3-2-1 CONTACT.

Recommend 3-2-1 CONTACT for home viewing.Encourage students to summarize segmentseither verbally or in writing.

Reconuner -I 3-2-1 CONTACT magazine forhome reading. Write to 3-2-1 CONTACTmagazine, EBMC Square, P.O. Box 51177,Boulder, CO 80321-1177.

4

11Behind the Scenes of Mr. WizardDon HerbertMr. Wizard StudioBell Canyon, California

DTelevision viewers may consider Mr. Wizard to

be a science teacher, but he's not faced with thesame constraints as a typical teacher. He los onlyone "student." no set curriculum, no "principal,"an adequate budget. more help, and "teaches" onlyone half hour a week. However, both have toimpart some aspect of science to a young person.Perhaps some of the techniques we developed overthe years for a television audience may help theteacher facing a classroom of studer ts.

The question most often asked of me is: "Wheredo you get all your ideas?'

Primarily from published materials. Specialistsin teaching science have described their tech-niques and collected the methods of others. I'vefound such volumes in bookstores, secondhandshops, and university stores. Two of the treasuresin my library are Experimental ScienceElementary Practical and Experimental Physics,by George M. Hopkins, published in 1890, and

4 OS

Behind the Scenes of Mr. Wizard 51

Magical Experiments or Science in Play, byArthur Good, published in 1894. Modernized ver-sions of many of the suggestions for science"experiments" described in the 1890s appear intoday's books.

The Mr. Wizard library now numbers about1,000 volumes, including eight sets of encyclope-dias, science textbooks for elementary, junior, andsenior high, and 20 file drawers of cataloged sug-gestions for sciene activities .om this collectionwe extract ideas for planning a "run down," thetelevision version of a lesson plan. However, collect-ing demonstrations is only the beginning. Theyhave to be selected and organized to make a "plot"that has a beginning, middle, and an end, andstructured around a tried-and-true formula fordrama

Catch attention.Arouse interestDevelop conflictResolve conflict.

Catching attention most often takes the form ofa cuestion, puzzle, problem, contradiction, or chal-lenge for the child as he or she comes through thedoor at the opening of the show. The plot"thickens" and further interest is aroused as wework out the answer that leads to the next step inthe plot.

It is important that the first challenge impliesthat finding the solution will be fun. Also. itshould not be a test of knowledge or intelligence,but an invitation to explore. By posing an intrigu-ing challenge, we can fairly easily catch attentionand arouse interest.

Developing conflict is a greater problem. Cer-tainly, there should be no conflict between thechild and Mr. Wizard. What can we do that hassome appearance of conflict without boy-meets-girl situations, murder, to solve, or even thesimplest kind of chase? The only motivation thatseems appropriate is curiosity, an essential ele-ment in all dramatic situations in which theviewer wonders what is going to happen next. Weset out to explore techniques `or generating, sus-


taining, and satisfying curiosity.To suggest possible plotting techniques, we have

compiled a list of "trigger" words: puzzle, riddle,mystery, secret, challenge, test, investigation, quiz,dare, problem. Whenever we are stalled in comingup with a workable structure, we use these to cueour imagination. Most of the time, one will helpgenerate a solution.

Once we select the series of demonstrations, welook for ways to make them more effective. Thissymbol focuses our thinking:

The circle represents the original idea. The verticalarrows suggest we improve it by making it higher,lower, taller, shorter, deeper, shallower, or heavier,lighter. The horizontal arrows suggest we considermaking it faster, slower, bigger, smaller, or thicker,thinner. It is amazing how often such a simpledevice prompts us to make a "standard" demon-stration more effective.

In the beginning, our restricted budget meantwe had to use simple equipment we could findaround the house or buy at a local store. Withoutrealizing it, we were taking Dr. Karl Duncker's testfor creativity week after week. Dr. Duncker, aGerman psychologist, challenged his students toattach three candles to a door without the candlestouching the door. The students could use onlyboxes of birthday candles, matches, and thumb-tacks on a table. Only a few figured out how to doit. Then he challenged another group, but put thecandles, matches, and thumbtacks on the tableout of their boxes. Many more students were ableto solve the problem. The first group saw the boxesas containers, and that function became fixed in

50

their minds. The second group could more easilyvisualize the boxes as platforws tacked to the dooron which to se the candles. Dr. Dunker coinedthe term "functional fixation": the tendency tothink of the properties of an object only in termsof the purpose for which the object was originallydesigned and to overlook other attributes thatcould make it useful in other ways.

A common example of function freedom is theuse of soap. Its slipperiness is incidental to itsprimary purpose of getting things clean. Thatsecondary property is the very thing needed to fixa sticky drawer. Other examples include using ascrewdriver to open a paint can, holding a dooropen with a brick, making paste with flour, andcutting off the corner of an envelope to use it as afunnel.

We first define the specific properties we needand then begin looking for everyday items thathave those properties. Function freedom guides usas we walk the aisles of supermarkets, hardwarestores, drugstores, and hobby shops looking for"scientific" equipment. With functional freedom aclothespin becomes an electrical switch. a sparkleran example of the randomness of radioactivity. amarshmallow an illustration of a solid colloid filledwith a gas, and gumdrops atoms in a model.

Using common items has another ac vantage. Asan analogy for 11/2 volts from a battery and the 120volts from a wall pocket, we use a mousetrap and arattrap. When both are set and the child is readyto spring them with a soda straw, the difference inpotential energy between them is apparent. Theinstantly recognizable rattraps and mousetrapsand a soda straw do not have to be "explained."The child can anticipate the results and see andhear the difference in "voltages" as the traps aresprung. Using an everyday item in a novel way toexplain a scientific phenomenon has become partof Mr. Wizard's identity.

Later. we discovered that the techniques we haddeveloped for planning a science television showhad been validated by educational researchers foruse in the classroom. Dr. John Cunningham. of

Keene State College, New Hampshire, in SchoolScience and Mathematics. December 1966, de-?cribed scores of investigations into what madeeffective teaching and concluded:

The upshot of all these currents of thoughtconverging from different starting points isthat motivating disturbances can come fromc inflict and that conflict often arises as aresult of curiosity ... the curious person notonly sees and hears but looks for and listens

for.

He goes on to quote Dr. D. E. Berlyne, of the Uni-versity of Toronto:

The element of enduring value in the newteaching techniques. iv 'ilding the discoverymethod and programmta instruction, thesecret of whatever success can be claimed forthem, the real germ of a pedagogical revolu-tion, may well turn out to be not in inde-pendent discovery, but in the attempt topinpoint and harness the sources of epi-stemic curiosity.

Dr. Cunningham concludes that "many of thenew science and mathematics curricula worklargely by manipulating conceptual conflict in theform of surprise, doubt, incongruity, perplexity,and confusion."

Mr. Wizard and science teachers do have muchin common after all.

Even itlevision Experiments Aren'tFoolproof

A question that's often asked, especially byreporters, is the following: "In view of the livenature of the show, did anything ever go wrong?"

Often enough, in spite of our careful planningand rehearsal, it was obvious from the way thechild and I talked to each other and how actionunfolded that the program was adlibbed andlive." No doubt the audience recognized and

5 -L


responded to thi: atmosphere of uncertainty.When something unintended happened, we didwhatever was necessary to remedy it, and con-tinued with our "experiment" just as any two peo-pht would in "real life."

However, failure can be the springboard for suc-cess. Our failure with rockets is a good example.i he climax of a show on rocketry was, of course,firing a rocket. We rigged a hobby store version tofly across the set on a wire. The fuse was a trickyaffair that sputtered and went out. The climax wasa dead rocket that flew nowhere. We adlibbed ourway to the end of the show, vowing to try againnext week.

On the following week's show, we started with a"foolproof" rocket made of pipe that had adynamite-type fuse to ignite it. The fuse burnedand ignited the fuel, but the pipe got hung up on awire and stayed on the launchpad. We went onwith the rest of the show.

In preparation for our third attempt, we triedthe functional freedom approach that had workedfor us in the past. What common item was madeof metal to withstand the burning of the fuel, hada large enoubh opening through which to load thefuel, yet could be closed tightly enough to containgas under pressure? It also had to have a smallhole through which the gas could escape to createthe thrust to propel the rocket. The method ofigniting it also had to be foolproof. The propertieswe defined fit a common hardware store item per-fectly. Our rocket was a small oil can. We took offthe spout to load it, screwed it back on and tight-ened it with a pair of pliers, tethered the can to apole, and ignited it with a small blowtorch aimedat the bottom. At the opening of next week's show,it launched successfully. We've repeated the oil-canrocket experiment many times, and it has alwaysworked.

The most potentially serious mishap occurredduring the well-known demonstration hi which aburning candle is covered by a bottle with themouth of the bottle underwater. As the candleflame goes out, the water flows up into the bottle,

54 Sciencc for the Fun of It

supposedly bemuse the flame used some of theoxygen in the air in the bottle, producing a partialvacuum. Atmospheric pressure forces the waterup into the bottle to take the place of the missingoxygen, This explanation is incorrect. Actually, theflame heats the air in the bottle, expanding itenough so that some of it bubbles out of themouth. Most of the time, this loss of air goesunnoticed. We figured out a way to have the childdeduce the correct c..-planation by lighting thecandle after it was inside the bottle.

On the show we did the experiment in thestandard way and outlined the usual explanation.We then produced our new version, in which wehad placed a small coil next to the wick of thecandle. We could cover the candle with the bottle,and with a tube, suck out enough of the air fromthe bottle to have water rise partway into it Wesent an electric current to the coil, which heated itred hot, and ignited the candle. In rehearsal, theheat of the flame expanded the air, forcing thewater level down almost to the mouth of theupside-down bottle. When the flame went out, thewater rose to its previous level, showing that thestandard explanation was incorrect.

Still in rehearsal we pointed out that the voiameof the gases produced by the flame was almost thesame as the volume of gases before the candle waslighted. The child gave the correct explanation:The candle flame heated the air and some of itescaped from the bottle. We were pleased that wehad designed a new demonstration that neatlyproved the correct explanation. Little did we real-ize disaster was about to strike.

As we set up for the actual telecast, we removedthe bottle from the candle without realizing thatthe wick got wet On the air, when we turned onthe current to the coil, it got hotter and hotter, butthe wick did not ignite. Instead, the air in the bot-tle became filled with vaporized paraffin. When thecoil finally got hot enough, it ignited the mixture,blew the bottle out of the close-up, and sprayedwater over the child and me. The bottle camedown out of the lights and clanged to the floor. As

5 z

soon as the crew realized that neither the childnor I was hurt, they roared with laughter. Fromlong training in doing a live show, I wiped the twoof us off, explained that I got the wick wet. anddescribed briefly what should have happened. Inthe classroom, the teacher could have put a newcandle in position and tried again. With otherdemonstrations scheduled and timed, we couldonly go on to the next one.

The accident happened in the final days of Mr.Wizard when the program was recorded on tapefor later rebroadcast. It is the only time the showwas ever edited. They cut only the laughter of thecrew, and the program went on the network withthe accident intact.

Thievision Science Can Have LastingInfluence

While the show was on the air we had little realcontact with the audience and had no idea of theshow's impact. Now, many years later, many adultshave told me that as child viewers they were influ-enced by the show. Some have said it taught themto think or that it kindled an interest in science.Some have even gone so far as to say it wasresponsible for their careers in science or technol-ogy. How could a half-hour television program inblack and white seen on small screens have hadsuch an influence?

One reason is that the program was on longenough for us to be able to experiment and refineour techniques. The series was also on longenough for viewers to respond to the informalstyle and the scientific content and to find theshow was worth a half hour of their time.

Another reason for the show's impact is prob-ably because we included activities that childrencould repeat at home. This meant that they had tothink about what they were doing, which madethem better able to recall the principle involvedand perhaps look forward to the suggestions onthe next show. Repeating some of the "tricks" alsomeant the children were not merely inactive spec-tators, but could actually enjoy doing science.

Learning implies there's been an internal changein the learner. As children tried to repeat whatthey'd seen us do on television, they were, in effect,teaching themselves.

If a half-hour show with contact only through _

television screen could have such influence, thinkof the tremendous opportunity that a scienceteacher has with more time and that very impor-tant element of close personal communication.

The original show aired on NBC from 1951through the middle of 1965. Now, some 23 yearslater, it is back in Mr. Wizard's World on Nickelo-deon, the all-children's programming cable chan-nel. We applied everything we learned on the oldshows to generate and satisfy the curiosity of anew generation of children and their parents, whowere the children who watched the original somany years ago.

The most important ingredient, a child havingfun experimenting with things scientific andtechnical, is now incorporated into a magazineformat more in keeping with the television oftoday. Interspersed with our usual activities are"Quick Quizzes" (short puzzlers), "Snapshots"(intriguing pictures), "Safaris," and "ScienceFrontiers" (scientific and technological explora-tions on film and tape). The series is in color andhas more variety and a faster pace. Titles andmusic introduce the show and each segment anda stock company of children of various ages stampeach segment with their personalities. There arethree indoor playing areas, and many of thesequences are taped on location. The uncertaintyof the adlib style is still there, but now it's on tapeand can be edited for better control and pacing.

Itlevision Science Is for Adults As WellWe're contributing to continuing education for

adults in another kind of television program:newscasts. In 1980, the National Science Founda-tion (NSF) challenged us to find a way to bringscience and technology to the vast audience thatwatches commercial television and is unlikely totune into a typical science program. My wife,

5 C.)


Norma (who is in charge of marketing our activi-ties). and after researching the problem, realizedthat the only programming that could presentscience on a regular basis in peak viewing periodswas a newscast With our first grant from the NSF,we followed the advice of news directors and pro-duced a series of 90-second reports.

The series is titled How About . . because ourgoal is to have the viewer say "How about that!"The series started on the air in the spring of 1980.To date. 621 reports have been produced. Eachyear for the past nine years an average or 140commercial television stations have aired the se-ries. For the last six years, it also reached 1,.ninternational audience via the Armed ForcesRadio and Television Network. The reports cover awide range of subjects by highlighting the latestdevelopments in science and technology at univer-sities and other research-oriented organizationsacross the country. The project is a good exampleof continuing informal education made possibleby the cooperation of government and industry:the NSF, an agency of the federal government andGeneral Motors, one of the leading corporations inthe private sector.


We are now exploring how the series can bemade available to teachers. On videocassette manyof the reports can bring students up-to-date ondevelopments in some of the disciplines covered inthe curriculum. With appropriate supplementarymaterials, they could also be stimuli for discus-sion.

While the subject matter in the How About . . .series is different from that of the Mr. Wizard'sWorld programs. some of the same techniques forcatching attention, arousing interest, and develop-ing and resolving conflict in the form of curiosityare again helping us bring a better understandingand appreciation of science and +echnology to mil-lions of television viewers.

ReferencesCunningham, John. (December, 1966). On curios-

ity and science education. School Science andMathematics.

Good, Arthur. (1894). Magical experiments orscience in play. Philadelphia. PA: David McKay.

Hopkins, George M. (1890). Experimentalscienceelementary practical and experimen-tal physics. New York, NY: Munn & Co.

Science Writing in Its Ageof Yellow JournalismJon FranklinUniversity of MarylandCollege Park, Maryland

Two clasAic images of the scientist have longvied for dominance in the American mind. In oneguise, the scientist is the absentminded professor,the bumbling, over-educated fool who has to bereminded to put on his galoshes. In his alter ego,he is Dr. Frankenstein. the n-nd scientist, theamoral if not immoral creator of a monster.

At a certain level, the public believes that scien-tists are people who mumble in languages theydon't understand, tap strange forces, think in

terms of cohorts of rats and tons of cowpancreases reduced to test tubes full of extractand who produce, as if by magic, the thermonu-clear bomb.

People in science are quick to jump to the con-clusion that the media shapes these stereotypes. AUniversity of Pennsylvania group found that peo-ple who watch a lot of television think of scienceas a threatel,.. . iterprise. Television scientistsfrequently an as the bad guys. Yet the

Science Writing in Its Age of Yellow Journalism 57

53

media capitalizes on attitudes that already exist;they do not create the negative view of science, butmake a bad situation worse by reinforcing it.

The media's willingness to capitalize on anti-scientific feelings spreads from prime-time televi-sion to the news hour, and eventually into re-spectable newspapers. Newspaper reporters andeditors feature science stories on "scare topics"such as the Dalkon Shield, Agent Orange anddioxin, hazardous waste, acid rain, nuclear winter,and genetic engineering, often at the expense ofcovering important advances in science. Theydidn't cover the neurotransmitter story until longafter Sol Snyder and Candace Pert made theirwatershed discovery. And what about the geneticengineering of plants? Materials science?Agronomy? We can all think of a long list of scien-tific trends and discoveries that the public shouldknow about and the press should write aboutextensively.

Part of this problem is certainly due to a lack ofeducation among commentators, reporters, andeditors. Media folks are as a ruse ignorant ofscienceeven more so than the public at large.They're not dumbdon't get me wrong. But as thephrase "the fourth estate" implies, the tradition ofjournalism tends to ally the journalist with thepolitician and the social administrator. The politi-cian and the reporter need each other, they knowthey need each other, and they make a big effort tounderstand each other.

No such tradition exists between scientists andjournalists. Most reporters and editors do the vastmajority of their college course work, for instance,in political science. The average journalist takesone required course, say, in chemistryand findsit so difficult and obscure that he or she is terri-fied of flunking. The journalist survives mostly bymemorizing things, and learns the lesson thatscience is awful, that it can't be understood bynormal people, and that at the same time, it's veryimportant.

And we're back, once again, to the idea thatscientists run things and the average Joe or Jane,


in this case the newspaper reporter, is incapable ofunderstanding science, much less of it luencingthe outcome. In my experience, that paranoia isrampant in the American newsroom: Science isseen as dangerously out of control. Many sciencewriters see it that way, and almost all environmen-tal writers (who outnumber science writers andusually get much better play) believe it to be so.Editors, by and large, are critical and suspicious ofscience and of all its prod' cts. And most sciencestories are covered by general reporters, not byscience writers.

Mutual Fear and HostilitySo the public fears science and the media not

only plays into that fear but shares it. And theaverage scientist is often as ignorant, frightened,and judgmental about the media as the media isat rut science. My favorite example of this predic-ament go.^3 back to the 1950s, when the first pul-sar was discovered. The United States had builtthe world's largest radio telescope at Arecibo inPuerto Rico. It was too big to aim, so it was nestled'. a natural crater so that it pointed straight up.Each day, as the earth turned, it swept across theheavens. Fairly quickly the scientists discoveredthat each time the dish swept across one specificsection of sky, it picked up a series of sharp, shortbursts of radio energy. Something up there wasbeeping at them, very fast. beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.

We know now L it it was a pulsar, the cinder ofan exploded star. It was spinning incredibly fastand giving off a radio beacon. With each revolu-tion, a beep was heard. But the Arecibo scientistsknew only that something up there was beeping atthem. And since they had never come across any-thing like that before, it had to be important. Theyknew they had to announce their discove:y to theworld, but weren't too sure how to go about it.Eventually they decided to find the largest news-paper in the United States and call an editor there.The best-read newspaper in the United Statesturned out to be a publication printed in Lantana,

5 it

Florida. just a few hours flight to the north. Awhile later. in Lantana, an editor picked up a tele-phone. Yes, he was interested, and would sendone of his best reporters on the next plane south.

The astronomers at Arecibo let the reporterlisten to the tape-recorded beeps and gave him alessor; in radio astronomy. Finally, he asked. "Soyou don't really know for sure what's doing thebeeping?" No. they replied. All they really knew wasthe beeping. The reporter said, "Then it could beanythIng, right? It could even be intelligent life try-ing to start a conversation."

The scientists laughed, pleased that the fellowwas beginning to grasp the basic vaguen( ss ofscience. They said, "Sure, we suppose it could beanything." They started talking about the wondersof radio astronomy again, but the reporter wassuddenly in a hurry to get back to his newspaper.

And so. the most important astronomical dis-covery of the decade appeared on the front page ofThe National Enquirer. The banner headlineannounced, in 72-point type, something like"Aliens Contact Earth."

One of the scientists involved told me this story.He'd learned his lessonhe was never again goingto talk to a reporter. It was 10 years before hecooled down enough to understand that the fiascowas his own fault for not making distinctionsbetween different newspapers.

We have this deadly combination of ignoranceand hostility on all front.. We have -.dentists whowon't cooperate, reporters who don't know whatthey're writing about, editors who don't care, andreaders with so many misconceptions and pre-conceptions that they wouldn't know an impo-tant story if it bit them. This is di .',' ait truth,and during the first part of my career as a sciencewriter I stubbornly resisted it I wanted to be aSERIOUS journalist. I wrote wel researched, care-fully crafted hard news stories about significantscientific advances. These stories usually appearedon page D-43, cut by half and draped gracelesslyaround a tire ad. Nobody noticed them.

The reason? Such technical science stories are

very precise, but they have one major drawback.They are written with the assumption that thereader has a context for the information. But thestory actually will make sense only to a smallsuoseL of people who have the background tounderstand it. Consequently, many important dis-coveries remain unknown to all outside the writ-er's immediate professional circle. For instance,the revolutionary breakthroughs in neurochemis-try remain even today largely incomprehensible tomost people.

Furthermore, such hard news stories don'trelate to the reader and his or her life. The publicdoesn't want to read about "serious" science, atleast the way I was presenting it. The undeniablefact was that I had chosen to be a science writer inthe middle of science writing's own age of yellowjournalism, and I could either fight it or join it Ichose t-: Join it.

The Age of Yellow JournalismThe age of yellow journalism is a period of his-

tory that lasted about a generation, from the1800s to the early 1900s, and was characterizedby emotionalism. About the only examples left aretabloidsThe National Enquirer, Weekly WorldNewsthat you see in the supermarket checkoutlines.

Yellow journalism didn't develop in a vacuum. Inthis period the majority of Americans becametruly literate. Before the 1800s, two intellectualclasses existed in tiis country: the very well-educated and the very illiterate. Periodicals weredirected at the relatively small. upper-classaudience. What about the ones who didn't readthose papersthe illiterate majority? First, keep inmind that by "illiterate" I don't really mean thatthey couldn't read and write. Literacy. for civicpurposes, requires more.

Most Americans had only the vaguest idea howtheir government worked. They understood little ofthe historical context of their institutions, letalone the flow of power within them. As to theoriesof government, they knew America was the best in


the world. To be a good citizen in those days wasenough. Then society began to change. In 1870seven million children went to public schools; dur-ing the next 30 years, that number doubled.

A peculiar thing happens with a little bit oflearning. People want to learn more. Readingmakes them want to read more. Suddenly, anincredible hunger developed for the written word,and a market for a true mass media was born.This was made possible by the invertion, aboutthe same time, of the high-speed printing press.

Butand this is very importantthe demandwasn't for just any written material. The vaguelyliterate, wanting to understand but without muchknowledge, read what grabbed them. Whatgrabbed them was stuff they could relate to, thatavoided the abstract What was not abstract? Anaxe murder. A theater fire. A juicy scandal, some-thing with a hint of sex in the wings. A marketexisted not only for the scandal story, but espe-cially the scandal story that involved the perfidy ofsome powerful figure. The public wanted whattoday we call the "gotcha" storythe story thatexposer corruption, malfeasance, lying, cheating,and general public-be-damned attitudes on thepart of the establishment The writers of these stcries were called muckrakers. Many of these storieswere merely sensationalistic, focusing on sex andviolence, and some stories turned the publicagainst politicians and public officials who weretrying to do a good job. But at the same time, cru-sading -eporters destroyed the Tweed empire anduncovered inhuman working conditions, and thegiverrunent generally became more accountable.

Another kind of story grabbed the public, toothe drama story, usually a legitimate story of legit-imate value with an emotional base. Balloon racesmade good copy. So did polar exploration andmountain climbing. People read exploration sto-ries. for example, because they had emotionalappeal. But along with the excitement of readingabout explorers, readers (whether they knew it ornot) were also getting an introduction to geolog, .

politics, and world cultures.


Even more important was the part that yellowjournalism played in the steadily rising literacyrate. Marginally literate people may appear to gainnothing specific from reading a good, bloody storyabout a ball pein hammer murder, yet they dogain something just by reading. They becomefamiliar with the language, and if they misunder-stand the institutions that are involved, at leastthey learn that such institutions exist

The age of yellow journalism represents the ado-lescence of the American press. As the audienceslowly became more sophisticated, it demandedmore. A reporter doesn't dare know less than hisor her readers. Newspapers also became moresophisticatedlarge, popular, and financially suc-cessful. This age of experimentation culminated inthe tradition of journalism you see today in paperslike The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, andThe Washington Posi. It was an age of flounderingaround and learning by experience, of literacy-

building, and of incorporating ever larger percen-tages of the population into the system.

That. precisely, is where science writing standstoday.

Science Writing That EntertainsMy theory was that the public really does want

to know about science. They know technology isour master today, and science is the master oftechnology. If you're going to get ahead, you've gotto learn to deal with computers. If you're going toget a job, you've got to know science. The public iscurious about science, but they want it in somecontext they can understand. And the scientificstory, whatever it is, must entertain.

As I considered the problem of communicatingacross the great chasm between science andsociety. of talking real science to police officers andbank tellers and English professors, I realized thatI would need to tap a new level of power. I wouldneed to make a quantum jump into somethingcalled "emotion."

Essays. I began to use the essay form, a type of

5 3

writing that helps readers identify with the sub-.ct and appeals to a basic emotioncuriosity. A

good essay leaves readers with the satisfying feel-ing that they know something they didn't knowbefore, perhaps something they believed they wereincapable of understanding. Done correctly, essayscan elicit from the reader a certain pantheistic,quasi-religious awe. In the process, the reader'smind is open to legitimate information andperspectives. Essays tap the reader's sense ofwonder and entice him or her into reading aboutthe mystery of black holes or the intricate mecha-nism of the human body. The idea is to have read-ers think, "Gee whiz, look at the universe! Look athow marvelous it is, how well-ordered, how under-standable!" Instead of leaving readers with the per-ception that science is a cold and inhuman pro-cess' hat real people can't understand it.essays allow readers to believe scientific researchis a fascinating endeavor. The reader can partici-pate, the same way he or she can participate inmusic by developing a taste for Beethoven.

So, besides being entertaining, essays providean easy entry into science for the nonscientific.The reader puts down the piece with the distinctfeeling that despite a bad experience in collegechemistry, he or she can in fact understandscience. The essay form has the power to reachacross the great chasm, touch the nonscientist,and change minds.

The drawback is that it can change only theminds of those people who will read essays thattreat science with respect. It will not work inminds that are already highly paranoid and suspi-cious about science, because they will see the workas propaganda For example, people who thinkmedical scientists are concerned primarily withmaking money don't become fans of LewisThomas, author of Lives of a Cell and other booksof essays on the mechanisms of science.

Stories. I would not be satisfied until I won theattention of the majority of folks who really don'tcare about science one way or the other, except to

fear it. To do this, I began to look for stories inscience that could be told in classic short-storyform.

Dramatic form always entails more than anidea. It features a character or characters. In thecourse of the story the character confronts a prob-lem. As the story continues, the character strug-gles to face and overcome the problem. The powerin the dramatic form of writing is tapped throughthe phenomena of suspension of disbelief, whichinduces experience. Readers forget they're sittingin an easy choir, or a bus, or wherever. Readersbecome the character, sharing the character'sexperiences, world, excitement, tension, sorrow,and ultimate fate. My character was usually ascientist, often a doctor-scientist, and the conflictwas usually with the unknownhumans againstthe rest of the universe.

Experience, as we all know, is the ultimateteacher, the ultimate giver not of information butof knowledge, the ultimate shaper of pattern andworld view. Therefore drama, unlike any other artform, can act' rally alter the reader's view of theworld. It .s the potential to heal the culturalwound, toe science/society rift.

In science writing's own age of yellow journal-ism, this technique proves to be powerful. Thestories have high entertainment value. Theyattract and hold the reader for their own sake. Theplot is the important element. not the science. butif the reader learns some science along the way,that's great. But it isn't why the reader reads thestories. I try to keep "science" out of the title.

When I present science in such a :man con-text, readers not only understand what they readbut remember it. In these stories, science isrevealed as a human thing, pt. rsued by humanbeings not unlike the readers. I get a lot of positsfeedback: people say they like the people I writeabout, and the stories make them much more intune with science and much less afraid of it. Somereaders say that I've even changed their attitudesabout science.

These ideas aren't exclusively mine. In recent


years more am more science writers are comingto share them, and science stories are rapidlybecoming the standard in science journalism.

Science LiteratureYou've probably heard that Truman Capote

invented what he called the "nonfiction novel." Yetthe first true example of the form that I've beenable to find is Hiroshima, a book written in the1940s by John Hersey, a crossover novelist andjournalist. The book focused on the stories of peo-ple who were in Hiroshima when the atomic bombwas dropped. It is first-class literature, in form aswell as function, and its aim is to make a tech-nological nrodtct understandable to the reader.The effect is to put the reader there, to constitutean experience.

Another pioneering science writer was LorenEiseley, a physical anthropologist who wrote fromthe University of Pennsylvania. Although he's bestknown for his classic book about evolution, TheImmense Journey, he wrote dozens of otherbooks, all about science. Many of them are studiedtoday in English literature classes.

In recent years the market for literary works ofscience (dramatic nonfiction and essays) has beengrowing. One of the most interesting recent suc-cess stories involves Tom Wolfe. Wolfe, after labor-ing with a limited audience for years, finally movedinto sciencespecifically, space science. His bookThe Right Stuff put him on the bestseller list andmade him an international celebrity.

The art of science writing is also attracting asubstantial number of physicians and scientists.Lewis Thomas, a physician and head of Sloan-Kettering, was the first one to put a literary, essay-form book (Lives of a Cell) on the bestseller list.Through him, Americans became aware for thefirst time of cellular biology. More recently. Oliver


Sacks, a neurologist, rang the commercial bellwith The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, abook relating strange tales from the neurologicalfrontier.

A whole generation of younger writers are usingscience and scientific subjects to develop moremodem, commercially viable literary styles. AndI'm talking about very state-of-the-art subjects.One such writer is Douglas Hofstadter, who in1964 won a Pulitzer for his book Anti-Intel-lectualism in American Life. In 1980 he wonagain for a stream-of-consciousness nonfictionbook entitled Glidel. Esther, Bach, an EternalGolden Braid.

Many science books have won the Pulitzer prizein the General Nonfiction category over the lastdecade. In 1977, the judges picked BeautifulSwimmers, by naturalist William Warner, whoused the biology of the blue channel crab as aliterary carrier vehicr to probe the culture ofMaryland's Eastern S 'e. The following year, CarlSagan won with The Dragons of Eden. In 1979,the winner was Edward 0. Wilson, for On HumanNature. In 1980, as I've just mentioned, Hofstadterwon for Geidel. Escher, Bach, an Eternal GoldenBraid. In 1982, we had Tracy Kidder's The Soul ofa New Machine, and in 1984, Paul Starr's SocialTransformation of Modem Medicine.

From the public, especially from today's students,come tomorrow's journalists. editors, politicians,and eJmmentators. It's our job to provide the pub-lic with science stories and essays that will beread, understood, and rememberedthat enter-tain as well as educate. These stoner and essaysassuar le public's fear of science by letting theminto th laboratories to share the drama of sciencewith scientists.

6 0

ADLos Angeles, CaliforniaRay Bradbury

The Rebirth of ImaginationDusk In the Robot Museums:

For some 10 years now, I have been writing aking narrative poem about a small child in thefuture who runs into an audio-animatronicmuseum. veers away from the right porticomarked Rome. passes a door marked Alexandria,and enters across a sill where a sign letteredGreece points in across a meado i.

The child runs over the artificial grass andcomes upon Plato, Socrates. and perhaps Euri-pides seated at high noon under an olive tree sip-

ping wine and eating bread and honey and sneak-ing truths.

The child hesitates and then addresses Plato:"How goes it with the Republic?""Sit down." says Plato. "and Ill tell you."The child sits. Plato tells. Socrates steps in from

time to time. Euripides does a scene from one ofhis plays.

Along the way. the child might well ask a ques-tion that hovered in all of our minds during the

6i

Dusk in the Robot Museums 63

past few decades:"How come the United States, the country of

Ideas on the March, for so long neglected fantasyand science fiction? Why is it that only during thepast 30 years attention is being paid7'

Another question might well be:"Who is responsible for the change?"Who has taught the teachers and the librarians

to pull up their socks. sit straight, and takenotice?"

Since I am neither dead nor a robot, and Plato-as-audio-animatronic lecturer might not be pro-grammed to respond, let me answer as best I can.

The answer is: The students. The young people.The children.

They have led the revolution.The children have become the teachers. Before

our time, knowledge came down from the top ofthe pyramid to the broad base where the studentssurvived as best they could. The gods spoke andthe children listened.

But, lo! Gravity reverses itself. The massivepyramid turns like a melting Iceberg, until thebays and girls are on top. The base of the pyramidnow teaches.

How did it happen? After all, back in the twen-ties and thirties, there were few science-fictionbooks in the curricula of schools. There were fewin the libraries. Responsible publishers only daredto publish books that could be designated as spec-ulative fiction.

If you went into the average library as youmotored across America in 1932, 1945, or 1953,you would have found:

No Edgar Rice Burroughs.No L Frank Baum and no Oz.In 1958 or 1962 you would have found no

Asimov, no Heinlein. no Van Vogt, and, er, noBradt)/ uy.

Here and there, perhaps one book or two by theabove. For the rest: a desert.

What were the reasons for this desert?Among librarians and teachers there was then,

and there still somewhat dimly persists, an idea, a


notion, a concept that only Fact shot Id be eatenwith your Wheaties. Fantasy? That's for the FireBirds. Fantasy, even when it takes scieno--fictionalforms, which it often does, is dangerc_.a. It isescapist. It is daydreaming. It has nothing to dowith the world and the world's problems.

So said the snobs who did not know themselvesas snobs.

So the shelves lay empty, the books untouchedin publishers' bins, the subject untaught

Comes the Evolution. The survival of that spe-cies called Child. The children, dying of starvation,hungry for ideas that lay all about in this fabulousland, locked into machines and architecture,struck out on their own. What did they do?

They walked into classrooms in Waukesha andPeoria and Neepawa and Cheyenne and MooseJaw and Redwood City and placed a gentle bombon teacher's desk. Instead of an apple it wasAsimov.

'What's that7' the teacher asked, suspict. _sly."Try it," said the students. "Read the first page.

If you don't like it, stop."And the clever students turned and went away.The teachers (and the librarians, later) put off

reading, kept the book around the house for a fewweeks and then, late one night, tried the firstparagraph.

And the bomb exploded.They not only read the first but the second

paragraph, the second and third pages, the fourthand fifth chapters.

"My God!" they cried, almost in unison, "thesedamned books are about something!"

"Good Lordr' they cried, reading a second book,"there are Ideas herer

"Holy Smoker they babbled, on their waythrough Clarke, heading into Heinlein, emergingfrom Sturgeon, "these books areuglyword relevant!'

"Yesr shouted the chorus of kids starving in theyard. "Oh, my, yes!"

And the teachers began to teach, and discoveredan amazing thing:

e 4.,

Students who had never wanted to read beforesuddenly were galvanized, pulled up their socks.and 1: Van to read and quote Ursula K. Le Guin.Kids who had never read so much as one pirate sobituary in their lives were suddenly turningpages Cth their tongues, ravening for more.

Librarians were stunned to find that science-fiction books were not only being borrowed in thetens of thousands, but stolen and never returned!

"Where have we been ?,' the librarians and theteachers asked each other, as the Prince kissedthem awake, "What's in these books that makesthem as irresistible as Cracker Jacks?"

The History of Ideas.The children wouldn t have said it in so many

words. They only sensed it and read it and loved it.The kids sensed. if they could not speak it, thatthe first science-fiction wiiters were cavemen andv.omen who were trying to figure out the firstscienceswhich were what? How to capture fire.What to do about that lout of a mammoth hang-ing around outside the cave. How to play dentist tothe sabre-tooth tiger and turn it into a housecat.

Pondering those problems and possible sci-ences, the first cavemen And women drew science-fiction dreams on the cave walls. Scribbles in sootblueprinting possible strategies. Illustrations ofmammoths, tigers. fires: How to solve? How toturn science-fiction (problem solving) into science-fact (problem solved).

Some few brave ones ran out of the cave to bestomped by the mammoth, toothed by the tiger.scorched by the bestial fire that lived on trees anddevoured wood. A few finally returned to draw onthe walls the triumph of the mammoth knockedlike a hairy cathedral to earth, the tiger toothless.and the fire tamed and brought within the cave tolight their nightmares and warm their souls.

The children sensed, if they could not speak,that the entire history of human::Ind is problemsolving, or science fiction swallowing ideas, digest-ing them. and excreting formulas for survival. Youcan't have one without the other. No fantasy, noreality. No studies concerning loss, no gain. No

imagination, no will. No impassible dreams: nopossible solutions.

The children sensed, if they could not say. thatfantasy. and its robot child science fiction. is notescape at all, but a circling round of reality toenchant it and make it behave. What is an air-plane. after all, but a circling of reality, anapproach to gravity that says: Look, with my magicmachine. Lefy you. Gravity be gone. Distance.stand aside. Time, stand still, or reverse, as I finallyoutrace the sun around the world in. by God' look!plane /jet /rocket -80 minutes!

The children guessed, if they did not whisper it,that all science fiction is an attempt to solve prob-lems by pretending to look the other way.

In another place I have described this process asPerseus confronted by Medul.a. Gazing atMedusa's image in his bronze shield. pretendingto look one way. Perseus reaches back over hisshoulder and severs Medusa's head. So science fic-tion pretends at futures in order to cure sick dogslying in today's mad. Indirection is everything.Metaphor is the medicine.

Children love cataphracts, though do not namethem thusly. A cataphract is a special Persian on aspecially bred horse: The combination threw theRoman legions back some long while ago. Problemsolving. Problem: massive roman armies on foot.Science fiction dreams: cataphract /human -on-horseback Romans dispersed. Problem solved.Science fiction becomes scientific fact.

Problem: botulism. Science fiction dreams: tosomeday produce a container that would preservefood, prevent death. Science-fictional dreamers:Napoleon and his technicians. Dream becomesfact: the invention of the Tin Can. Outcome:millions alive today who x uld have otherwisewrithed and died.

So, it seems, we are all science-fictional childrendreaming ourselves into new ways of survival. Weare the reliquaries of all time. Instead of puttingsaints' bones by in crystal and gold jars, to betouched by the faithful in the following centuries.we put by voices and faces, dreams and impossible

Dusk in the Robot Museums 65

dreams on tape, on records, in books, on television,in films. Humans are problem solvers only becausethey are idea keepers. Only by finding technologi-cal ways to save time, keep time, learn kora time,and grow into solutions, have we survived intoand through this age toward even better ones. Arewe polluted? We can unpollute otuselvm Are wecrowded? We can de-mob ourselves. Are we alone?Are we sick? The hospitals of the world are betterplaces since television came to visit, hold hands,take away half the curse of illness and isolation.

Do we want the stars? We can have them. Canwe borrow cups of fire from the sun? We can andmust light the world.

Everywhere we look: problems. Everywhere wefurther deeply look: solutions. The children ofhumans, the children of time, how can they not befascinated with these challenges? Thus: sciencefiction and its recent history.

And becausf the children of the Space Agewanted their fictional dreams sketched andpainted in illustrative terms, the ancient art ofstorytelling, as acted out by your caveman orwoman, was reinvented as yet the second glairpyramid turned end for end, and education ran

This chapter reprinted by permission of Ray Bradbury.Copyright@ 1980 Ray Bradbury.


from the base into the apex, ma the old order wasreversed.

Hence your Revolution.Hence, by osmosis, the Industrial Revolution

and the Electronic and Space Ages have finallyseeped Into +.2-z: blood, bone, marrow, heart, flesh,and mind of the young, who as teachers teach uswhat we should have known all along.

I hope we will not get too serious here, forseriousness is the Red Death if we let it move toofreely among us. Its freedom is our prison and ourdefeat and death. A good idea should worry us likea dog. We should not, in turn, worry it into thegrave, smother it with intellect, pontificate it intosnoozing, kill it with the (ath of a thousandanalytical slices.

All of us would, or should, like to remain child-like and not childish in our 20-20 vision, borrow-ing such telescopes, rockets, or magic carpets asmay be needed to hurry us along to miracles ofphysics as well as dream.

The Revolution continues. And there are monrevolutions to come. And there will always be prob-lems. Thank god for that.

,

1

,I

The Zoo as Noah's ArkAnnette BerkovitsBronx ZooBronx, New York

That people naturally think of zoos as sources ofgrAentific information is perhaps best illustratedby excerpts from the scores of letters that arrive inthe Bronx Zoo's mailbag. A seven-year-old whoheard that armadillos ate termites wrote to checkif the zoo could sell him an armadillo for hisgrandmother's birthday. He wanted to help herwith a termite problem in the basement. Anotheryoungster wanted to know where he could find thebiological clock A girl who discovered the concept


of deciduous trees wanted to know ifone couldproperly refer to "deciduous antlers." An aficio-nado of primates, aware of their social nature,asked whether a lone ape on exhibit could die of"melancholy." A teacher wanted to know how totake care rf the egg she claimed her gerbil hadlaid.

Amusing as these inquiries are, they reflect thepervasive scientific illiteracy of the public. On thepositive side, they also reveal how animals can

evoke genuine scientific investigation, curiosity,and interest Letters such as this one from asecond-grader in California, who shared with ushis letter to President Reagan, are extreas-.:ly rare:

Dear Mr. President, I am concerned aboutpeople who are killing endangered animals. Iwant you to help the animals by tellingworkers not to build houses where animalslive. Animals have no place to go. And also.please stop people from shooting the ani-mals. I want my children to see the animals. Iam begging you please!

Thus, along with their former role of interpret-ing the mysteries of animal behavior and biologyto the public, zoos are now being challenged toelicit an affective response from visitors. The newobligation to involve not only the visitors' minds,but their hearts as well, is rooted in the hope thatvisitors will be moved toward positive actions onbehai; of the environment after their zoo visits. Nolonger is it sufficient for modern zoogoers to pas-sively observe and admire. Zoos are increasinglyexpecting them to behave in certain ways. Gawk-ing must be replaced by giving, admiration musttranslate into action, enjoyment must be coupledwith understanding.

Ecological changes, particularly those since theIndustrial Revolution. have influenced the role ofzoos. None are more serious and none have had assignificant an impact on the course of modernzoological institutions than the dramatic twenti-eth-century changes in the environment Dr. WilliamG. Conway (1984-85), General Director of the NewYork Zoological Society, which operates the BronxZoo, speaks eloquently about these changes:

Among the largest issues facing science andsociology is the loss of wild animals andplants which is taking place throughout theworld at a constantly accelerating rate. Thenext 50 years will see the extinction of a sig-nificant percentage of all remaining species.

No matter what efforts are made to controlthe human population, the continuing loss ofhabitat is inevitable, if only because thehumans who will occasion much of it havealready been born.

Compelling zoo exhibitions such as JungleWorld at the Bronx Zoo enhance visitors oppor-tunities for learning not only facts, but values.Modern zoos have suddenly been propelled into anintensive search for better and more evocativemethods of exhibition and interpretation. Withdramatic decline of wild places and wild speciesaround the world, the work of modern zoos hastaken on aspects of an emergency rescue opera-tion. This is a new role for zoos, which mtflrecently have served mainly as repositories and liv-ing libraries. Perhaps this newest era for zoos canaptly be named by a metaphor ahead of its time:the zoo as Noah's Ark.

The Zoo Llucator's Dilemma: QualityExperiences for the Masses

There has been no better time in human historythan the present for zoos to work with educationalsystems to affect the course of future existence ofboth animals and people.

Sounds lofty? Impossible? Perhaps not whenyou consider that more people attend today's zoosthan all sports events combined. The combinedannual zoo attendance in U.S. zoos is estimated tobe 112 million. Worldwide, zoos have the samemagnetic and universal appeal. During a recenttour of Chinese zoos, I learned that the annualattendance of the Beijing (Peking) Zoo is nearly 12million. Numbers pale when one can experiencefirsthand the palpable excitement of zoo visitorsas I did during an early morning visit to the Can-ton Zoo, where thousands of children were Joel:ey-ing for positions in front of their favorite exhibits.

I encountered similar scenes in zoos from War-saw to Madrid, from Belize to Tokyo, and closer tohome in Topeka, Columbus, San Francisco, andPhiladelphia. Everywhere, zoo visitors exhibit the

The Zoo as Noah's Ark 71

universal behaviors associated with p:easurablelearning.

If one were able to calculate precisely the world-wide zoo attendance figuies in a single year, thepotential and opportunity that zoos have foraffecting people's attitudes toward wildlife conser-vation would be obvious and staggering. Thesenumbers represent both the promise and problemfor informal learning in zoos.

For most zoo visitors, viewing an exhibit beginswith the ubiquitous question "What is it?" 11-

lowed by an average 60 seconds of looking, andends with "What's next?" or "Where is thebathroom?" What can zoo educators do toenhance the attention span of zoo visitors? ,`firstand foremost, educators must present animalsand their fascinating behaviors in an interestingand relevant context. Everyone can recall at leastone zoo label that showed a faded man of someobscure land mass along with an unpronounce-able Latin name for the animal. "Au courant" zooeducators do not consider this to be proper inter-pretive technique.

How can we best .educate in an informal set-ting? Informal learning in zoos (or anywhere) cantake a multitude of fc:ms. Unlike other settings,zoos offer learners a. chance to receive informationthrough all of their senses. Smell teaches themeaning of scent marking and territorial behaviorin the big cats; hearing teaches the meaning of amating call and its implications for species surviv-al; vision explains :.captive coloration anddescribes the beauty of an emerald boa; touchconveys the roughness of an elephant's skin.

The definition of informal contains specialmeaning for zoo educators. It gives them freedomto be creative and to address the public in famil;ar,direct, and user-friendly ways. But any seriousdiscussion of the zoo public and 'ts needs calls fora much closer analysis of the visi , : profile.

Who is the Zoo Visitor?Just about everyone is a zoo visitor, and this is

the cr x of the zoo educator's dilemma School


administrators who deal with a much more nar-rowly defined population often bemoan the im-possibility of their task. After all, they say, providing quality education to individuals with a varietyof socioeconomic, cultural, and educational back-grounds is exceedingly difficult.

But take a closer look at the typical Sundaycrowd, and you'll understand Lite zoo educator'sproblem. Not only is there an enormous variety ofpeople, but they span all age groups. A commonmisconception is that young children primarilyvisit zoos. Interestingly, a visitor survey conductedat the Bronx Zoo in the summer of 1986 revealedthat 22 percent of visitors came to the zoo unac-companied by children. Nationally, nearly 25 mil-lion adults flock to zoos annually without childrenin tow.

The 'me adult phenomenon is far moreprevalent than zoos expected. When the Pionx Zooopened its renovated Chi'dren's Zoo in 1981, themedia gave an erroneous impression that adultswho were not accompanied by children would notbe admitted. Stories were heard of many childlessadults attempting to "borrow" children from theirneighbors, , latives, and friends to be admitted tothe wonderland where anyone could see a prairiedog or be a prairie dog. see a .urtie or be a turtle.Never before or since have there been such gener-ous babysitting offers.

A common practice of the New York City Boardof Education demonstrates another example of themagical attraction of zoos. Before budget cuts. sev-eral fulltirne truant officers were permanentlyassigned to the Bronx Zoo. Their job was toretrieve adolescs-rits who planned to spend theirday out of the ci .ssmom "playing hooky" at thezoo. What a tribute to the power of zoo exhibits asmotivators for informal learning!

,..et us take a closer look at the mass of human-ity that pours it through the gates of every zoo. Itseems reasonaoie to assume that zoogoers repre-sent a segment of a normal population. One couldpredict that people at one extreme will be veryactive participants, seeking out courses, lectures,

special tours, and avidly reading most graphicdisplays. An equal number of people at the otherextreme will be passive, perhaps evendisinterested. These people will learn solely fromviewing an exhibit. The largest remaining segmentof the audience has middle-of-the-road tendenciesand is the one on which zoos must focus theirattention. Tills group presents the greatest chal-lenge as well as the greatest opportunity for zooeducators. In the United States alone this groupaccounts for roughly 74 million visitors each year.The group probably ranges from people who aresomewhat passive to those who are mildly active.Members of this group probably read somegraphic displays, but only the most engaging ones;ride the camels. the monorail, or the safari trains,if only to rest their weary feet; and might partakeof colorful special events, particularly those theyfind entertaining rather than overtly educational.

How can zoos best deal with this large, amor-phous group of informal learners? Perhaps bybreaking them down into smaller, more narrowlydefined and consequently, more manageable sub-groups. The business world frequently applies theconcept of market segmentation to increase theselling power of various products. In some ways,zoos can benefit by borrowing the business model.Th( audience of zoo visitors con'ains many clearlyidentifiable subgroups even at a cursory glance.Zoos serve adults, children, familie3, couplesteens, schools, college students, camps, yuppies, allraces and nationalities, seniors, and the handi-capped. A closer inspection reveals even more dis-tinct segments. We are likely to find white-collarand blue-collar workers, Gray Panthers, photo-graphers, art lovers, teachers, tourists, scouts, sin-gle parents, and many other definable subgroups.

Perhaps by creating programming more closelylinked to the needs and characteristics of thesesubgroups, zoos can achi. greater success in sell-ing their product. But before we analyze `heseneeds, we should carefully define the nature of theproduct. This is where the usefulness of the busi-ness model diminishes. Some might define the

product as the exhibit or tile live animal itself, butin a truly modern zoo this definition is incomplete.

As zoos assume an ever more critical role inwildlife preservation, they need to sell the ideas ofconservation, biological diversit.r, population con-trol. sustainable yield harvesting, species survi alplans, and other unfamiliar concepts. Unlike busi-nesses, zoos must market ideas rather than prod-ucts. Conveying the value of a tangible product isa relatively simple task, but how can zoos conveythe value of abstract ideas more effectively? This isthe very heart of the zoo educator's dilemma.

Solutions for tne Twenty-FirstCentury Zoo

With some deeper thought, a few guidelines for"selling ideas" emerge. Ideas should be articulatedclearly and directly. They should represent a philo-sophical consensus of the zoo profession andshould relate to the visitors' lives. This is notalways a simple task. Zoo educators are stillembroiled in several debates.

Should tame live animals be used in zoos asteaching resources? Do Children's Zoos serve anyuseful functions? Do participatory exhibits reallywork, or does the medium become the message?Do animal s: ows demean the animal? Shouldrr.,,re effort be expended on teaching youngsters oradults? How can U.S. citizens be r, ,de to caremore about habitats in remote par ;. , of the world?Is evolution an appropriate subject for zoo ex-hibits? Can the emotions be influenced throughintellectual approaches?

Although the answers to such questions are stilldebated, educators accept some key concepts. Forexample, they agree that it is desirable to presentideas in some sort of a hierarchical sequence, pro-ceeding from the more familiar to the complex,and building the most &lc act constructs on asolid foundation of basic.. They also know thatthey can make an idea more appealing by person-alizing it and presenting it in terms c: the visitor'simmediate experience. Another important guide-post to selling ideas is to present them in layers of

I aJ


complexity. taking into account that zoo learnersrepresent enormous intellectual and motivationalvariability.

There Is no question that to be successful, zooeducation prcorams in the next decade will haveto be more closely linked to the diverse needs ofzoo constituencies. Each audience segment needsits own special approach. Zoos will not be able torestrict programming to the groups most appeal-ing to funding sources (i.e., the gifted, young chil-dren, the underprivileged). Rather, zoos will haveto educate donors about the value of conveyingideas to the massesa rainbow of people repre-senting all ethnic groups, ages, and professions.

The necessary commitment to new programswill require considerable resources. Indeed, it isunlikely that tie target audience will be either will-ing or able to contribute significantly to the cost ofdeveloping and providing such programming on asustained basis. This is a particularly seriousproblem for zoos, which primarily are nonprofitinstitutions struggling to meet the cost of educa-tion while maintaining animal breeding and exhi-bition programs. Faced with such a challenge,zoos will need to marshall all the technologies cur-rently at their disposal and establish cooperative"think tanks" to find the most effective use oftheir living collections for the benefit of distantwild habitats.

Of all the possible resources, live animals are thezoos' most valuable treasures not only because ofeach animal's intrinsic and biological value, butalso because each living creature is endowed withuntold educational potential. In the final analysis,the captive collections in the world's zoos willspeak most convincingly on behalf of their wildand "free" brethren. Zoo educators and zoo exhibitdesigners must create informal learning opportuni-ties that take . ull advantage of what each animalhas to offer.

The Art and Science of QuestioningAn animal's geographic distribution, ecology,

evolutionary history, morphology, physiology,


anatomy, and behavior are just some topics thatlend themselves to interpretation. A clearer focuson any of these aspects also yieles a wealth ofadditional areas for productive investigation. Hewdoes the animal cope with the climate of itshabitat? How does it make or find shelter? Whatnutrients are essential for its survival? How doesit obtain them? How it navigate through itsenvironment? Who are its competitors? How dcesit reproduce? How does it identify other membersof its species? Does it care for its young? Is itsocial or solitary? Has its popuk `ion remainedstable or is it declining? What role do humans playin its future survival? These are just some questions curious and properly directed zoo visitorscat i explore.

Curiosity is the motor that drives the scientificpulz.lits of a zoo "explorer." But zoo designers andeducators can engage die visitor in the scientificprocess by cleverly spotlighting subjects that meritstudy. Close observation is a first step. However,the great majority of urban zoo visitors have hadlittle experience with this skill. Learning goodobservation skills takes practice, but a few basicquestions could be placed at strategic locations toencourage cz:,etui observation. For example, vis-itors might be encouraged to determine how manyanimals are on display. With active or camouflagedspecies this task alone could turn into an enjoy-able game. Furthermore, visitors might be askedto figure out which animals are male or female.This in turn may encourage closer observation ofindividual behaviors. Perhaps along the same The.viewers might want to consider the age of theanimals. Having gone this far, som visitors mightwish to pose hypotheses and conduct more obser-vation, or data gathering, to determine if theirguesses (hypotheses) were correct.

Cleany, riot all visitors will pursue the scientificprocess through all of its steps. Time constraints,crowded exhibits, the animal's daily cycle, andother variables will interfere. However, the essen-tial fact is that animal exhibits can open entirelynew realms to the nonscientist. Properly exhibited,

71

the living, behaving animal brings out the scien-tist in everyone. After all, aren't the acts of observ-ing and asking questions the major activities ofscience? Don't scientists pose more questionsthan they answer?

Zoo educators as well as visitors need to developthe art and science of posing good quest lns.Because education is a process of imparting andacquiring knowledge, zoo educators and visitorscan learn from one another. The diversity ofanimal lifestyles and their survival strategies areso endlessly fascinating that doing so should be arelatively easy task.

Just a quick glance at the discovery cards fromthe Bronx Zoo's recently published curriculumentitled WIZE Inquiry through Zoo Edu-cation) suggests a plethora of discoveries that youcan make by studying animals. How might you bedifferent if you had an exoskeleton? Why do theeyes of a chameleon move independently of eachother? How do badgers keep their burrows thyduring a flood? How are the teeth of a gorillasimilar to your own? How do predators learn themeaning of warning coloration? How can thealbatross stay aloft without beating its wings?Why do hummingbirds have a higher metabolismthan other birds? How do deep-diving mammalsavoid the vends? Why do some toads carry theiryoung embedded in the skin on their back?

One important thing zoos can do to improve theunderstanding of each animal's role in theecosystem is to present information that showshow the animal interacts with its physical environ-ment and with other species of animals. Visitorscan also explore the effect of human activity onanimal survival. The interconnectedness of livingsystems must be an integral and recurrent themeof interpretive programs. Creative interpretationcan also make room for connections betweenanimal study and other areas in science.

Like other science disciplines, animal sciencecan b,. integrated within a larger context ofscience, making it more dynamic and relevant.The Bronx Zoo is currently involved in a major

effort to show a nationwide audience of teachershow to accomplish this kind of curricularintegration.

For example, how many physics teachers wolldthink of a trip to the zoo to explore concepts inphysics? Yet a closer look reveals a wealth ofopportunities. The study of optics in Lhe verte-brate eye, the spearographic analysis of featherpigments. transmission of vocalizations in the airand in itre water, thermoregulation, calorimetry ofvarious diets, the physics of bird flight, insulatingproperties of body coverings, buoyancy of aquaticanimals, or mechanics of gibbon brachiation arejust a few physics concepts that could come to lifeat the zoo.

Other science disciplines can also benefit fromthis kind of integ-ative approach. Chemistryteacners could con a fascinating chemistrylesson exploring tii,.. .,..cts of acid rain cn aquaticanimals. Geography and geology teachers canmake lessons more interesting by ncorporatingthe study of patterns of animal distribution, bothin modern and prehistoric times. The behavioralsciences such as psychology or sociology can alsobe enriched by including animal studies. Kr wl-edge of patterns of social behavior, dominancehierarchies, aggression, and territoriality inanimal species can enhance our understanding ofthe roots of human behaviors. The point needs nofurther belabonng, because for the creativeinstructor the zoo offers a gold mine of opportuni-ties to motivate almost any learner. The living,breathing animal is better than any text, illustra-tion, or laboratory experience for learning even themost sophisticated scientific concepts.

Cormfrlering that today's zoos have an entirelynew rc in species preservation, perhaps in thenot too-distant future zoo scientists can call onthe lay, yet scientifically literate, zoo visitor toshare in a partnership for species protection.Properly involved, the great masses of urban zoo-goers can influence the course of animal preserva-tion. By providing a base of financial, political, andmoral support, this group can actively participate

'lire Zoo as Noah's Ark 75

in the zoo's role as Noah's Ark. But this will nothappen until zoo educators realize that there ismuch to be done to bring a modicum of scientificliteracy to the average zoo visitor.

Man ..Arius and enjoyable though they are, zooshave yet to fully realize their potential as centersfor informal science education. Some zoos todayare already at the brink of the twenty-first centuryin the animal management realm. Modern tech-nology and the grim statistics of species eninctionhave propelled them !iito a new age. Frozenembryos, ova and sperm banks, surrogate

mothers, computerized matching of mates, andscientifically &Ain:tied sex ratios and inbreedingcoefficients are the stuff of science fiction rapidlybecoming the daily reality. Zoo education mustmake a major leap to catch up with tomorrow.

ReferenceConway, William G. (1984-85). The practical diffi-

culties and financial implications of endangeredspecies breeding pregrams. 1984-85 Interna-tional Zoo Yearbook (Vol. 24/25). London: Zoo-logical Society of London.

Helpful Hints at the ZooDon't expect to see lions and tigers and bears.

Modern zoos exhibit fewer species in largersocial groups than in the past Therefore, notevery species will be represented in your zoo'scollection. Declining numbers of species onexhibit can be a positive sign that your zoo ismodernizing its animal management practices.No longer is a zoo's quality measured solely bythe number of species in the collection. To avoidbeing disappointed, try to find out ahead of timewhich animals are on exhibit

Do plan to visit a specific area of the zoo, par-ticularly if you are visiting a large urban zoo. Ifyou try to cover too much, you will miss anopportunity to make cse.citing observations. Takeyour time, don't rush, and keep in mind thatanimals don't behave on cue. Your patience willoften be rewarded by an unexpected discovery:asudden courtship display, a song, a flash ofcolor, or even a birth.

Don't look for spe -.!ific animals. Modern zoosfrequently exchange animals to increase thegenetic diversity. Your favorite animal from aprevious visit may have been shipped to a zoo inanother state or country. Try to think of thebenefits to the species as opposed to thinking ofindividual animals.


Do try to learn something about the activitycycle of your favorite animal groups. If, forinstance, you come to see a nocturnal animalduring the day, don't expect it to be active.

Do find out what endangered species your zoohas in the collection, and try to learn whatbreeding success it has had with this species.Breeding endangered animals is an importantgoal of most zoos. Appreciate their efforts whenyou see the young of such a spies on exhibit

Don't be too disappobted when a particularhouse or exhibit is closed. The zoo could berenovating old-fashioned exhibits, or a newbornmay require privacy with its mother for a fewdays. In either case give your zoo credit for mak-ing progress.

Do plan to visit your zoo during the lesscrowded seasons. Most zoos are open year-round. Your chances for interesting observa-tions are often better in the off season. You willProbably be rewarded beyond your expectations.Think of a trip to a tropical exhibit in the winteras a great mini-vacation.

Do find out what educational programs yourzoo has for your particular interest group. More

7

and more zoos have education curators whoplan a variety of course offerings for childrenand adults.

Do check out volunteer opportunities. Manyzoos train a cadre of dedicated adults who workas docents, providing guided tours and partici-pating in many other public services. If you are a

teacher, your skills will be particularly welcome.

Do become a member of your zoo. It needs thegrass roots support of concerned citizens.Members often receive publications that keepthem abreast of the latest developments as wellas admission to special events, previews, andbehind-the-scenes facilities.

7.;


10Making the Most of the ZooPegi S. Harvey and Debra EricksonSan Diego ZooSan Diego, California

What can replace seeing a giraffe's 46-cm-longblue tongue reach out for an acacia branch, orwatching elephants roll on their backs in themud? The authenticity of these experiencesmakes them memorable. Presenting them throughmodels or television simply doesn't command thesame lasting effect.

Zoos offer an escape from the confinf,r4 of theclassroom. They are places where learning adven-tures can integrate the "rea thing" ink. your


curriculumliving, breathing, three-dimensionalsights. These visits motivate, stimulate, inspire,and exhilarate. Students begin looking beyondtheir neighborhood to form a more global pictureof the world. Not only do they become worldwidetraveuTs, but they also experience nature first-hand by touching tamanduas, smelling sage, hear-ing howler monkeys, seeing snakes, and tastingmonkey chow. A visit to the zoo increases observa-tion skills and relates education to experience.

Most importantly, the feelings resulting from theseencounters lead to a permanent commitmenttoward conservation.

A famous conservation quote reads, "In the endwe will conserve only what we love, we will loveonly what we understand, we will un.krstand onlywhat we are taught" Before students climb thevalues ladder and make a conscious effort to con-serve, a progression must take place: They aretaught ... they understand ... they love ...theyconserve.

The foundation for creating a conservation-mindel values system in students begins withatoucher. By discussing endangered species acidmeir habitats, students begin to understand andto appreciate the importance of each organism inan ecosystem. Concepts such as extinction andhabitat destruction are often remote, complex. anddifficult to understand. Yet by coming close toanimals and actually seeing and touching them,students form a personal bond. Through time. thisbond turns into commitment to care for animalsand a realization that all species on Earth areinterdependent.

By thinking globally and acting locally, students'commitment evolves into stewardship. They beginto realize that by recycling paper and conservingwater they may be helping an endangered species.Conservation then becomes a more concrete con-cept they can act upon and commit to.

You can arouse students' curiosity about ani-mals and plants until they're hungry for moreknowledge. This not only affects their conservationethics. but also acts as a catalyst for changingother behavior outside the classroom. Studentsbegin making informed, conscious decisionsfrom choosing to read and watch nature-relatedmaterial, to spending more time outdoors explor-ing the world around them. These decisions caninvolve tne whole family, increasing the scope ofinfluence.

So break ti,.;wn the barriers of the textbook, labguide, and classroom. Use the zoo as a dynamiclearning resource.

But I Don't Know Any of Those Pla.rts orAnimals!

You dor need to be an animal expert to teachcreatively and effectively at a zoo. Zoo educatorshelp bridge the gap between you and the plantsand animals, so you can do the same with yourstudents. But how do you get started?

Ftst, call your zoo and ask them to send a bro-chure that explains their programs. Many zoosoffer programs that include:

guided tours1 self-guided tours

self-guided tours paired with a puppet showslide shows and animal showsprograms for gifted studentsspecial education programscareer presentaxiGnsotireach programs

After making reservations, many zoos send aninformation packet containing a "recipe" for yourvisit, along with pre- and post-visit activities. Whathappens if a curriculum aid isn't available, youneed more Information, or you're not sure what todo with the information you've received? Call thezoo! Many zoos offer a wide variety of teacherorientations and workshopssome are offered forcredit through local universities. These offeringsare designed to demystify the tremendous amountof information available and to reduce the plan-ning burden. At some zoos, you can make anappointment to consult with a zoo education spe-cialist to tailor a program to meet your needs.

Many zoos offer teacher orientations or special-ized weekend training programs. During thesummer, Monterey Bay Aquarium in Californiaoffers a 10-day workshop called Marine ScienceTeacher Institute K-12 teachers. Teacherslearn how to develop a marine science curriculumand take home not only specimens, slides, experi-ments. and worksheets, but also confidence intheir ability to teach the subject. But their expe-rience doesn't end there. Follow-up sessions helpMarine Institute graduates discuss their suc-cesses and failures with fellow teachers.

Making the Most of the Zoo 79

Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo and the San DiegoZoo offer lecture series on topics such as "GreatApes" and "Vanishing Species" After attendingthe series, a special class helps translate theinformation into classroom activities. High schoolteachers can send their top students to thesepresentations, and these students can later sharetheir feelings on the lecture with their dassmates.

You can also become involved with the docentprogram at your zoo. Docent programs teach indi-viduals about ecosystems and their inhabitantsalong with techniques for presenting the informa-tion. Docents are assigned to certain areas of thezoo or asked to give tours to visitors and educa-tion groups. Docent training programs run 4 to 16weeks and are usually offered only once or twice ayear. The Lincoln Park Zoo has a short trainingprogram each spring so teachers can get involvedas summer volunteers.

Teachers who lead summer school classes at theSan Diego Zoo also come away with a new under-standing on how to use the 'too. An educationprogrammer trains teachers about the informa-tion and presentation styles. Teaching coursesand explaining animals on a formal basis make iteasier to transfer your re !ct and admiration forthe animals to your students. You'll be amazedhow many of your experiences you'll share withyour class. The excitement and wonderment an'contagious.

Other resources are available V-, prepare you foryour zoo visit. Natural history museums oftenhave compatible curriculum materials. Many havematerials such as skulls and skins you can checkout to prepare your class before your visit. Librar-ies are another resource. Ask the librarian at yourschool. district media center. city, or universitylibrary to point you in the right direction forbooks, films, records, and videotapes.

Project Wild and Outdoor Biological Instruc-tional Strategies (0.B.I.S.) both offer workshopsthat show activities you can tie into a zoo visit.Use information from all these sources and callother teachers who have visited the zoo. Ask them


for activities that worked well for them and trythem out. Take time to investigate all thepossibilities.

Charting a Successful CourseThe most successful visits to zoos are those that

are focused. It's impossible to see every animal andto talk about every ecosystem on your trip. Don'ttransfer the "cover the whole textbook" syndrometo your zoo visit. It will frustrate you and your stu-dents. Many zoo offerings have themes tmch asadaptations. behavior. African animal.". animalcare, animal locomotion, endangered species, andecology. Choose one of these themes or create yourown.

Since most teachers aren't accompanied by aguide when they visit the zoo, preparing yourselfand your class is vital. But don't let that discour-age or intimidate you. Guides aren't the only peo-ple who can unlock the zoo's secrets. Remember,you have an advantage in knowing your curricu-lum and your students' needs and talents. Stimu-lating and motivating teaching at a zoo doesn'tdepend on quoting facts and relating concepts.Rather, it relies on your ability to ask questionsthat actively involve your class.

Why is this involvement so important? Studentsretain about half of the concepts they encounterand even fewer facts and terms. Lectures that givelong lists of facts are not effective and competewith the animals for your students' attention. Butactivities and attitudes have a great impression onyour learners, so concentrate your efforts in thoseareas.

After deciding your theme, use available resourc-es to prepare your students for their visit. Manyteachers get parents, administrators, and otherteachers excited about the trip, but they forget totransfer those feelings to their students. Get yourstudents to look forward to their trip. Discuss thetheme, do theme-related activit'es, and have yourstudents compose a list of questions ti -7 haveabout the topic. Have them try to discover theanswers to their questions during their visit

Make your trip the hot topic of conversation at allthe school's lunch tables.

Many zoos have a tree planning pass you canuse to visit the zoo and develop your trip'sstrategy. When you get home, make a list of all thethings that excited and fascinated you. Includethese things in your trip, because they captivateyou, they will certainly interest your students.Break down your plan into "chunks" that the stu-dents can easily digest Yet don't treat the animalsas postage stamps; make sure students can envi-sion them in their ecosystem.

Remember you are facilitating a meaningfulexperience between the plants and animals andthe students. Promote the concept of wonder,amazement, and diversity of life. Give your stu-dents time for uninterrupted observation so theycan develop their own conclusions to questionsauch as why elephants flip sand on their backs orwhether a zebra's stripes are black on white orwhite on black.

Carefully read au the instructions the zoo sendsyou so you can have a hassle-free aumittance.Make sure you communicate to your chaperons

what their responsibilities are. Give them a packetcontaining copies of zoo information along withthe schedule for the trip and the list of rules forthe visit Follow your plan, but be flevible. If ananimal is being fed or giving birth, stay and watchthe event and cut out something else. If a guide isescorting your group, team up with them to main-tain class control.

Don't let your visit be an isolated experience.Discuss what you. kafned after the trip. Give thestudents time to share their impressions and feel-ings. Discuss what amazed them along with theirquestions that didn't get answered. Involve themin post-visit activities such as writing poems oressays, or creating a mural or scientific drawing.Show them avenues for further investigation.such as reading material, nature shows. or naturetrips offered by the Audubon Society or the SierraClub.

Don't underestimate what you can do when youteam up with the zoo. You will not only have a last-ing impact on today's students, but also on thefuture of the plants and animals that share ourearth. We need you as a member of our team.

Helpful Mints: Taking You:: ZooExperience One Step 2eyond

The San Diego Chargers sponsored a programcalled "Kicks for Critters." Individuals pledgeddonations for each field goal made for the season. Lee Childs, a math and science teacher,took this one step beyond. She created "Cans forCritters." Students collect aluminum cans

oughout the year, usually about 83,000 cans,resulting in a $600 to 8800 yearly contributionthat goes toward research on endangeredspecies.

Following their trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Vickie Madigan's communicatively hapdi-capped class of fourth- through sixth-graderswas so impressed with their visit that theyturned their classroom and hallway at Robert

Down School into an aquarium. Shadow boxaquariums lined the hallway and each child wasecstatic about the thibit he or she created.Some exhibits were recreations of the kelp forestcomplete with divers; others represented theotter exhibit or Monterey Bay Habitats exhibit,complete with schooling fishes and sharks. Stu-dents drew their favc rite marine plants andanimals to add to a huge mural labeled "OurAquarium." Vickie said the experience was agreat catalyst for improving communication forthese special students.

At the Atlanta Zoo, teachers and studentsworked with the help of the Atlanta JournalConstitution newspaper to raise money to buy

7

Making the Most of the Zoo 81

two new elephants. By having bake sales andother activities, students raised more than350,000 in two months. All the students


involved in the project were iovited to the ele-phants' unveiling The four- and five-year-oldAfrican elephants are now in their new home.

11The Science Museum:Object Lessons inInformal EducationMichael ltmpletonNational Science FoundationWashington, D.C.

Why is a museum like a school? Like the MadHatter's "Why is a raven like a writing desk?." thequestion is more for argument than for answer.

Education by ChoiceWhy are museums informal educators? The

audience is self-selected and the visit is freelychosen. Visiting a museum is an exercise in freechoice. filled with incentive and opportunity forpersonal variation. The need to attract and hold

an audience has led museums to c'rnbine enter-tainment and recreation with education and

The economics of free-choice learning makesmuseums sensitive to individual interests andneeds. Individuals assemble their personal curric-ulum as they proceed through exhibits on dive. &subjects that they can pass or view in varied order.(In a few museums, textbook-like linear sequenceexhibits allow no choices; visitors respond by pass-

The Science Museum 83

ing crowded or unappealing sections, or byswimming upstream against the current)

Each of us learns differently. Museums providevaried, multisensory approaches to learning:objects. models. motion or animation, voice andmusic, touch or physical manipulation,7.1sualimages or 'ideo sequences. Accompanying textmay be multilevel for different reading or interestlevels, or multilingual for different cultural back-grounds. Science centers employ "explainers"instead of guards to help visitors understand thefunction and meaning of individual exhibits.Museum exhibits, however comprehensive theymay seem, are highly selective experiences. Likemost informal science education materials.whether a television program or a kit of scienceexperiments, a museum exhibit is heavily editedby its creators and "self-edited" by each individualwho experiences it.

Museums, unlike schools, reach large numbersof peoplea given exhibit "curriculum unit" maybe seen by 100,000 to 1,000,000 people a yea .

Museums employ unusual or expensive equip-ment, rare specimens, or painstaking research.Few schools can afford the oust and complexity ofa large marine mammal display in an aquarium,an elaborate and realistic reconstruction of a tropi-cal rainforest, the translation of a complex labora-tory experiment into a science center exhibit, theelaborate, dramatic presentation of a large planeta-rium, or the ever-favorite reconstructions of dino-saurs in a natural history museum.

The unique character of museums is theirreliance on objects and phenomena as the funda-mental basis for education and communication.Although museums occasie-ally exaggerate theinherent learning power of specimens, models,artifacts, or experiments, these things are the liv-ing heart of museums.

Such objects both allow and require differentways of learning. The three-dimensional and visu-ally rich environment of the museum gives newopportunities to those who do not think readily intextbook terms or who need objects to understand


abstractions. Important ways of knowing aboutthe world cannot always be represented in the flatworld of blackboard, textbook, or television.

Exhibits allow individual attention by individuallearners; they allow decentralized, self-paced learn-ing. Object-rich museums c- a meet different stu-dents' needs ad- the same time. The learner receivesfeedback and reinforcement from touch, smell,sound, the reward of a response, or the more sub-tle interaction of a complex experiment whoseparameters can be varied at will. At one time,muse' ems' professional concern for preservationand care of unique objects obscured these impor-tant aspects of object-centered learning. Led byscience centers, museums are once again recog-nizing the importance of interaction.

The Origins of Museums as InformalEducators

In relining the Encient practice of object-basedlearning, museums developed an approach to edu-cation and learning quite different from that ofschools.

Science museums began in Europe between thefourteenth and seventeenth centuries as privatecabinets of curiositiessocial and intellectualconstructions of and for the nobility. The strange,unique, and remarkable were the objects of choice.As late as the eighteenth century, museumattendance was limited to those with carriagesand calling cards who made appointments fortours led by the founder or a knowledgeable ser-vant. Prior to the work of such organizers of natu-ral knowledge as Hutton, Linnaeus, Lamarck, Cuv-ier, and ultimately, Darwin, collections werefragmented and reflected the natural history of thetime. Guides did what they could to structure thevisit, pointing out objects of note, adding localcolor, and occasionally emphasizing a point ofscience or of natural history. As in society, chil-dren were absent or in 1sible.

The slow transition to public museums beganwith the opening of the Ashmolean Museum atOxford in 1683 and the British Museum in

1759a transition that would take another cen-tury to complete. As eighteenth-century sciencebecame better organized and societies and jour-nals flourished. science also became a subject ofpopular interest among a rising middle class. Pri-vately operated museums began to compete withthe British Museum. Scientific knowledge devel-oped disciplines and divisions; geology and biologybecame separated from the "physical" sciences,and museum collections became classified bysubject

Near the end of the eighteenth century, theAmerican and French Revolutions marked thebeginning of the democratization of life. Museumsfelt the impact the Revolution led to the foundingof the Museum National d'Histcire Naturelle(Paris) in 1793 and the Conservatoire Nationaledes Artes et Metiers (Paris) in 1794.

In England, a movement for popular educationin crafts, technology, and the underlying sciencesarose in response to the social impact of mechani-zation and industrialization. The Royal Institution(London), founded in 1800, initially emphasizedadult, informal science education. Its director, SirHumphrey Davy, made popular science lecturessignificant London social functions. His successor,the great physicist Michael Faraday, began a pro-gram of popular Friday evening lectures in 1826,and instituted the first of 19 annual "ChristmasCourses of Lectures Adapted to a Juvenile Audi-tory." These lectures established the lecture-demonstration as a polished means of popularcommunication and legitimized informal scienceeducation for the young.

A parallel demand for broad public access tomuseums for culture, education, and recreationresulted in regular hours for the I 'ritish Museumin 1807. "Any person of decent appearance" wasadmitted without an appointment A heated pub-lic debate in 1837 led to the opening of themuseum to the public on holidays; on the firstEaster Monday, more than 23,000 people came.

Popular exhibitions added a populist flair. Giantpaintings, landscapes, or dramatic scenes of battle

ri

as large as 20 feet tall were popular at the end ofthe eighteenth century. Great panoramas and di-oramas followed in the early years of the nine-teenth century. Whole buildings were devoted torealistic portrayal of popular scenes or giant paint-ings on moving rolls of canvas, and were equippedwith machinery, music, and all the tricks of stage-craft These exhibitions drew large crowds at greatexpense. In subdued form, these techniques led tonatural history museum dioramas that repre-sented natural life and to the atmospheric effectsof planetarium light and sound.

Practical models of productive technologymachines, mechanisms, boats, and fishing gearintroduced the "working classes" to museums.The Adelaide Gallery (London, 1834) and thePolytechnic Institution (London, 1838) were exhi-bition centers remarkably like modern science-technology centers. The Polytechnic Institutionoffered exhibits, demonstrations, lectures, andteacher training activities, and charged a shillingentrance fee. As audiences expanded andbroadened, exhibit guides became guards, andexplanatory and expository text were added tomuseum displays.

Finally, the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851crez ted the first great world's fair of technologyand commerce, which exalted industry, itsmachines and products, and technology and prog-ress. In the United States, early museums bor-rowed European styles with the Peale Museum(Philadelphia,, 1786) and P. T. Barnum's AmericanMuseum (New York, 1841). These early Americanmuseums were informal and popular and the edu-cational nature of their contents widely advertised.Science museums developed with the first of theSmithsonian's museums (Washington, D.C.,1856), the American Museum of Natural History(New York. 1869), and the influential CentennialExhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia

In Germany, the idea that museums couldrepresent working examples of machines andtechnologiesthat objects could explain them-selves through their operationwas developed by

g 2,


Oskar von Miller in the Deutsches Museum(Munich, 1906; 1923). Julius Rosenwalt: Adaptedthis idea at the Museum of Science and industry(Chicago), which after its opening in 1933 rapidlybecame America's most popular museun. ofinduL Jv and technology. The Franklin InstituteSelena', Museum (Philadelphia. 1933) and theBuhl Institute of Popular Science (Pittsburgh,1939) also reflected the rising interest in thiscountry for popular, informal education in scienceand technology and the creation of what wouldcome to be called science-technolotZ -enters.

The most dramatic expression of this newemphasis on science, rather than oil collectedobjects from history or nature, came with thetransformation of Boston's established museurr ofnatural history into the Museum of Scienceimmediately following World War II. Educating thepublic about science and technology became themain goal of the new museum, and prior com-mitments to collecting, preserving, and studyingnatural history were replaced by a new emphasison informal science education.

. rim than 100 new American science centershave hem founded since the end of World War IIwith informal science education as their primarymission. The participation of America's scientificccauramity in developing the U.S. Science Pavilion(now the Pacific Science Center) at the 1962Seattle World's Fair reflected this new attention toinformal science education. Two remarkableyearssaw the opening of the Ontario Science Center inToronto in 1969; the Lawrence Hall of Science inBerkelay, California. in 1968; and the Explora-torium in San Francisco in 1969.

In response to the success and popularity ofthese and other science centers, an internat.i nalmovement has developed with the goal of creatingnew science iruseums dedicated primarily toinformal education. A tremendous resurgence ofinterest in their educational mission has led natu-ral history museums, zoos, and aquariums toadopt son of the appropriate teenniques of thescience technology center.

86 Se;ence for the Fun of it

Museums and Schools: Contrasts andConsequences

Ha. then do museums and schools ,iiffer? If thedifferences between formal arri informal learningresult in unique roles for each, then what domuseums do that no others do as well?

Schools are predominantly systems of educa-tion, with each school, grade level, or class a well-ordered elemc -It of an educational whole.Maintaining the systemeconomics, behaviorand pedagogy dominates. Knowledge andinstruction generally appez.- as continuous andsequential. purposefully selective, explicated bytextbooks, and organized and managed by lists ofnecessary instruction (scope and sequence docu-ments) and necessary performance (standardizedperformance o a standardized tests).

As students reach high school and beyond,knowledge derived from scienti esearch is evenmore tightly structured, pre. mulatect uni-versal, mathe-natical, rind them:- . and. The pro-cess of learning IL represented to the student as arevonsibility, a requirement, and a duty; all underttr, unfair heading "formal education."

Learning outside this orderly context is called"informal education," which means learning thatcenters on individuals who freely choose whether,when, and what to learn. Sources for informalscience education ere diverse aryl disaggregated.They sharn an intense concern for the attention ofthe individual leanicr; exploitation of .stiriosity,novelty, and occasionally, the bizarre; compro-mises between the cor Alex content of science anda necessary simplicity and ease of understanding;and utter disregard for the distinction betweenlearning as enjoyable personal recreation and edu-cation as a serious, responsible business. Modernscience - technology centers and science museumsare a primary institutional base of informs(r;cience education. They cornaine the entertainingaspects of visiting museums and exhibitions withobject-based and participatory learning; this iswhy they are popular and effective adjuncts toschools and libraries

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In contrast to formal education in schools, ascience museum's informal education, expressedthrough public exhibitions and programs, ishighly variable and selective, edited according torules and values idiosyncratic to each museum.Essential knowledge is represented by thingsrather than textscollected specimens in naturalhistory musnums. constructed enhibits that dis-play or model scientific phenomena in sciencecenters. Small museums are highly selective. whilelarge ones contain so much material that it can-not h seen in a single visit. Consequently, visitorsperceive museums, whether rightly or wrongly, ascomplex, branching, and nonsequential experienc-es, with few interrelated components.

Museums do not meet the many requirementsof classrooms or laboratories. Museums do notguarantee that participants will master subjects.Order and decorumcontrol over individualbehavioris minimal by comparison. Tnere arevirtually no measures of knowledge gained or pro-ficiency attained. And yet, museum visits arehighly prized, sought-after experiences that deeplystir students and teachers alike. People recallmuseum visits with fondness and significanceears later. t their educational best, museums are

surprising, exciting, and engaging, while lackingthe predictability and thoroughness of schools.

Museums represent discoVery; they are librariesturned inside out. The museum visitor has nocatak4 of contents available and no recourse otherthan a brisk walk through the halls and galleries.

A museum's contents announce themselves andan a real, tangible epresentation of ideas. In general, one exhibit refers to another only by juxtapo-sition; the order and manner of use (and thusinstruction) is largely up to the individual.

Learning directly from things is deeper, moreprimitive, and more fundamental than learningfrom frizTal lectures, texts, and lesson plans. Butthe pedagogy of informal, object-based museumlearning isfar less well understood. we entera museum, we enter the age of Hi, .ner, whenC_NI.ajects were themselves powerfol, memory a prin-

cipal tool of scholarship, and songs and ballads ameans of instruction. Our present ability to createexhibits of things from which we learn is similarlyprimitive and similarly Homericpassed downfrom one practitioner to another by example,rather than from text to text.

Informal Learning in Museums:Concrusions

If the museum experience is primarily the expe-rience of things, how does a visit to a museumdiffer from everyday experience, or from theinstructional use of objects in a classroom? Whynot make all of nature, art, and environment ourmuseum? ii museums are simply reductions ofour experience, why are they so stimulating andexciting when we arrive?

First, museums reflect the limitation and cir-cumscription of their contents. While museumsare never as disciplined and organized about theircollections as they would claim, even the nest of amagpie or a packrat is remarkable for the concen-tration and juxtaposition of its otjects. As seen byvisitors, museums share with dumps and midensthe nagic of uninformed accumulation. Thingstake on meaning and value when held out for con-templation, regardless of their organization.

Second, it their best, science museums containcarefully cL. ted collections of objects, whethcr nat-ural history, physical phenomena, or science's art.They are classified by some scheme and sifted bysome notion of beauty, craft, or place in a universeof knowledge. They are selected and select exam-ples of our intellectual culture.

Third, they are salient. Exhibits are de.igned torelate to key concepts, ideas, or components of asubject , rm. They remind us of what we want toknow or what we want to remember about a sub-jert. Exhibit components honor by their selectionthe significance of particular content. They areexemplars of knowledge and of a pedagogy L:provides instruction in that knowledge. Prat- --tioners of science and technology assemble exhib-its to represent a curriculum with the objects and


MO

experiences of the museum. This curriculum can-not be mistaken for that of the school, however, forit is shaped by the unique necessities of exhibi-tion display and the subtle character of object-based learning. It is particular, never general. It israrely comprehensive. never encyclopedic. It is acurriculum none the less.

Fourth, museum objects and exhibits are care-ful constructions of sophisticated scientists, edu-cators, craftpersons, and tinkerers. Like well-crafted lessons from a master teacher, there ismuch that does not meet the eye. Many failuresand false starts, many notions that did not workhave ben tiled and cast aside. At their best, theycreate experiences never s in the classroom:the librar: of experiments in visual percention atthe Explomtorium (San Francisco) are qualita-tively and quantitatively superior to any othersource As cons suctions they have the point ofview of their creators; they are neither neutralstatements of fact nor self-evident explanations of"nature." At their best they have the selectivity andclarity of great essays.

The "modem" science museum, whether sciencetechnology center, natural history museum, ornature center, reflects a tradition of museum piac-tice that is interwoven with the development ofboth science and science education. To use muse-ums effectively, one must recognize the uniquecharacter of museums that makes them educatorsparallel with but independent of formal education.In moving from school to museum and back


again, the task is to make the most out of theirdifferent ways of education. A field trip to themuseum is far more than escape from the class-mom. And the return to school should be markedby a renewed interest in the processes and sub-jects of school science, rather than a return to thehumdrum and ordinary. When this happens, themuseum is not simply an entertaining andduplicative luxury, a good excuse for a breakInstead, it becomes a necessary place of informaleducation and learning, filled with essentialopportunities not duplicated in field, home, orclassroom, and it engenders a lasting influence onthose who participate.

For Furthcr ReadingAlexander. Edward P. (1983). Museum masters.

Nashville, TN: Association for State and LocalHistory.

Alexander. Edward P. (1979). Museums in motion.Nashville, TN: Association for 'Rate and LocalHistory.

Altick. Richard D. (1978). The shows of London.Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.

Danilov, Victor J. (1982). Science and technologycenters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Lucas, A M. (1983). Scientific literacy and infor-mal learning. Studies in Science Education. 10,1 5,-.;

Tretsel, George (1984). A museum is to touch.194 yearbook of science and the future. Chi-cago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

The Muse in the ClassroomJoel N. BloomFranklin Institute Scieme MuseumPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania

Architect-philosopher Buckminrter Fuller de-scribed children as "born true scientists," full ofcuriosity and the urge to investigate. This naturalcuriosity can be nurtured, along with the under-standing that science is relevant to daily life. Ifchildren and teachers become partners in experi-mentation and exploration, neither is :,usceptibleto the unfortunate impression that science ifboring, irrelevant, and incomprehensible.

The Franklin Institute Science Museum in

Philadelphia has been quite successful in developing partnerships to improve science teaching inthe schools. Indeed, all over the country, schooldistricts are turning to musei am for collaborativeefforts in science education and teacher training.In Philadelphia, a support and advocacy groupcalled the Cnmmittee to Support Public Schoolsand tie Philadelphia School District havelaunched a major science and mathematics initia-tive: PRISM. Strongly supported by the area's lead-

The WI:me in the Classroom 89

ing corporate executives, the Philadelphia Renais-sance in Science and Mathematics seeks tostrengthen science education by nurturing con-nections between the private sector and schooldistrict. museums, and other educational institu-tions. A particular concern is to increase the par-ticipation and achievement of minority studentsin higher level science and mathemati, courses.

Museum-to-GoTo date, the Franldin Institute's most ambitious

project is Museum-to-Go, a program developedover the last several years with the sur.port of theConunittm to Support Public Schools, the AtlanticRichfield Foundation, and the Gulliam H. ClamerFoundation. Museum-to-Go is just that: It bringsthe hands-on learning of the Franklin Instituteinto the classroom. It provides complete, easy-to-use hands-on se 'ice kits for elementary andmiddle school students. as well as workshops thattrain teachers how to use these materials.Teachers, administrators, and supervisors havebeen involved in every aspect of kit and workshopdevelopment.

The kits correlate with the standard elementaryscience curriculum and emphasize the physicaland earth sciences. Each kit is a self-containedresource package for an entire class to conductkey experiments on a given topic. Since each kit iscomplete, the teacher does not waste valuable timeseeking ann organizing these materials. Class-room implementation i3 immediate. The kits areavailable on a loan basis, anc' as eaur kit is usedin the classroom, it is returned for refurbishing sothe next teacher will receive a classroom-readypackage. These kits are available only if teachersattend the appropriate training workshops.

A Museum-to-Go training workshop 1 a stimu-lating, nonthreatening experience where teachersexchange ideas and brainstorm with &leaguesfrom other schools. Each workshop cm ers a dif-ferent topic, focusing on four interrelated dimen-sions! How To Teach Science, What lo Teach. WhyTeach Scienc.!, and How To Evaluate Learning.


Typical units cover chemistry; acids, bases, andsalts; energy: and meteorology. The 3,000 teacherswho have participated in Museum-to-Go work-shops welcome the opportunity to address theirown believed inadequacies in science: their lac. offamiliarity with basic science, lack cf training inexperiential science education, r,nd !ack of confi-dence in their own abilities.

Thanks to the unstinting cooperation of theteachers and administrators of the PhiladelphiaSchool District, Museum-to-Go has surpassed allexpectations. Our training workshops are alwaysoversubscribed. Teacher evaluation has beenoverwhelmingly positive. All of the teachers whohave participated say tin would recommendMuseum-to-Go science kits to other teachers.

Students are also enthusiastic supporters of theprogram. Nothing in my career has made me moreproud than the letters from students who attendthe Moffett School in North Philadelphia Excitedabout science and asking for more, Maria, a sixth-grader, wrote. "I told my mother that science is mybest subject I never knew I could do science. Now Iknow I can." Many of the school's students, whorepresent 26 nationalities, do not speak Englishwell. Only 10 percent are native English speakers.Even so, all students participate fully in sciencebecause the school's administration is committedto hands-on science education. As a result, thefifth- and sixth -grade teachers took our work-shops and now use our hands-on activities Whenone of our staff visited the school, two Asian chil-dren guided her through their classroom, pointingout their electricity experisr,cnts and proudlyexplaining in broken English the differencebetween parallel and series circuitry. On( sixth-grade class constructed a doll house, fully wired.

The Museum-to-Go concept was inspired in partby earlier researct, work conducted at the FranklinInstitute. Borun et al. (1983) showed that studentslearned more when their classroom experienceswere enhanced by a museum visit. Perhaps evenmore significant, they enjoyed the learning expe-rience, found it more interesting, and were moti-

vated to keep learning. The study concluded thatscience is more accessible to children when class-room learning is supplemented by the hands-onexperience of a science museum. This conclusioninspired us to create a program that made hands-on science a regular classroom experience, not justa once-a-year field trip.

The hands-on learning of Museum-to-Go isespecially significant for an inner-city school sys-tem. Economically and academically disadvan-taged students derive the greatest educations!benefit from direct interaction with sci,;nce ac-tivity materials, according to studies of test resultsfrom 13,000 students who participated in activity-based science programs (Bredderman, 1983).Experimental activities do not rely heavily on read-ing skills, and many disadvantaged students arepoor readers. These children have been known tosucceed in science classes at a rate comparable tothose with better language skills.

In fact, publications by the National ScienceTeachers Association (Mechling & Oliver, 1983)conclude that science activities seem to improvecommunication skills as well. At the elemertarylevel, activity-oriented science programs improvethe academic skills of students who are curently"at risk," and may well increase minority represen-tation in the science profession.

The Philadelphia Bit CollaborativeThe Philadelphia Kit Collaborative builds on the

success of the first four years of Museum-to-Go.By 1992, Museum-to-Go kits will be introduced to2,800 Philadelphia elementary school classrooms.At each elementary grade level, four hands-onscience activity kit units will fulfill four major cur-riculum goals.

The Philadelphia Kit Collaborative is le mostcomprehensive program of its Kind in the UnitedStates. It is a national model for ways thatscience museums, concerned corpora ions, advo-cacy groups, and major urban school dis-tricts can unite to improve public scienceeducation.

Summer InstituteEach slimmer, 40 exemplary elementary

teachers, science specialists, and principals receiveindepth training in hands-on science education,using all the resources of Museum-to-Go in con-junction with the museum itself and our staff ofeducators. Funded by the U.S. Department ofEducation, the Summer Institutes help 10 Phila-delphia elementary schools become science demon-stration sites. Once again, the Philadelphia SchoolDistrict and PRISM have joined the Franklin Insti-tute to improve science education, particularly atthe elementary level.

Camp-InNot all our programs are as formal as the Phila-

delphia Kit Collaborative or the Summer Institute.Ask 450 elementary and junior high schoolteachers from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, andDelaware who participated in the First AnnualTeachers' Camp-In in 1986.

Camp-In is a well-established offering at manyU.S. science museums. Founded at the Cente. forScience and Industry in Columbus, Ohio, in 1972,Camp-In offers a unique experience to youthgroupsGirl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and others.Sleeping bags in hand, campers actually campinside the science museum, enjoying exhibits andspecial programs during this overnight adventure.Camp-In has provided unusual educational expe-riences to thousands of young people in the pastdecade.

The Franklin Institute operates a successfulCar, o-In program for )3uth groups, but we alsopioneered the Teachers' Camp-In. At the firstCamp-In, teachers participated in earth scienceand astronomy workshops, listened to Ira Flatow,host of PBS Newton's Apple, experimented witheducational materials and compute: software, andexplored the museum itself. Rumor has it that oneor two teachers actually slept a bit. Most stayed upall night and watched the sun rise from our roof-top observato y. "The camp-in changed my wholefocus on teaching science," said second -grade

The Muse in the Classroom 91

teacher. "You can't teach science from ct textbook."We started receiving inquiries about the SecondAnnual Teachers' Camp-In before the firstTeachers' Camp-In was over.

Energy for the Fifth GradeIn Philadelphia, energy and electricity form a

large part of the fifth-grade science curriculum inboth public and diocesan schools. In the 1985-86school year. every fifth-grader in Philadelphia'spublic and diocesan schoolsnearly 20.000studentsvisited the Franklin Institute for a spe-cial energy-themed program. Energy for the FilthGrade, designed to complement the fifth-gradescience curriculum. We chose the fifth gradebecause middle school is a traditional time forfield trips to the Museum. and because of the con-vergence between the scienc^ curriculum, theeducational resources of the Franklin Institute.and established atter_dance patterns.

Recognizing the logistirsl realities of a museumvisit for inner-city school children. Energy for theFifth Grade provided free transportation (thanksto generous support from Philadelphia's WilliamPenn foundation). Students attended a 45-minutepresentation in our Science Auditorium that fea-tured dramatic props. including a working air-plane engine. This lively. participatory showexplored heat, light, sound. and mechanicalenergy. demonntrated potential and kineticenergy: and showed how energy is transformedfrom one form to another. A special tour of themuseum guided students to exhibits on energy-related topics. and an Energy Exploration exhibitinvited them to find answers to energy-relatedquestions.

Energy for the Filth Grade was a multiphaseprogram. We distributed to all participating class-rooms a resource book that contained pre- andpost-visit activities that explored the haw.' themesof the program: energy sources. types. and trans-formations. Students prepared for their museumvisit, and afterwards, discussed what they had!earned and experienced.


Corporate ContributionBell of Pennsylvania underwrote a three-year

program with the Franklin Institute for twoschools (Dunbar Elementary and WanamakerJunior High) near its new corporate computerfacility in economically depressed North Philadel-phia. The program includes science museumvisits and hands-on computer lessons, as well asvisits from the Institute's popular TravelingScience Show. This program will not only improvessience education in these schools, but also con-tribute to a good relationship between Bell and theresidents of the new neighborhood.

Field TripsAll of these programs. from Museum-to-Go to

the Bell program. are relatively structured. Anotherkey component of the Franklin Institute-schoolrelationship is the more familiar. less structuredschool visit to the science museum. Every year.more than 150.000 school children visitmuseum on class field trips. They come to expe-rience star shows in the Fels Planetarium, enjoylively programs in the Science Auditorium and theDiscovery Theatre. and participate in one of themany special classes presented by our museumeducation staff. Another 350,000 students expe-rience our Traveling Science Shows every year attheir own schools.

PublicationsWe have also produced three educadonal publi-

cations for classroom use, in collaboration withthe Newspapers in Education project of Philadel-phia Newspapers. Inc.. publishers of the Philadel-phia Inquirer and Daily News. Distributed assupplements to the new. rapers, these 16-pagepublications have provided educational materialfor nearly 100.000 students to date on topics suchas Halley's Comet. Women in Science, and Hands-On Activities for the Elementary School Class-room. A :qurth supplement will be published intht. autumn c,f 1988.

The Franklin Institute Selena_ Museum has

provided informal learning experiences for thethree-quarters of a million people who visit useach year, as well as more structured prcgrams forschools. This tradition has provided entertaininghands-on science education to more than 40 mil-lion people since we opened our doors in 1934.The Franklin Institute also provides a laboratoryto develop and test educational techniques anddevices. At the same time, our formal partnershipswith schools grow broader and deeper as we seekto find new ways to apply our expertise in expe-riential, hands-on education in the service ofimproved science education in the classroom.

ReferencesBorun, Minda et al. (1983). Planets and pulleys:

Studies of class visits to a science museum.Washington, DC: Association of Science-Tech-nology Centers.

Breddennan, Ted (1983). Effects of activity-basedelementary science on student outcomes: Aquantitative synthesis. Review of EducationalResearch, 53(4), 499.

Mecbling, Kenneth R., & Oliver, Donna L (1983).What research says about elementary schoolscience. Washington, DC: National ScienceTeachers Association.

For Further ReadingApelman. Maja, Hawkins, David, & Morrison,

Philip. (19851 Critical barriers phenomenon in

elementary science. Grand Forks, ND: Univer-sity of North Dakota Press.

Bennett. William J. (1986). First Lessons: A reporton elementary education in America. Washi ng-ton, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Bennett. William J. (1986). What works: Researchabout teaching and learning. Washington, DC:U.S Government Printing Office.

Cohen, Rosalie. (1986, November). A match or nota match? A study of intermeaiate science teach-ing materials. Forum '86: The Science Curricu-lum. Paper presented at the National Forum forSchool Science.

Hawkins. David. (1983). Nature closely obsen ed.Daedalus, 112(2).

Lapp, Douglas M. (1980). Helping teachers teachscience: The need for teacher support systems.The National Elementary Principal, 59(2), 61.

Linn, Marcia C. (1986). Establishing a resourcebase for science edacatioi: Challenn,c.:s, trends,and recommendations. i3erkelc-y: University ofCalifornia Press.

National Commission on Excellence in Education.(1983, April). A nation at risk: The imperative

for educational refoan. Washington, DC: U.S.Government Printing Office.

National Science Resource Center. (1986, Sep-tember). Position paper presented at theNational Conference on the Teaching of Sciencein Eleme tary Schools, July 13-16. 1986,Washington, DC.

Helpful HintsCall the museum and ask if reservations can bemade. Reservations may be required for specia!programs, guaranteed lunchroom space, or toreceive a discounted group rate.

Call the museum's Education Department sev-eral weeks before your planned visit. Ask forinformation about the exhibits and about spe-cial educational progran that may complementyour science curriculum and enrich your visit.

Many museums offer printed material that willalso be useful; ask what is available.

Visit the museum in advance. The FranklinInstitute offers a free Educator's Pass to helpteachers prepare for then visits: most othermuseums offer free or reduced admission toteachers.

Don't try to do it all. It is impossible to see and

The Muse in the Classroom 93

do everything in a single visit and have an edu-cationally worthwhile experience. Concentrateon a few exhibit topics.

Prepare your class with activities that relate tothe exhibits you'll be visiting. The must un'sEducation Department can suggest pre-visitactivities.

Give your students specific assignments andreview them in advance, or divide your etas intoteams anu have them work together on anassigned topic. An assi& lent might be a ques-tim to answer or observations to make at the


museum, or finding and preparing a classroomactivity that relates to a topic you'll be exploringat the museum.

Let your students help plan your visit, includingrules for appropriate behavior. Using the . ause-um's floor plan, plan your route to the exhibits.It will be a good exercise in mapping.

The museum staff is there to help. Ask for direc-tions, explanations, and other assistance.

Consolidate your gains. Have a post-visit sessionto review what you've observed and experienced.

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40

Hearing the Music ofthe Sphties: InformalAstronomy EducationAndrew FraknoiAstroLomical Society of the PacificSan Francisco, California

Whether it is the avid amateur astronomerscanning the skies from a dark country location.the youngster enjoying her first planetarium show,or the average worker stopping his or her morningroutine to consider a point raised on the Stardateradio programthousands of people, in all walksof life, learn about science and the scientificmethod through astronomy.

I can cite several reasons for astronomy's popu-larity, but those of us who are in the field may not


be the best sources for objective explanationsweare, after all, clearly prejudiced. Still. I suggest thatastronomy holds a special fascination becausespace represents the next physical frontier. Andthe discoveries of modern astronomy stretch ourintellect and imaginations in ways that can out-strip the predictions of even the most "far out"science fiction

Astronomy is also rare among the sciencesbecause it provides an active and rewarding role

for amateurs. With only modest equipment and alot of patience and dedication, astronomy hobby-ists discover new comets and exploding stars,monitor stars that vary in brightness in unpredict-able ways, hunt for asteroids and fireballs. andspread their contagious enthusiasm for the skiesamong youngsters and adults in their community.

A variety of organizations and informal net-works have grown up around astronomy, creatingan institutional base for public education thatsimply doe., not exist for fields like particle physicsor biochemistry. Although most teachers areprobably casually familiar with these astronomi"alresource organizations, few are aware of thenumber or the types of services they provide.

Bringing the Skies Indoors: PlanetariaFor most of us, the dark night sky that so capti-

vated our ancestors and explains why astronomywas the first science can be enjoyed with onlysome effort. For city and suburban residents, thesky has been polluted by the lights of civilization(although many of us are not sure that fast-foodrestaurants and shopping malls necessarily qual-ify as civilization).

The second-best place to see and to becomefamiliar with the stars is at a planetarium, wherea specialized projector simulates the night sky ona dome. There are approximately 1,000 planetariain the United States, ranging from small ones thataccommodate abut 20 people to giant facilitieswith 300 or more seats. Most planetaria are asso-ciated with a science or natural history museum, acollege or university, a school district, or an indi-vidual school. Many have public shows and specialprograms or classes, although schedules andrequirements vary tremendously. The Interna-tional Planetarium Society can provide moreinformation about building or operat g a plane-tarium in yo-ar school district. To find the nearestplanetarium, call the astronomy or physicsdepartment -.t a local college, your local sciencemuseum, or the science corriculum specialist inyour district.

Radio and Itlevision ProgramsMost local public television stations have run

and continue to run Cosmos, Carl Sagan'senormously popular and highly personal introduc-tion to astronciny, and Prrgect Universe, a primeron modern astronomy. NOVA. the PBS scienceshow, features two or three new astronomy pro-grams each year, and many of these later becomeavailable for rental to school and communitygroups (but, alas, only at high prices).

Stardate is a daily series of brief astronomyreports on radio. Produced by the University ofTexas MacDonald Observatory, the syndicatedseries has made millions of listeners more awareof phenomena in the sky and of modern astro-nomical research. Many radio talk shows featureastronomers as guests from time to time, althoughonly Car! Sagan has broken the barrier by makingregular television talk show appearances.

Astronomy HotlinesMany planetaria, museums, and amateur

astronomy clubs have telephone announcementlines with information about their local activitiesand sky events. Finding out about these cansometimes be difficult but is usually worth theeffort. In addition, you can call two natic nwideastronomy hotlines that will keep you up to dateon what is happening in astronomy. Thesenumbers are listed below.

On the west coast, the Astronomical Society ofthe Pacific (ASP) provides an astronomy newshotline that generally features a three-minutenontechnical report on a single development ordiscovery in astronomy. The number is (415)337-1244. On the east coast, the staff of Sky &Telescope magazine offers Skyline, a recordingthat discusses several stories in less detail andalso offers discussions of sky events for seriousamateur astronomers. Their number is (617)497-4168.

Both numbers operate 24 hours a day. Mes-sages are changed once a week aid cost nothingbeyond the actual charge for the call.

93'

Hearing the Music of the Spheres 99

Organizations for Armchair AstronomersMost people begin exploring the universe from

the comfort of their own easy chairreadingabout astronomy, listening to the radio, or watch-ing television. These "armchair astronomers" aredistinguished from the amateurs who will addobserving and maybe even telescope building totheir activities.

Several nontechnical magazines are devoted topopular astronomy, including Astronomy, Sky &Telescope, and Mercury.1 he first two are availablein many larger libraries, while the third comeswith membership in the Astronomical Society ofthe Pacific. In addition, general science magazineslike Discover, National Geographic, and ScienceNews regularly cover astronomical ideas and dis-coveries. The AstroMedia Corporation publishes acolorful magazine for younger children calledOdyssey, which contains a mix of education andentertainment

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is theoldest and most active .:ational astronomy groupin the country. Although the Society's name harksback to its origins on the Pacific Coast in 1889,today it has members in all 50 states and in morethan 70 other countries. The ASP is uniqueamong scientific societies in that it welcomes notonly scientists and educators in the field, but every-one with an interest in the heavens. The Societypublishes the popular Mercury magazine as wellas a professional journal in astronomy, holdsmeetings and lecture programs, offers workshopson teaching astronomy, and gives five prestigiousinternational awards. Through its Selectory, acatalog of educational materials, the ASP offersastronomical slides, posters, books, software,maps, and sky observing aids for teachers and thepublic.

The Society also offers a special free publicationfor teachers interested in using astronomy in theriaiwoom. The Universe in the Classroom is aquarterly newsletter with information on new dis-coveries, practical classroom activities, andresources for teachers and students. Subscrip-


q^

tions to the newsletter are free, but requests mustcome on institutional stationery and must includethe grade level the requestor teaches.

Another society especially for armchair astron-omers is The Planetary Society, founded in theearly 1980s by Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray andnow the largest space-oriented group in the world.The Planetary Society publishes a colorfulbimonthly magazine, The Planetary Report holdsconferences on topics relating to the exploration ofthe planets and the search for extraterrestrial life,and supports research in these areas. An impor-tant aspect of their work is to mobilize public andpolitical support for the science and technologyneeded to understand more about our solar sys-tem. Their 100,000 or so members regularly writeto Congress and work in their local communitiesto encourage the peaceful exploration of space.

Amateur AstronomyAlthough many people are perfectly content to

remain armchair astronomers, taking an occa-sional look at the dark night sky during a camp-ing trip, others find they are bitten by the "observ-ing bug" and want to observe celestial phenomenaon a regular bdais. (By the way. you do not need torush out and buy a telescope if you are bitten.Instead, you can start observing with the nakedeye or a simple pair of binoculars

Once someone makes a serious effort to becomefamiliar with the constellations and begins tospend a number of evenings observing the sky. heor she has graduated into the category of amateurastronomer. It is here that an unparalleled net-work of local and national groups exists to helpand to support those who want to learn moreabout the heavens.

At the local level. many cities and towns have anstronomy club, often a loosely organized group of

devotees who meet once o. twice a month, listen toguest speakers, hold "star parties" and telescope-making workshops, exchange information aboutthe hobby of astronomy, publish an informal news-letter, and just enjoy one another's company.

Many amateur clubs are associated with a col-lege, museum, or planetarium, but others existonly through members' efforts and meet inschools, churches, or members' homes. To find aclub near you, ask the astronomy or physicsdepartment at the nearest college or a sciencemuseum.

Many, but by no means all, of the cluba are partof two larger federations or "umbrella groups"formed several decades ago. The Western AmateurAstronomers includes about 30 or so clubs in thewestern states, while the Astronomical Leaguerepresents several hundred clubs throughout therest of the country. These umbrella groups are runentirely by the efforts of volunteers, so if you writeto them, remember to enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope to help them with postage.

From the teacher's point of view, probably themost wonderful thing about local amateur clubs isthat many of them have an ongoing program ofbringing infcrmation to schools. With notice, amember will often come and talk to a class andeven bring a telescope with a proper filter for day-time Sun observing. Some clubs also sponsor pub-lic observing sessions in the evening that studentsand their families can attend.

A much smaller subset of amateur astronomerswill go on to perfect their skills sufficiently toactually participate in astronomical research. Asmentioned earlier, amateurs have made and arecontinuing to make important contributions toastronomy in several areas. These include huntingfor new comets, finding exploding stars in othergalaxies (one amateur in Australia found 15 suchexploding stars using only a very primitive tele-scope and a prodigious memory), and monitoringvariable stars, which change their ')rightness inregular and sometimes irregular fashion. Althoughthe details of these activities are beyond the scopeof this chapter, it is worth pointing out thatnational groups bring together amateurs whopractice them. For more information, write to suchgroups as the American Association of VariableStar Observers or the Association of Lunar and

Planetary Observers (see resource list at the end ofthis chapter).

Astronomy on ComputerA growing area of informal science education in

astronomy is in the field of home software,spurred by the enormous increase in the availabil-ity of reasonably priced home and school comput-ers. A recent survey revealed more than 100 piecesof commercially available software for astronomy,ranging from simple calculational programs tocomplex sky simulation programs that convertyour computer into a flat planetarium. (A reprintof the survey giving a full annotated list of theseprograms, with the addresses of all manufacturersand a bibliography, is available for $4 from theASP.)

Debunking PseudoscienceAlas, so much of informal education about

astronomy these days turns out to oe miseduca-tion. Our students are constantly exposed touncritical media coverage of "fiction science" suchas astrology, UFOs as extraterrestrial spacecraft,and ancient astronauts.

In my own university-level teaching experience,a significant number of my students believe thatthe arrangement of stars and constellations at themoment of their birth can influence their destiny,that the Air Force is hiding the bodies of alienswho came here in a flying saucer, and that manyof the great archeological monuments of thehuman species were built with the help of ancientastronauts (presumably, and insultingly, becauseour ancestors could not build them alone).

To help reporters, teachers. students, and thepublic evaluate the many claims of such "para-normal" phenomena. a new organization has beenformed by concerned scientists, educators, andskeptics in all walks of life. Called by the ratherawkward name the Committee for the ScientificInvestigation of Claims of the Paranormal(CSICOP), the group includes such noted figuresin science education as Carl Sagan, Isaac Asimov,

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Hearing the Music of the Spheres 101

Stephen Jay Gould, and magician James Randi(who can spot a fraud a mile away). CSICOP pub-lishes an excellent magazine called the SkepticalInquirer, holds annual conferences, and has gen-erated local groups in many cities in the UnitedStates and Canada.

Interdisciplinary Approaches toAstronomy

Because astronomy has inspired artists for mil-lennia it is not surprising that i.i great deal ofinformal learning in this field takes place throughthe humanities. There is, of course. the area ofscience fiction, which includes many good storiesbased on extrapolations of science and teaches agreat deal about the universe to its many fans. Buteven in "serious" literature, astronomical ideascan inspire or challenge, as in John Updike's novelRoger's Version or the short story "Passions andMeditations," by Joyce Carol Oates.

In music. the many pieces inspired by astron-omy include a jazz piece about supernovae, operason the work of Kepler and Einstein. and even rock-and-roll songs about black holes. Many modernpoets use images from astronomical research, andsome, like Diane Ackerman and Diane Wakosky.have woven whole skeins of poems from astro-nomical themes.

A much more detailed exploration with manyspecific references to the interaction betweenastronomy and the humanities can be found inInterdisciplinary Approaches to Astronomy, abooklet available from the ASP for S4.

In its ability to inspire us, to stretch our imagi-nations. and to capture our fancy. astronomy isone of the best areas to introduce science to our


students and to the wider public. As the poetRobinson Jeffers. whose brother was an astrono-mer, wrote earlier in this century in "Star Swirls,"

There is nothing like astronomy to pull the stuffout of man.

His stupid dreams and red-rooster importance:let him count the star swirls.

Resource Organizations for InformalAstronomy EducationAmerican Association of Variable Star Observers,

25 Birch St., Cambridge, MA 02138Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, c/o

Dr. John Westfall, P.O. Box 16131, San Fran-cisco, CA 94116

Astromedia. c/o Kalmbach Publishing. 1027 N. 7thSt., Milwaukee, WI 53233

Astronomical League. c/o Merry Wooten, ExecutiveSecretary. 6235 Omie Circle, Pensacola, FL32504

Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 390 AshtonAve.. San Francisco, CA 94112

Committee for the Scientific Investigation ofClaims of the Paranormal, P.O. Box 229, CentralPark Station, Buffalo, NY 14215

International Planetarium Society. Memben,hipInformation, c/o Mark Petersen, P.O. Box 3023,Boulder, CO 80307

Planetary Society. 65 North Catalina Ave., Pasa-dena CA 31106

Sky Publishing, 49 Bay State Rd., Cambridge. MA02238

Western Amateur Astronomers. c/o StephenEdberg, Jet Propulsion Lab., 4800 Oak GroveDr.. Pasadena, CA 91103

9.

I1ia . . 1i.

Westinghouse ScienceTalent SearchEdward G. Sherburne, Jr.Science ServiceWashington, D.C.

Now in its 48th year. the Westinghouse ScienceTalent Search (STS) is unusual amongscholarship competitions. Administered byScience Service and supported by Westinghouse.the competition places primary emphasis on thestudent's report of an independent researchproject in some area of science. engineering, ormathematics. and only secondary emphasis onacademic achievement.

In short. the evaluation is based on the stu-

dent's ability to "do" science in a way that is analo-gous to. though less sophisticated than. what aprofessional scientist does. To use a sports anal-ogy, one does not test ability to play tennis bygiving a paper-and-pencil test. One observes per-formance on the tennis court. We do not meanthat academic ability is unimportant. But asRobert J. Sternberg (1985) comments in his bookBeyond Ig-A Triarchic Theory of Human Intelli-gence. "Possession of knowledge does not guaran-

9 ;

Westinghouse Science Talent Search 103

tee the creative use if that knowledge." A high-quality independent research protect couldindicate creativity. as well as motivation, initiative,persistence. and other attributes that contributeto scientific performance.

To enter the Science Talent Search. a secondaryschool student does an independent research proj-ect and describes the research in a paper of about1.000 words. The student also answers questionson a Personal Data Blank, which has open-endedquestions designed to elicit evidence of the stu-dent's interest and creativity in science. These twoitems constitute an entry. The entry must arrive atScience Service by midnight, December 15. Anyentries arriving late are automatically disqualified.

Scientists. engineers. and mathematicians fromsuch institutions as Johns Hopkins, the NationalInstitutes of Health, Princeton. and Berkeley workas judges. Entries are placed in categories by dis-cipline and evaluated by at least two judges whoare specialists in the relevant discipline. After eval-uating all the entries, the judges rank the entriesand designate the top 300 as honorable mentions.

The Admissions office of every four-year collegein the country receives the names and addressesof the students, printed in a booklet that is sentwith letters of recommendation. Because of theimpressive undergraduate track record of previoushonorable mention winners and the rep' station ofthe STS program, the colleges approach many ofthe students with admission and scholarshipoffers.

The judges then study the honorable mentions,and from these, select 40 winners to compete forscholarships totaling $140.000one $20.000 first,two $15.000 seconds. three $10,000 thirds. andfour $7,500 fourths. The remaining 30 studentsreceive scholarships of $1.000 each. STS awardsscholarships without regard to financial need.

The 40 winners receive an all-expense-paid tripto Washington. where the judges interview thestudents. The students also visit scientific labora-tories and talk with scientists about their work.see their members of Congress. attend the theatre


(usually the Kennedy Center), and talk to thescientific public when their projects are exhibitedin the Great Hall of the National Academy ofSciences. The scholarships are announced at aformal banquet on the last evening of the stu-dents' visitthe largest scientific dinner party ofthe year in Washington.

Many of the other entrants have yet anotheropportunity for recognition through the 35 StateScience Talent Searches. Science Service dupli-cates the entries and sends them to the Directorsof the State Science Talent Searches. The stateSTS's then conduct their own competitions, manyof which have numerous awards. includingscholarships.

Scientific Versus Academic PerformanceRichard S. Mansfield and Thomas V. Busse

(1981) comment on ti. "threshold effect" that hasbeen suggested by some psychologists. They implythat a threshold of academic ability in a disciplineis required, but beyond that level. additional aca-demic achievement is not as important as otherabilities such as creativity or motivation. In asense. scientific performance guarantees a certainlevel of academic achievement because researchcan't be done without the necessary knowledge.On the other hand, what you know doesn't matterif you don't know how to use it. In a study of STShonorable mentions done by Harold A Edgertonsome years ago (1973), the scientific achievers(those with the best research papers) were notalways those with the highest grades. The studylooked at 300 honorable mention winners whowere selected on the quality of their researchpapers, that is. on their scientific performance.These 300 were compared with another 300 fromthe total pool of entries selected for their academicachievement (grades. SAT scores. and class rank).

The study compared the two groups to see howmany students were in both. Two-thirds of thestudents chosen on the basis of scientific perfor-mance would not have had high enough scores ifacademic achievement had been the criterion. And

1 0 ,,i

two-thirds of those chosen on the basis of aca-demic achievement had such low ratings on theirscientific achievement that they would have beenexduded from the top 300 on the basis of scien-tific performance.

How Well Do the Winners Do?If the selection process for the Science Talent

Search is so different, how well do those selecteddo? One can look at this in two waysin terms ofcollege success and occupational success.

The results of a Science Service mail survey(64.9 percent response) of winners from 1942through 1979 show that 99 percent of thewinners have a B.S. or higher (Science Service.1979). Even more impressive is that 70 percent ofthe group have a Ph.D.. M.D.. or both. Becauseundergraduate and graduate degrees only indicatecollege success. we need to look at post-collegesuccess (Hoyt, 1966). In science. post-college suc-cess is generally defined by how the scientificcommunity recognizes the winners.

To date. five former Science Talent Searchwinners have won the Nobel Prize. That it proba-bly takes 30 years after winning the STS to finishundergraduate and graduate school and do thenecessary research is even more significant. Andso. winners prior to 1960 are old enough andexperienced enough to be eligible.

The National Academy of Sciences recognizesoutstanding achievement in science through elec-tion to membership, which is considered thehighest elective honor a scientist can receive inthis country. To date. 28 former Science TalentSearch winners have been elected.

For younger scientists. a fellowship award is animportant recognition and often the precursor tolater scientific achievement. One of the oldest andmost prestigious programs is the Sloan ResearchFellowships. aimed at stimulating fundamentalresearch by young scientists of outstanding prom-ise. To date. 47 former winners have received theseFellowships. Other major awards include twoFields Medals (the Nobel Prize of Mathematics)

and eight MacArthur Fellowships.This analysis of success cannot by any means

be called "scientific." but it does suggest that, forwhatever reasons. students selected by the ScienceTalent Search will succeed both in and aftercollege.

The Importance of the 'reacherIn one of the major contemporary studies of tal-

ent. Bloom (1985) concluded that the old expres-sion "genius will out" does not hold. Whatever theIndividual's natural talents. strong support andinfluential teachers are essential in helping a stu-dent reach high levels of achievement.

One might correlate winning the Science TalentSearch with attending a good school. This is lotcompletely true. The schools that produce winnersand honors are usually good. but many goodschools do not produce any winners or honorablementions. Many do not even have entries. Someschools produce winners for a while and then. forno apparent reason. stop. We found that usually aparticular teacher left that school. If the teachermoved to a school that had no winners or honors.the school began producing winners. Nothingchanged but the teacher's location.

Thus. the overall quality of a school seemsunimportant. Instead. the school must have one ormore teachers who want to develop studentresearch. and more specifically. who want toencourage students to enter the Science TalentSearch.

What characteristics do these teachers have? Astudy of the Science Talent Search (Campbell.1983) found that they have exceptional knowledgeof and enthusiasm for the subjects they teach. andthey can communicate those qualities to their stu-dents. They are interested not only in the subjectin an academic sense. but also as an area of ongo-ing research to develop new knowledge. They arehardworking and often put in long hours at nightand on weekends. They have close relationshipswith the students. and working with the studentson the projects deepens those relationships.

Westinghouse Science Talent Search 105

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In the Personal Data Blank students name oneperson who influenced their scientific interest themost. Students mention teachers or school staffmost frequently, scientists second, and familymembers third.

ReferencesBloom, Benjamin S. (Ed.). (1985). Developing tal-

ent in young people. New York: BallentineBooks. (Paperback).

Campbell. James Reed. (1983). Horizontalenrichmentfor precocious high school sciencestudents. Paper presented at the Annual Meet-ing of the National Association for Research inScience Teaching. April 7. 1983, Dallas, Texas.

Edgerton, Harold A. (1973). Identifying highschool seniors talented in science. Washington.DC: Science Service.

Hoyt. Donald P. (1966). College grades and adultaccomplishmentA review of research. TheEducational Record.

Mansfield. Richard S., & Busse, Thomas V. (1981).The psychology of creativity and discovery.Chicago: Nelson-Hall.

Science Service. (1979). Survey of Science TalentSearch Winners. Washington, DC: ScienceService.

Sternberg. Robert J. (1985). Beyond IQA Marchic theory of human intelligence. New York:Cambridge University Press. (Paperback).

Helpful Hintst Research:Identify promising students in the ninth or tenth

grades and have them learn about and doresearch.

Start students early on their research projects.Some projects represent months or even years ofwork.

Do not let students wait until the last minute towrite their papers, which also takes time.

Refer students to the Directory of Student Science7Yaining Programs for High Ability PrecollegeStudents published by Science Service if theyare looking for summer research opportunities.

Entries:Mail entries early. Remember, the deadline is mid-

night, December 15, for receipt of the entry, notthe postmark. If you're near the deadline, use anovernight delivery service.

Requests tor entry materials must be from ateacher, guidance counselor, or principal on


school letterhead, and rraterials must go to theschool. Parents and students may not requestmaterials.

Have ,tudents fill in the Personal Data Blank first.The teacher may then add comments and pro-vide transcripts of tests scores and grades.

Encourage students to be concise and to thepoint. The quality of the writing, not the quan-tity, counts.

Rules:Avoid library research.Read the rules carefully and note that they may

change in some way from year to year.

Recognition:Recognize participants and especially honorable

mentions or winners through a school assem-bly, the school newspaper, local newspaper. etc.

Last, write Science Talent Search. 1719 N St. NW,Washington. DC 20036 if you have questions.

1 re 4

Training YoungResearchersSol LanderNew York City Board of ExaminersBrooklyn, N.Y.

Each year New York City students competing inthe Westinghouse Science Talent Search consis-tently shine in both the number of honors andwinners they achieve and in the quality of theirresearch. In the 1979-80 competition. more than60 New York City students were recognized; thefollowing year, 82 students were winners! In amore recent competition. 12 New York City stu-dents achieved honors out of the 40 nationwidefinalists. with four of them receiving honors as the

first. sixth. ninth, and tenth top prizewinners.What is the key to this consistent success?

Although official training is not provided. studentsare encouraged at an early age to participate inschool, district, and citywide science fairs. Let'slook at the step-by-step process for training youngpeople to compete in science research projects.

Steps to Training Young ResearchersSearch and Identification. Assistant principals

10,3Training Young Researchers 107

visit intermediate and junior high schools in theirneighborhoods. talk to graduating youngsters andSpecial Progress classes, and explain that strongscience programs are available in the principal'sparticular high school. (Students who are twoyears above level in reading and mathematics areeligible for seventh- and ninth-grade Special Pro-gress classes. An expanded. more demanding cur-riculum and opportunities for individualizedresearch in social science and science are featuresof such classes.) This step is greatly simplified insmall school districts. Principals examine recordsof science-oriented students, noting special inter-est and achievement in science and mathematicsas well as information on independent researchsuch as entry in the annual citywide science fairs.Assistant principals perform much of this inves-tigative work in their free time, often on the week-ends. In New York City these fairs are conductedunder the supervision of the American Institute ofScience and Technology and the Science Unit ofthe Division of Curriculum and Instruction.

Personal Interview. A student interested in enter-ing the competition receives a personal interviewat the high school. The assistant principal tries todetermine the student's maturity, enthusiasm.and dedication, and spells out the requirementsclearly: reading science journals and magazines.doing a literature search, working additionalhours, and having diligence and determination.These preliminary steps are vital for the involve-ment of qualified yourgsters.

Guidance. The principal helps the student explorehis or her area of interest. In this step. studentand principal determine the practicality of prob-lems to be researched, availability of literaturesources, znd the time the investigation willrequire. Often. classroom discussion motivates astudent to decide to pursue a particular project.Television programs and magazine articles areadditional sources of motivation. Exposure to avariety of science topics is the key. The coopera-


ting teacher's role (the next step) becomes impor-tant at this point; overambitious students must becareful not to select an experimental problem thatis over their heads.

Selecting a Capable Cooperating Thacker. Gui-dance, direction, counsel, and resear-h experienceare some of the main qualities principals considerwhen selecting a cooperating teacher. The teachermust be available to the student, and this maymean that a teacher normally required to teachfive classes per day will have one class or an admin-istrative assignment removed from his or her pro-gram.

Consultation. After the student has some idea ofthe areas to be researched, he or she consults withthe teacher. The teacher and student discuss

time frame for the projectbasic elements of a good projectproject notebookuse of graphs and statisticsdata interpretationwriting the report, including thebibliography

Program Planning. Aside from the regularRegents science and mathematics courses (appli-cable in New York State). students must takecourses in advanced placement and laboratorytechniques. and they must participate in summerinstitutes such as those sponsored by the NSF oroffered at local colleges and research institutes.They also must learn how to use community facili-ties such as the New York Academy of Science andLhe Sloane-Kettering Institute. Students areencouraged to participate in project competitions.including the City-Wide Science Fair. NationalEnergy Foundation (SEER Energy Program). Jun-ior Science and Humanities Symposium, West-inghouse Science Talent Search, and the OttoBurgdorf Science Conference.

Recent developments in the Otto BurgdorfScience Conference make the conference especially

valuable training for students. University facilitiesare made available to the prizewinning students toexplain their projezAs and their investigatorytechniques to other high school students invitedto attend. A question-and-answer period follows onaspects of the particular piece of research andgeneral aspects of reports, data, graphing, andpresentation. This procedure serves as a formatfor peer exchange and oral presentation, helpingstudents to express themselves and clarify thetools of science.

Supervising teachers also conduct sessions atthis conference with the students and with oneanother. where they outline techniques in projectreport progress and self-evaluation. The student,therefore. has the opportunity for self-evaluation,and this evaluation is reviewed with the teacher.

Formal Notification of Parents. Parents also maybecome involved. The school sends parents a letteradvising them of their child's ;Merest in an accel-erated science program and explaining the fullcomplement of available courses in tenth, eleventh,and twelfth grades. The school informs parents ofafterschool participation in science competitions,the Columbia University Saturday Science Pro-gram, and the National Scierce FoundationSummer Programs. The parent is invited to signthe letter. return it to the school. and call if anyquestions remain unanswered.

Coordinating Meeting of Supervisor, Teacher,and Laboratory Specialist. The student meetswith supervisor, teacher, and laboratory specialistto discuss time, materials. and practicality of theproject. The student must show that he or she hasdone library research in this area Participants inthe meeting discuss the cost to the school and tothe students for materials. The student and the

supervising teacher arrange days and hours ofconsultations, and the wonderful world of researchwelcomes another young investigator!

General Outline and Breakdown of Time Slots.Library research requires four weeks, equipmentdescription two weeks. the experimental phasethree weeks. data collection three weeks, datainterpretation and analysis three weeks. andreport writing three weeks. The total? Four andone-half to five months for the entire procedure.Students find this ti-eakdown extremely helpful asboth a daily and an overall guide for each phase.they know that procrastination and meanderingmay lead to incomplete projects. The entire pro-cess may not necessarily be completed in the five-month period but can take up to two years fromconception to final presentation. depending uponthe student's nature or method of working.

Westinghouse Reception. The final asrect of thecompetition is the Westinghouse reception held ina New York City hotel. The Board of Education ofNew York City goes to great lengths to ensure aplanned, effective program. We thank the West-inghouse Electric Corporation, the WestinghouseEducational Foundation. and Science Service forinitiating and maintaining this prestigious cventfor more than 40 years. As long as the eventendures, New York City will participate to the ful-lest extent possible and continue to shine in edu-cational and scientl..c achievement.

How wonderful it is to behold the exploration ofthe scientific world through the eyes of teenagers!Challenged by competition, motivated by theirown interests, and eager to work diligently :.owardrecognition. these young people open their mindsto the possibilities of the future for themselvesand for the world.

Training Young Researchers 109

1Family Math: Making theHome an Environmentfor Problem SolvingKathleen DevaneyBerkeley, California

At 6:30 p.m. on a late-October Thursday. thefirst students arrive in the library of Bayside Ele-mentary School, a K-5 building in a middle-income family nPlghborhood. A tall man wearingcasual clothes and running shoes, and two boys.one about 8 years old and the other about 10, stopat the sign-in table just inside the library dc,or andprint their names"Steve," "Rob." and "Tim," onstick-on name tags. Steve and Tim attach theirs totheir sweaters; Rob pastes his on his Baltimore

110 Seit.rce for the Fun of It

Oricles baseball cap. which he wears backwards.At the sign-in table. Tim, the older boy, nicks up

a glass peanut butter jar filled with raw kidneybeans and bearing the label: "Estimate how manybeans are in the jar." Tim turns the jar around.The three confer but do not agree, and write threeanswers on separate slips of paper and place themin the answer basket.

Susan Sherman, one of the two co-teachers ofthis class and a third-grade teacher in this school,

ink;

greets them by name and points them toward thesign-in graph posted on a corkboard. The graph isa Venn diagram of three circles, "I am a sister," "Iam a brother." and "I like to play Balloon Ride" (anactivity they learned at last week's class). Allponder the graph. and after some pointing andtalking among themselves, Steve. Rob, and Timwrite their names in the 'brother"/"balloon ride"intersection on the graph.

On the opposite side of the room, Holly Benson.the other co-teacher, has just finished setting uplearning center instructions for self-paced activi-ties. She suggests to Steve that he and his sonsbegin to work on one activity and then teach it tothe next family that's arrivinga young womanholding a baby in a carrying seat, and a girl aboutage eight. Before they finish signing in. the fatherarrives and takes the lorty, while mother anddaughter read the Venn diagram and print"Sarah" and "Rebecca" in the "sister" circle.

This is a hypothetical, but typical, Family Mathclass. Each family does hands-on activitiestogether using inexpensive household materials.They also get handout instructions for doing thesame and other activities at home. All the activi-ties are designed to be done over and over withoutboredom. Thus parents learn, through their ownand their children's accomplishments, that mathskill is not a gift frdm God but a gain fromrepeated. concentrated, inventive, frequently coop-erative work and play. They come to understandthat math ability is not rare: it need not be painfulto achieve. Anyone can do math, and it can be fun.

Family Math has three aims: to stop mothersand fathers from passing their null or negativeattitudes about mathematics on to children: tohelp parents create an environmentat homewith family activities such as household jobs.shopping, trips, and gamesthat familiarizeschildren with the broad scope of math: and to per-suade parents and children to approach math asproblem solvers. Parents learn they can stimulatetheir children's mathematical and scientific think-ing in the home just as naturally and enjoyably as

1 r,

they nourish their children's literacy by reading tothem.

The Beginnings of Family MathStarted by the University of California's Law-

rence Hall of Science in Berkeley in 1982, FamilyMath began as a response to black mothers in a low-income neighborhood of Richmond, California.who asled Clyde Wallace. the assistant principal attheir children's school, to teach them the maththey needed to help their kids at home. Wallacementioned their request to teachers of theEQUALS course he was taking at the LawrenceHall of Science. (Through inservice programs,EQUALS helps teachers retain students who other-wise would not succeed in mathespecially girls,blacks, and Hispanicsby persuading them thatthey can and should continue taking math evenwhen it is no longer required.) Taking Wallace'ssuggestion, Virginia Thompson, an EQUALS staffmember who had been a math resource teacher.designed a course that parents could attend withtheir children, learning math through activitiesthat could be repeated with enjoyment manytimes at home. Since 1982 when Thompsonpiloted the first class in Richmond, Family Mathhas spread across the United States. More than15.000 participantschildren and their parentshave taken the class.

Basic Principles of Family MathFamily Math teaches the relationship between

mathematics and the natural world and work life.Parents learn that perseverance in math is vital toall children's school preparation for higher educa-tion and for most rewarding careers. They learn toemphasize the usefulness of mathematics in prob-lem solving. Parents realize that math means morethan just arithmetic and algebra, because ourscience-oriented society requires abilities to mea-sure, estimate, visualize spatial relationships(expressed through geometry). interpret datausin_l probability' and statistics, reason. and solveproblems logically. Family Math cultivates this

.....

Family Math 111

problem solvingusing the mind accurately.analytically, systematically, investigatively.

The program or,ginators have identified thebasic principles of Family Math for ar' -tptationoutside of school. These principles also can beapplied to science subject matter.

Focus on problem solving. Teach parents andchildren to think about a problem by looking forpatterns, drawing a picture, working backwards,working with a partner, or eliminating possibili-ties. "Having a supply of strategies allows a choiceof ways to start looking at a problem, relieving thefrustration of not knowing how or where tobegin," write program directors Nancy Kreinbergand Virginia Thompson (1986). "The more strate-gies you have, the more confident you become, themore willing you are to tackle new problems, andthe better problem solver you become."

Teach with "hands-on" materials. Householdobjects like beans, blocks, string, pennies, playingcards, and toothpicks help children and adultsunderstand numbers, shapes, quantities, space.pattern, and relationships. "Traditionally, thesematerials are used mainly in early elementaryyears, and paper-and-pencil mathematics becomesthe rule after second or third grade," Kreinbergand Thompson write. 'This is unfortunate, sincemuch of mathematics can best be explained andunderstood using the tools of manipulative mate-rials and models; and, in fact, many research andapplied mathematicians do just that."

Arrange the class environment and the schedulefor serious but nonstressful efforts by parents andtheir children. "We provide a supportive environ-ment in which parents and children feel comfort-able doing mathematicsan environment that isat once nonthreatening and encourages risk tak-ing.... We present familiar math topics at firstand gradually introduce ways of doing math prob-lems that are unfamiliar, so that curiosity ispiqued and motivation to solve the problemsencouraged." In Family Math. there are no grades.credits, or judgments; parents consistently observeand experience adults working with children in


nonjudgmental ways.Demonstrate and explain the scope and se-

quencc of mathematics, the specific topics beingtaught at the children's grade level, and how topicsrelate to each other. Present mathematics contentin a way that explains why children are taughtparticular concepts at certain ages, how theseconcepts are interrelated, and why learning mathis important

Teach activities parents can do at home withtheir children. "Parents learn activities they canuse at home to reinforce the concepts, and thatare interesting enough for repeated use withoutfalling into a drill-and-practice mode."

Introduce the link to careers and the future. 'Toensure that the reason for studying mathematicsis made explicit, men and women from the com-munity. working in math-based occupations. cometo Family Math classes to talk about how math isused in their jobs and the jobs of people withwhom they werk"

Model a teaching style that generates enthusi-asm and persistence. "We provide early success sothat learners will want to continue; encourage-ment to move at a pace that is comfortable for(each) learner: and an ambience of informality.vivacity, and variety that stimulates and sustainsinterest" In the atmosphere of cooperation, think-ing out loud together, and friendly challenge. peo-ple dare to try something new.

Family Math can be taught in classrooms, thelibrary or multipurpose room of a school, in achurch fellowship hall. a public library, a sciencemuseum, a community center, or a boys or girls'clubhouse. It can be taught by teachers. teachers'aides, parents, youth workers, retired persons. orolder students. It can be taught as one sessionfor instance, one whole Saturdayor as six weeklysessions, each approximately two hours, held inthe early evening. Classes can be as large as 200 oras small as five.

Every Family Math class is different because eachinstructor chooses from a collection of more than100 active learning lessons explained and pictured

I n3

in the Family Math book (i blished by and avail-able from the Lawrence Hall of Science, Universityof California, Berkeley. CA 94720). plus theteacher's own old-favorite or newfound activities.Usually. Family Math leaders target classes to twoor three grade levels of children, for instance. K-2.3 -4.5 -6. 7-8.

An Imaginary Typical Class,Continued . . .

Back at the activity stations, Steve. the father.extends a roll of adding mach tape from Rob'sshoe sole to the top of his head and cuts off astrip. while Tim does this for himself. Then Steveholds Rob's strip against his sideways-stretchedarms and marks on the strip the length of theboy's reach. The second family arrives, and Sarah.the mother. helps Steve take hi3 own measure-ments, while Rebecca Is measured by her father.Tim copies from a sample card a chart on whichto enter his family's findings: Under the heading"Short rectangle (the tape is shorter than yourreach)." he prints Rob's name, under "Tall rectan-g'e (longer than your reach)." his father's name:and under "Perfect Square (about the samelength)," his own name. Rob sticks his arms out sothat his elbows make right angles, tramps asquare p^th in front of the table, and chants."Tim's a squarea perfect squarer"

Now families are gathering around the Venndiagram, as the rest of the class, about 15 familiesin all, arrive just before and after the 6:45 p.m.starting time. About one-third of the family groupsinclude both mother and father with one or morekids. Once signed in. families move to the activitystations, all dealing with measurement. Besides"Perfect People." there are activities about volume(involving different sized jars and plastic cups tobe filled with beans): about area and perimeter (anlci TIME magazine. a blue-and-brown poster forthe upcoming school science fair, and a crackedBarbra Streisand record, all to be covered withwhite beans or one-inch squares): and about mass(using small lumps of clay and a balance made

I

from an old foot ruler. string, paper clips, andpaper cups).

The room is buzzing with chatter. Families whofinish all the activities sit at table' nimd theroom and follow instructions on '.... ridout sheetentitled 'Value of Words." Each letter of thealphabet is assigned a monetary value, startingwith one dollar for "a" Each member of the familyis to calculate mentally. if possible. the value of hisor her name: then the family finds the sum of thevalues of all their names and looks for anotherfamily with the same name value

A little after 7:00 p.m.. Holly calls everyone to beseated around the library tables. "Let's talk aboutwhat you just did." she begins. "What kinds ofmeasurement were you doing? What activity me l-sured how long something was, or how high?'Several children raise their hands and shout atthe same time. "Perfect People."

'W,re there any activities where you found howmany beans or squares it took to cover somethinguo?" Acknowledging the children's answers, shecontinues, 'That's called area." She similariy iden-tifies the activities in volume and mass.

"When you covered the record and the posterwith the beans, we might say that you were mea-suring with nonstandard units. They work fine tohelp you compare the area of the record, which isa circle, with the area of the poster, which is arectangle." Holly manages to address both thechildren and the parents. "In school, studentslearn first to compare measurements, then how toorder measurements from small to big. and thenthey start using nonsta 'Ward units, such asstring or toothpicks, beans, or squares: and finallythey go on to metric and English standardmeasurement."

A mother asks, "Why co our kids have to learnabout the metric system? I don't use it, and Ithink it's fadirg outlike at the gas stationsbecause people don't understand it."

Holly replies, 'Yes, of course students are learn-ing both English and metric, because they'll haveto use both." She asks for examples of work in

Family Math 113

which knowing metric is required. Parents volun-teer answers of car repair, manufacturing prod-ucts for export, engineering, medicine, and sewingwith European dress patterns.

Susan takes this opportunity to pass out a hand-out from the Family Math book It defines stan-dard and metric units of measurement for length,area, capacity/volume, weight/mass, and tempera-ture. Holly calls attention to the comparisons: Ifsnot hard; just remember that a liter is a little morethan a quart a meter is a little more than a yard. Itis important for children to be familiar with bothmeasurement systems, but they probably won'thave to figure out exact conversions from one tothe other until they get to high school physics."

Concluding this five-minute overview of mea-surement, Holly next asks the gimp to report onthe activities they did at home the past weekusing handouts from the previous class. An eight-year-old girl says she taught her friends to play"Balloon Ride," a variation of a Chinese gamecalled "Nim." Toothpicks represent ropes holding ahot-air balloon to the ground. It develops intuitiveunderstanding of subtraction and logical think-ing. A boy says his whole family played "DoubleDigit" a dice game relying on chanceprob-abilityand skill in estimation, and he won. Amother says she and her kids did the volumeordering activitydiscovering which of her potsand pans hold the most water and she was theone who spilled water all over the kitchen floor.

At 7:15 Holly and Susan split the group, keepingfamilies together. Susan teaches an activity called"Create a Puzzle." As she passes out scissors andsquare pieces of cardboard, she explains that thisactivity develops understanding of the attributesof geometric shapes. Each adult or child makesthree straight cuts in his or her cardboard andthen figures out how to put the four pieces backtogether into the original shape. Then they givetheir puzzle to a partner to solve. 'The more chan-ces people get to handle real materials," Susanexplains, "the more they gradually develop the abil-ity to visualize the relationship of objects in space.


"This is a very important skillfor instance, inreading and sketching maps, giving and followingplace directions, understanding diagrams andillustrations for putting toys or furniture together.If you practice these skills at home, you willstrengthen children's confidence when they haveto tackle geometry in high school. Take a look at ageometry book Three-dimensional figures start onpage three! Unless students have visualized fig-ures in space when they're much younger, thatcan be hard. So children need lots of cutting, andputting back together. and pasting, and puttingthings on top of other things. If you've cut apartan isosceles triangle and put the pieces together tomake a rectangle, you are more likely to under-stand eventually why the formula for the area of atriangle is half of its base times its height"

On the other side of the library, Holly teaches"Two-Dimensional Nim," a game played by pairstaking turns putting their respective markers(bottle caps and beans) on a 3x6 rectangular grid.Holly explains that this is a reasoning game. "Playthis often, and you'll get better strategies forwinningand for solving all kinds of problems,"she promises. "Strategy means saying What if ...?'It means being able to experiment and take risks.If you think you have a strategy that can win allthe time, I'll play it with you if you win, IT changethe rules to make it harder."

At 7:30, the teachers put out juice and coffeethey have provided and cookies the parents havebrought. For 10 minutes adults chat, childrenplay, and some families finish measurement activ-ities they didn't do at the start of the class. Afterthe break, the two groups switch activities. Whenthey finish, the teachers separate parents andchildren, and Susan teaches the children how toplay "Balloon Ride" on the calculator. two kids to acalculator.

Holly takes the parents into ..,n alcove, where shetalks with them in detail about how tonight'sactivities fit into the school's math curriculum.One of the prime motivations for teaching FamilyMath is to counteract parents' belief that math is

110

mainly numbersarithmetic. So bit by bitthroughout the series, they explain the rationalebehind the state's new mathematics frameworkand how each topic will prepare children forhigher mathematics and science study. Sheinvites parents' questions and encourages theirexamples of things they can do at home to enrichchildren's understanding and enjoyment of math.

Most of this 15 minutes is dialogue. Some par-ents express frustration about their own poormath instruction and surprise at their new dis-covery that they can do this work without struggleor boredom. Holly reassures the parents thatchildren will learn if they fully understand under-lying concepts before they encounter new work,and if they are not made to fear failure and to hatethe drudgery of conventional drill.

Holly is trying to influence the parents whopush their kids too hard and the parents who donot help their kids at all. For instance, Steve seemsskeptical about the profundity of "Double Digit,"which he has played with Rob and Tim the pre-vious week. "I don't see them doing all this deepthinking while they're playing."

Sarah interjects, "Oh, I think they just play! Butafter a while they begin to see a pattern.""Right!", Holly adds. "All these activities aredesigned to be repeated. As they play "DoubleDigit," they are bound to develop intuition aboutprobability. Later in school, this intuition will bemade explicit to them. Everyone accepts that par-ents can develop their children's reading enjoy-ment by reading stories to them. In the same way,you can develop math literacy and enjoyment ifyou play these games and puzzles and solve every-day problems with your kids, and identify themathematics that's everywhere in your home."

The class reassembles for closing activities.Susan announces that Floranetta, a 10-year-old,has won the beans estimation with her guess of637. Floranetta gets a big hand and explains howshe came within three of the rirrt number. "Ilooked through the bottom, and I guessed therewere about 30 across there; and I turned it on the

side, and I counted 20well not axactlyabout 20going up to the top; and so I multiplied and I got600; but then I thought about the ones that werefalling through the cracks in the rows, and I justguessed, like, 637."

"Don't be afraid to guess!". Susan exhorts."That's what r stimation iscareful, informed,practiced guessing."

Holly passes out this week's homework: Find outall your friends' favorite ice cream flavor, and makea pie chart to display your results.

The final group activity is a human pie chart."Suppose there were only three flavors of icecream: vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate," Susansays, standing in the middle of the whole class.who are now on their feet. "All who love strawberryice cream stand in a nice arc here to my right."Holly helps arrange the strawberry aficionadoswhile Susan continues: "Now all the chocolate-lovers make your arc continue around the circle asfar as you reach." Finally, they assemble thevanilla-lovers in an arc, completing the circle. Hollypastes three lines of masking tape from the centerout to the circumference, making boundariesbetween the flavor arcs.

'We've made our own ice cream graph," Susansays. "Which flavor has the most people7' Thechildren shout, "Chocolate! Even if we didn'tcount, we'd be able to see that because chocolateis the biggest piece in our pie chart." Susan says,"Now can you see the I.-3y you can show what youfind out about your ice cream-loving friends? Youcan draw a graph on paper like the circle we'vemade here. A graph is a picture of the informationyou collect."

Before the class closes, Holly announces thatnext week, "role models," a carpenter and amechanical engineer, will describe how math isessential in their work and how they decided onthese careers. Holly invites the chi riren to bringtheir older brothers and sisters to the class. Hollyand Susan have recruited a woman carpenterand a black engineer to prove that white males arenot the only students who can aspire to math-

Family Math 115

based careers.As the families leave, some remain to finish the

measurement activities as Susan and Holly beginpacking their materials. They are tired at the endof a day that started earlythis class on top ofafull day's :lassroom teaching. But they have foundthat this teaching creates rather than drainsenergy.

Why Itachers Volunteer for Family MathFamily Math gives teachers the exciting oppor-

tunity to work as a team, as well as the new chal-lenge of teaching adults and children together.Family Math allows teachers to give informationdirectly to parents and to stimulate their interestin improving the math curriculum to prepare allstudents for high school math and science.

Family Math is a way to explain to parents thestate's or district's math curriculum and rationale.Through active learning and by watching theirchildren, parents become convinced that the newmethods work better than the way they weretaught.

For teachers, the classes also are a source of newlearning. Observing the interaction of childrenwith their parents gives insight into students, andthe activities give teachers ideas for improvingtheir own classroom instruction. Holly and Susancan't help but feel energized by such rapid attitudechanges and accomplishment in both childrenand adults. By giving children a comfortable andrelaxed work and communication experience withtheir parents. they contribute, at least for thepresent, to the emotional health of these children.They know that for .-)rnz, Family Math is a power-fill contrast to family L, .,meats over school-worknagging by 14. .y.rent 'sistance by thechild. "Homeworl Mfr (,t. ..ition and tears"is the way one p,Irent det,cr,r-'c' Family Math.

Interviews urtil telk %to have taught sev-eral classes of TA:1AF i'ath reveal all these as rea-sons for taltinc., iother teaching responsibility,frequently as volunteers. Some Family Mathteachers who teach classes in which their own

118 Sciena for the Fun of It

students participate cite evidence that some chil-dren's test scores improve after Family Math. Butthe program is too brief in duration (10 or 12hours at maximum) and too young in practice(six years) for teachers to expect that it will raisestudents' achievement. What Family Mathteachers are after is something more complex,subtle, and far-reaching: gaining the partnershipof parents in their children's learning.

The Family lbgether, nuking ProblemSolving

Disappointment and frustration about parentswho keep at arm's length from their children'sschooling is one of the biggest detractions in teach-ing, according to Stanford University researcherswho interviewed representative teachers abouttheir sense of satisfaction and effectiveness(Lareau, 1986). Family Math not only involves par-ents in helping their children with homework, butit also stimulates the playing, talking, and think-ing together that teachers see as indispensable inemotionally caring for children.

Family Math provides an informal setting whereteachers and parents can get to know each otherover time and where teachers can become moresensitive to parents' needs, as well as explain theschool's rules and needs. Thus Family Mathappeals not just to "star" teachers and to mathspecialists, but also to "ordinary.' teachers whowant to gain parents' participation with childrenin learning.

Still, most teachers who undertake Family Mathteaching come to it convinced that what they needfrom parents is not only enforcement of home-work assignments and reinforcement for schoolrules, but also a new spirit or ethos about mathe-matics, and more expressions of mathematics ineveryday life at home.

"I introduced to them that their home is a lab,"says Carolyn Gray, a math resource teacher in SanBruno, California She has taught several series ofclasses at her school, which she describes as anethnic rainbow. "I told them they can do math in

the kitchen, or at the beach. A favorite activity wascutting salami and fruit or vegetables. I told them,You know what shape the tomato will be whenyou cut it, but your kids don't.' Every time we weredoing an activity, I was stressing that it was open-ended and unfinished; they could go home andcontinue with it.

"Some adults don't want to do the activitiesbecause they are threatened that the kids will getthe answers before they do. They think it's a com-petition. I told them, 'I don't want the answers. Iwant to know your mindhow you get to thoseanswers.'

And ThrryJuhl, who has taught several series ofFamily Math in both rural and urban schools inthe Sacramento area, says, "The most importantthing is the family together talking math, talkingproblem solving. That is very, very valuable. Theyare both learning togetherthis is rare."

Teachers like Gray and Juhi teach math to low-income and immigrant parents, some of themnon-English-speaking. Bill Ruano, a fourth-gradeteacher, holds his classes in his school in WalnutCreek, an upper-middle-class suburb of San Fran-cisco. Ruano finds the same values in FamilyMath that Gray and Juhl speak of. He cites ascommon this comment from a single parent:"Family Math was the best quality time Wendyand I have spent together in a long time."

"In Family Math," Ruano says, "there's sharingbetween parents and kids. Children have an equalchance to share their knowledge, to win at games.That's unusual. Children are usually the little peo-ple, and parents have all the power.'

By adolescent years, the power balance maybegin to shift, and then Family Math can be valu-able in setting an example of mutual cooperationand positive communication between teenagersand their parents. Kathy McKeown, an eighth-grade coordinator at a Berkeley junior high, orga-nized a Family Math claw: in geometry, which stu-dents and their parents were motivated to takebecause of the tough course waiting for them atBerkeley High School. McKeown observed, "Family

Math bridges the gap. It opens communicationbetween parents and kids on things they ordinari-ly don't talk about."

This potential in Family Math to expand thecontent of communication as well as balance thepower within the family has implications not Justfor emotional well-being but for students' intellec-tual development as well. Children spend worri-some amounts of time in entertainment pursuitswith peers rather than in interaction with adults.(A Foundation for Child Development study foundthat women who work in the home spend anaverage 27 minutes a day in education-relatedactivitiesplaying, talking, reading, teachingwhile women who work outside the home spec Ionly 11 minutes. Fathers spend about nine min-utes a day in such activities with their children.)

"There is a very important need for interchangeand communication between generations, saysMcKeown. "Adolescents need communication withtheir parents on content instead of struggles overauthority. In Family Math you're building a differ-ent kind cf communication, allowing kids tocommunicate about the content of the world."

Organizing Family Math CoursesSo far, classroom teachers have initiated and

taught Family Math for their own students. Theyorganize the course after taking a two-dal ,work-shop in which they do a dozen or more of theactivities in the Family Math book, receive thebook as a teaching resource, and get tips on howto schedule, publicize, recruit for, program, andconduct a series of classes tailored for their owncommunity.

Teachers find they must spend considerabletime planning, but once a class is organized, it isself-guiding. Family Math teachers do very littlelecturing, which would turn off children andadults.

Workshops for Family Math leaders have beentk...aght at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley,Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Barbara, SanDiego County, Portland, Minneapolis and St. Paul,

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Family Math 117

Charlotte (North Carolina), Indianapolis, Phoenix,Nashville, Massachusetts, Vermont Idaho, andNew Jersey. The program has spread to Australia,New Zealand, Canada, Sweden, and Puerto Rico.The Family Math book is also available in Spanishand Swedish.

The program is popular with middle-class par-ents. In some suburban communities, FamilyMath becomes the thirg to do, like Little League.But reaching parents who aren't involved withtheir children's learningwho leave it to theschool and the professionalsis more difficult. Insuch communities, teachers need the assistanceof cLq-ssroom aides, bilingual teachers, PTAmembers and other parents, community liaisonworkers, counselors, and the school principal.

Increasingly, schools pay to send their teachersto Family Math workshops. Administrators valuethe program as a way to explain the enrichedmathematics curriculum to parents, improveschools public relations with parents, and aboveall, lure parents who would not otherwise respondto the schools. Some schools serving children ofimmigrant parents find Family Math is a way toexplain they are needed as teachers at home, sincemath is not dependent on parents' knowledge ofEnglish.

In some instances, community agencies may bemore effective than schools in organizing FamilyMath programs. In Indianapolis, the Urban Leagueconducts classes to train a cadre of parents whowill teach Family Math in their neighborhood.

In Phoenix, a multiservice agency for the His-panic community, Valle del Sol, sponsors classesin Spanish and English.

In Oregon, Family Math is spreading through astatewide network of American Indian educatorswho teach Indian parents to conduct classes incities and on reservations.

In Washington, D.C., the National Urban Coali-


tion trains parents to teach Family Math in blackchurches.

In San Ysidro, California, a Hispanic communityorganization called Alba sponsors Family Mathamong Spanish-speaking parents.

The NSF funds these projects.Mary Jo Cittadino, a parent from Albany, Cali-

fornia, who took Family Math to help her first-grade daughter, has become a Family Mathinstructor in her school district and at the Law-rence Hall of Science. She credits Family Mathwith "revolutionizing" her own educationmaking her "math competent."

"I'm a real proponent of the Family Math styleactive learning," Cittadino says. "It gives you wil-lingness to 'take' risks. The consequences aren'tthat terrible. You learn from your mistakes. Often,mistakes are more important than getting theright answer. This carries over into other aspectsof life.

"I've learned I'm capable. I knew I was quick tounderstand certain things, but where I excelledwas where I put my time. Now I know that every-body can do math; we just do it at different paces.I've learned there are steps to doing thingsmathematical that can be learned, that don't haveto be intuitive. If we are trained, we can developunderstanding and feeling. Math is a whole newway of perceiving the world. Nobody should be cutoff from it."

ReferencesKreinberg, Nancy, & Thompson, Virginia (1986).

1983-1986 Report of Activities to the Fund forthe Improvement of Post-Secondary Education.Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

Lareau, Annette. (1986). Perspectives on parents:A view from the classroom. Stanford, CA:School of Education Policy Institute, StanfordUniversity.

I

Helpful HintsLet your children know that you believe theycan succeed. Let them see you enjoying theactivities. liking mathematics. Children tend toemulate their parents, and if a parent says. "Youknow, this is really interesting." that becomesthe child's model.

Be ready to talk with your children about mathand to listen to what they are saying. Even whenyou yourself don't know how to solve a problem.asking a child to explain the meaning of eachpart of the problem will probably be enough tofind a strategy.

Be more concerned with the processes of doingmathematics than with getting a correctanswer. The answer to any particular problemhas very little importance, but knowing how tofind the answer is a lifetime skill.

Try not to tell children how to solve the prob-lem. Once they have been told how to do it,thinking usi lolly stops. It's better to ask themquestions about the problem and help themfind their own methods of working it through.

Practice estimation with your children when-ever possible. Estimation helps the thinkingabout a problem that precedes the doing, and isone of the most useful and "sense-making" toolsavailable.

Provide a special place for study, allowing yourchild to help you gear the study environment tohis or her learning style. Some kids really dowork better sprawled on the floor or bed, or witha musical background. There are no hard andfast rules.

Encourage group study. Open your home toinformal study groups. Promote outside formal

study groups related perhaps to scouts, church.or school organizations. This will be especiallyimportant as your children grow older.

Don't expect that all homework will be easy foryour child or be disappointed that it seems diffi-cult. Never indicate that you feel your child isstupid. This may sound silly, but sometimes lov-ing, caring parents unintentionally give theirkids the most negative messages: for example,"Even your little sister Stephanie can do that,""Hurry up, can't you see that the answer isten?". "Don't worry, math was hard for me tooand besides, you'll never use it! ", or "How comeyou got a B in math when you could get A's ineverything else?"

Find positive ways to support your child'steacher and school. Join the parent group. Offerto help find materials or role models. Accom-pany field trips. Avoid making negative com-ments about the teacher or the school in frontof your childyour child needs to maintain agood feeling about the school.

Try not to drill your child on math content orcreate hostilities by insisting that math work bedone at any one specific time or in a specificway. Don't use math work as a punishment.Parents and adolescents have enough thingsthat may create friction without adding math tothe list.

Model persistence and pleasure with mathe-matics. Include enrichment, recreational mathin your family routine. Try to introduce mathideas (with a light touch!) at the dinner table, orwhile traveling, even to the grocery store.

Helpful Hints reprinted by permission of Lawrence Hall ofSciencefrom Family Math by J. IC Stenmark. V. Thompson.and R Cossey.

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Family Math 119

Fun with Sciencein Your CommunityPhyllis KatzThe Hands-On-Science ProgramRockville, Maryland

"Making time for ..." has become an importantpart of modern life. Today, we schedule time forexercise, time to be with our children, or a fewmoments of peaceful solitude. Not so long ago, wedidn't have to "make time" to tone our muscleswith special equipment and gym memberships.Normal activities were inherently physical. Walk-ing, planting, gathering, chopping wood, andbuilding and repairing a place to live (or moving toanother) not only kept our bodies in shape, but


our senses sharp. We performed daily experimentsupon which our survival depended. We tried drag-ging or pushing. We tried raw and cooked. Wetried stones and clay and metal. Children taggedalong, practicing skills as we made our waythrough history, until now. We live in an environ-ment of such complex specializations that wemust "make time" to use our bodies to keep Clemhealthy, word process to communicate, and foodprocess and microwave to cook. We "make time" to

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give our children attention because often theycan't tag along. We send our children to school toteach them how to solve problems. In many ways,our activities lack survival value. How much doesthe child know about seeds, weather, and soilwhen he or she opens a package of frozen vegeta-bles? As we make time for exercising our bodies,we need to make time for exercising our minds.

The Need for Problem SolvingProblem solving is course work for our children.

Say "experiment" and visions of test tubes, datasheets, and laboratory settings come to mind.School is work for our children. They see it thatway. They are given goals, progress reports, andsystems of accountability by which they are testedand compared to themselves, their neighbors, andtheir national counterparts. Children divide schooland play as adults divide work and playsharply.Without question, they need discipline andresponsibility, but unfortunately, children equatepleasure with play, not pleasure with work.

The Importance of Play"Let's play," the kids shout We've heard it so

many times that often we dor : think about itsmeaning. What are we saying when we invite play?Maybe it's the challenge of strategy on a chess-board. It could be the physical competition ofbaseball, hockey, or volleyball. It might be buildinga sand castle, or painting, or coloring with crayonson paper. Perhaps it's an invitation to share a pre-tend world where one sets the stage, picks thecharacters, and controls all the action. Whateverthe choice, play involves some planning, coordina-tion, trial and error, materials manipulation, peerdiscussion, evaluation, and retrial. Play is self-initiated. It is fun because it's voluntary andterminated when the pleasure principle isn't work-ing. It is an early and lasting form of informalscience education, if you choose to look at it thatway. Things happen differently on blacktop thanon concrete. Some balls are prized for theirbounce. Our formal education is a few short.

intensive years but informal education goes on forthe rest of our lives, in our hobbies, sports, andwork.

If we combine our need to "make time" for playwith time for informal science education, we needto plan and find a place to make it happen. TheHands-On-Science Afterschool Enrichment Pro-gram was born from these needs.

The Hands-On-Science Outreach Program is achoice for the nonschool hours of children andtheir families. We often say that Hands-On-Scienceclasses are to school science what piano lessonsare to the music curriculuman opportunity todo more for those who want it Local agencies andindividual PTAs find financial support for thosefamilies who need it We have a cycle of activitiesso children can, if they want to, participate fromthe time they are four years old until they finishsixth grade, without repeating. Or they can, anddo, float in and out of the series when particulartopics stimulate their interest

The Beginnings of Hands-On ScienceMontgomery County, Maryland, while perhaps

not unique, is unusual. Just north of the nation'scapital, its well-educated population demands andsupports a large, high-quality, countywide schoolsystem of more than 100 elementary schools. Inaddition to the individual Parent-Teachers Asso-ciations (PTA) that support each school, the PTAoperates on a county level, where it powerfully lob-bies the county for education tax dollars andcommunicates with the Board of Education andthe school administration. In the 1970s, whenbudget cuts forced foreign language out of elemen-tary schools, the Montgomery County Council ofPTAs created Educational Programs, Inc., a non-profit educational corporation, to pay a directorand teachers to offer foreign language before orafter school as a fee-based option. When "recre-ational science" was introduced, therefore, amechanism was in place to accommodate it.

The Hands-On-Science (HOS) afterschoolenrichment classes run in three (fall, winter, and

1 1 7Fun with Science 121

spring) eight-week sessions each year. There arefour age/grade levels (Pre-K. K-1, 2-3, 4-6) thatmeet once a week for an hour and are limited to10 or 11 children.

For more than three years, the Hands-On-Science Program grew rapidly, mostly by word-of-mouth, parent- to-parent. The metropolitanWashington area is somewhat transient. Peoplemove in and out according to the political climate,government contracts, or military assignments.Before long, people were asking to take HOS withthem to their new locations. In 1984, Hands-On-Science Outreach, Inc. (HOSO), was formed asanother nonprofit company to provide HOSclasses outside of Montgomery County. In 1985,the National Science Foundation awarded a grantto pilot the HOS Program in selected communitiesacross the country.

Mixing Play with Problem SolvingThe Hands-On-Science Program makes time for

play. Playing pieces or tools are selected and orga-nized by themes to give children experience withthe phenomena or the processes we call science.The themes help children group their experiences,see the trends, and draw conclusions to formexperiential theories. The titles are playful andenticing. "The Toymaker" is a series on simplemachines for second- and third-graders. Childrenmake simple toys to understand the function ofinclined planes, wedges, wheels, and axles. Thechildren get materials and guidance but theyaren't graded on the quality or frequency of theirresponses. They are free to "play" with thematerialsto see what happens if they add coldwater instead of warm water to a yeast mixture, orto watch how the movement of a paper clip affectsthe stability of a paper airplane flight. They areencouraged to cooperate, not necessarily to distin-guish themselves as individuals All programmaterials go home with children so that experi-ments and activities can be repeated or explainedto family or friends.

The HOS activities are chosen for their age-


appropriate skill and content level, as well as theirsafety and simplicity. To keep HOS classes withinthe reach of most children, the costs are kept low,and this means shoestring science. We use lots ofpaper plates. cups, glue, plastic mirrors andthermometers, disposable measuring cups, rocksamples, flip disks, whirligigs, and kite string andshoestring. While some push-button, computer-oriented children have been disappointed at first.they usually become actively curious when theyare challenged to do such things as mix a propor-tion of glue, glitter, and water so it will flow tomake designs on a paper cone pendulum.

The acceptance and positive use of what doesn'twork is another important lesson in HOS. Failure,in its experimental sense, is the elimination of onepathway to a goal. It is a positive action. "Good, weknow this won't work, so we have to try anotherway." A little frustration can go a long way toencourage ingenuity. HOS teacher trainingemphasizes positive attitudes and good self-images. The HOS experiments and activities canbe familiar activities approached from new angles.They can resemble arts and crafts, music, gameplaying, or storytelling. We look for experiences towhich science can be applied. We seek to keep thatsense of wonder in children that is so often elimi-nated in their quest to please adults. The childrenexplore rather than seek to memorize in after-school, informal science.

The ItachersHands-On-Science teachers are mentors more

than they are formal teachers. They are notexperts, but leaders who present situations andmaintain enough order for safety and a good useof time. The typical HOS teacher is a former ele-mentary school teacher, but HOS teachers can beretired people, graduate students, freelancers,artists, gymnasts, engineers, writerseven formeror present scientists. They have in common asense of fun, energy, genuine interest, and plea-sure in the way children grow and think. Whilesome very energetic fulltime teachers work with

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the HOS Program, it is a general policy that theydon't. Regular classroom teachers present a con-flict: They work all day teaching already; they dressmore formally than we like HOS teachers to dress;and most importantly, the children in theirschools see them as formal educators. Most chil-dren would rather not participate than appearunknowledgeable to the teachers who grade them.So the HOS teacher is drawn from the greatercommunity, a parent or other adult who isn't a full-time teacher.

HOS teachers attend a training program thathas been refined over the years to meet the spe-cific needs of afterschool, informal science. Theylearn to stimulate tired children, use behaviormanagement techniques that keep the childrenproductively busy but unregimented, answerquestions with questions, and insist that thechildren exercise their brains. They learn to feelcomfortable saying 1 don't know." This is a veryimportant part of the role modeling that an HOSteacher does. The courage to say "I don't know,"followed by "Let's find out," or "How could we goabout finding out?" is crucial to discovery. What isthere to discover if you know it all, or think youshould?

Because HOS classes are midday and employ-ment is at most a few hours a week, most HOSteachers are women. This means that children seewomen model an interest in science. Women bringthe children their science materials. Women helpthem set up their experiments. And women havefun doing these things. Since, for so many years,the image of a scientist has been a man in alaboratory coat, this association of women withscience is welcome.

The presence of the HOS Program raises thescience consciousness of a community. From theparent volunteer who coordinates the informationand registration at her school, to the people whoteach, and to the school administration andfaculty who encourage the use of their facilities,the HOS Program involves a number of adult par-ticipants as well as children.

Kit MaterialsBefore undertaking the massive project of kit

production. we had teachers purchase their ownsupplies, but it was time-consuming and inconve-nient and therefore didn't always get done. For awhile, we stuffed material into donated groceryand liquor boxes. These were somewhat out ofplace in schools where alcohol consumption isforbidden! As the program demand grew, weneeded greater reliability and cost-effectiveness. Atone point, we standardized the boxes and fedchildren pizza dinners if they helped pack the kit.Today, the materials are packaged professionallyin neat, uniform boxes by a sheltered workshop.

Inside is a list of what the HOS teacher needseach week. The materials are fun, safe, and for themost part, easiiy found, so children can repeat theactivities that interest them. Some teachers bringthe entire box each week. Some store them athome or at their teaching sites and pull only whatthe week's activities require. It's their choice.

We have been asked to supply the curriculum.the kits, or the training separately, but we don't.They are fully integrated and one doesn't workwithout the others. Together, they work well.

The PlaceHands-On-Science classes, sponsored by the

parents in a school, usually take place at a child'shome school. Public or private, the school buildingis already a familiar gathering place for the chil-dren, parents' groups, and community leaders.Many jurisdictions have established "CommunitySchool" programs for better use of the buildings.They have policies and personnel to deal easilywith nonschool system users. A school building,during nonschool hours, is a good place forHands-On-Science activities. But libraries,churches, synagogues, YMCAs and YWCAs, muse-ums, and nature centers have also been host sites.They too are interested in providing safe locationsand good activities for children. Depending on thegeography, demography, and politics of the com-munity, any of these places will work.

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Fun with Science 123

Family Science FestivalOnce HOS classes are in full swing and their

presence stimulates interest people want to findmore ways to do informal stience. We have devel-oped summer programs and a Family ScienceFestival to meet these demands. The summer pro-grams are offered in two-week sessions for morn-ings, afternoons, or both. They present moreextensive explorations than are possible in anhour a week and use more space and somewhatdifferent equipment. The Family Science Festivalis an event.

We stage our Family Science Festival once a yearon a winter Sunday afternoon so we can includefamilies who have transportation or schedulingproblems during the week. It is a simple happen-ing, where we find a big, open spacethe gymna-sium of a community center, in our caseandgroup tables and lay out materials and self-guideddirections. We charge an entry fee for the children.To discourage dropouts and encourage familytogetherness for these science activities, parentsget in free At one end, we set up a flight runwayfor making and testing paper airplanes. We have aseries of brain teasers in pencil boxes. There arephysical activities, simple chemistry tests, and allsorts of other things to do. We use a separate roomfor younger children who experiment withmagnets, do dinosaur shape rubbings, and rollobjects down different inclined planes. Each yearwe add different activities to the festival for varietyfor returning participants. We have published amanual, Putting Together a Family Science Festi-val, for others to duplicate this type of event (Themanual is available from NSTA for $8. Write toNSTA Special Publications, 1742 Connecticut Ave.NW, Washington, DC 20009.) We'd like to see itused, perhaps, at local schools as a fundraisingactivity in place of, or in addition to, say, a spaghet-ti dinner. It's as much fun as a school carnival,


requires less out-of-pocket cash for an organiza-tion, and can demonstrate the pleasure in con-tinued, informal science.

Parents and SchoolsA PartnershipAll in all, the Hands-On-Science Program makes

more time for science education. It brings parentsand school systems closer together as a partner-ship in education. We have been told that childrenwho take HOS classes ask more and better ques-tions in their formal science classes, and teachersenjoy their increased interest. As parents becomemore involved through HOS, they feel more com-fortable in the school and often volunteer to helpthe regular classroom teacher and support theinschool science program.

Hands-On-Science afterschool classes "maketime" for children to find workable solutions with-out pressure and with pleasure. We each balanceour lives differently between work and playthosethings we must do and those things we choose todo. The more the former overlaps with the latter,the more harmonious our lives, the happier weare. The HOS Program aims at the pleasure ofproblem solving, the joys of discovery, the positiveself-image and confidence derived from a thought-ful approach to trial and error. Here, in smallgroups, and with adults who share and modelscience for fun, children (and those adults) settime aside to play with science. Perhaps they willbecome tomorrow's scientists. Perhaps morewomen and minorities will feel more comfortablewith pursuing science careers. Maybe children willchoose scientific jobs, even if they can't be thegeniuses of their professions. Perhaps HOS stu-dents will just be more inventive, flexible individu-als because they have been exposed to more adultswho can say shamelessly, "I don't know. Let's findout." or "I hadn't thought of doing it that way.Let's show it to the others."

Helpful HintsThere is strength in numbers. Form a coalitionof schools and parents' organizations to worktogether. Your community may already haveuseful networks. Use them.

Check out the possibilities for facilities. Somecommunities are flexible and others are rigid.Some charge fees, and some don't.

Check out insurance coverage. Schools carryliability insurance, but school users should alsocarry insurance. This is an expensive, butnecessary, part of any program and should notbe overlooked.

Make long-range plans. Once you have sparkedthe interest in your community, you will want tobe able to feed it. What are your community'sresources?

Prepare a realistic budget. Will you use volun-teers, older students, or teachers for your lead-ers? Is there a local pay scale established by thecommunity schools or unions? What will it take

to prepare and distribute the class materials?

Consider safety carefully in the preparation ofyour activities. Not all informal science activitiesfound in the best books are appropriate togroups of children exploring with nonspecialists.

Become aware of existing resources in yourcommunity. Stay in touch with your local col-leges and universities. Even if they are not cur-rently administering an informal scienceprogram, they are in the pipeline to receiveinformation on successful programs. Checkwith museums. They are, by their nature, insti-tutions of informal learning. Some already doand many could provide the training necessaryto do neighborhood informal science educationtraining on a regular basis.

Hands-On-Science Outreach classes are operat-ing in 21 sites in the United States. For moreinformation, contact the Hands-On-Science Pro-gram, 4910 Macon Rd.; Rockville, MD 20852:(301) 881-1142.

I PiFun with Science 125

State Academies of Science:A Partnership with Programsfor the GiftedLynn W. GlassIowa Junior Academy of Scienceill Oss Iowa State UniversityAmes, Iowa

Intellectual activity anywhere is the same,whether at the frontier of knowledge or inthe third-grade classroom. What a scientistdoes at his desk or in his laboratory, what aliterary critic does in reading a poem, are ofthe same order as what anybody else doeswhen he is engaged in like activitiesif he isto achieve understanding. The difference isin degree, not in kind. The schoolboy learn-ing physics ts a physicist, and it is easier for


him to learn physics behaving like a physicist than doing something else (Bruner,1963).

This quote from Jerome S. Bruner characterizesmore than a half-century of activity by theNational Association of Academies of Science(NAAS). In a letter to the membership in 1928,Howard Enders, secretary of the Academy Con-ference, the forerunner of the NAAS, said, 'The

12

future of our scientific ' ulture depends largely onfinding promising young people and helping them.Is it possible for affiliated academies to Mice upthis question, and how may the Academy Confer-ence be useful in this connection?' By 1929, thejunior academy of science movement was becom-ing the major thrust of many state academies ofscience. By 1930, state academies in Alabama. Illi-nois, Indiana, Iowa. Kansas. Pennsylvania. Texas,and West Virginia had adopted the junioracademy movement. From these early efforts, stateacademies of science have become essential part-ners of school programs for gifted science students.

The primary purpose of the early junioracademy movement was to create and to cultivatean interest in scientific work among high schoolstudent& These early founders recognized thatmany students would not have an opportunity togo to college and that the junior academy should,therefore, teach students the scientific ideal ofseeking truth (Bilsing, 1934). In addition, the jun-ior academies were a way to discover and tode 'op students who had the potential to becomeft leaders in science. Early handbooksrecommended close cooperation between stateacademy scientists and junior academy membersto help junior members conduct and fund theirresearch. The handbooks encouraged cooperationfurther by recommending that junior academyprograms be an important part of the annualmeeting of their state academy of science.

Junior Academies TbdayToday, NAAS promotes the cony n aims of thevarious state academies and the American Associ-ation for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). TheNAAS represents over 90 percent of the more than50 science academies in the United States andhas a combined membership of nearly 35,000.Since 1962. one of the major activities of thisorganization has been supporting and sponsoringthe American Junior Academy of Science (AJAS),the modern-day descendant of the ear:, junioracademy efforts.

Although present-day junior academies areorganized diversely, a unity of purpose existstoprovide enriching scientific experiences for allyouth, to identify students who Ire academicallytalented in science, to develop scientific talent, andto allow students to present results of their scien-tific endeavors in an atmosphere that closelyresembles what is available to senior scientists(Baker, 1970). These purposes have remained rela-tively unchanged for more than half a century.

In perhaps the pinnacle of junior academy activi-ties, high school students present research papersat the AJAS annual meeting (held concurrentlywith the AAAS annual meeting). Junior academyyouth from throughout the nation share theirscientific talent by displaying poster papers andpresenting oral scientific reports. In recent years.the male-to-female ratio of students presentingpapers has been 5 to 4, a fact indicating strongparticipation by scientifically gifted young women.Paper titles at a recent meeting include Isomeriza-tion of Phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase (PEPC),The Study of the Phagocytosis of Ureaplasmaurealyticum by Neutrophilic White Blood Cells,Microbial Decomposition of Organic Residue inSoils, C-V Measurements of Gallium Oxide and Sil-icon Dioxide on Gallium Arsenide Wafers, and AStudy of the Effects of Noise Upon the Concentra-tion of Adolescents. The titles, as well as the pre-sentations, reflect serious thought and effort pt,into these research efforts. No formal judging ofposters of papers takes place at this meeting.

Particiiiation in the AJAS/AAAS annual meetingis not all ,,:ork. Youth are encouraged to attendscientific presentations by AAAS members. Eachyear during this meeting, the AAAS conducts aone-day Youth Symposium in which junioracademy youth and leading scientists participatein large and small group sessions. Besides scien-tific activities, each meeting features tours of areascientific laboratories, museums, or other pointsof local interest. Time to share experiences is oneof the most important aspects. Meeting people atthe Youth Symp is a valuable part of the

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State Academies of Science 127

maturing process for these young scientists.At the grass roots level, state and local science

academies foster scientific research by precollegeyouth. Most state academies have created regionaldistricts to enhance service and to create a greateridentity with academy members. District directorsare usually high school teachers who are membersof the state science academy and who have suc-cessfully initiated and supported research done byhigh school students.

A broad program of activities provides enrichingscientific experiences for all junior academymembers. Teachers, science dub leaders, and jun-ior academy directors take leadership trainingsessions. "How To" workshops for youth includeselecting a research project, finding a suitableplace to conduct research, locating helpfulresearch scientists, and organizing and presentingresearch results. Many state academies maintain aroster of capable and interested scientists whogive their time freely to encourage and help youthinterested in exploring scientific phenomena

Good communication among school personnel,scientists, and students is essential to establishand maintain excellent programs for gifted sciencestudents. State academy newsletters are forumsfor sharing ideas for research projects, an-nouncing meeting dates, and communicatingwith junior and senior academy members withsimilar interests. Many state junior academiespublish abstracts of completed student researchprojects, an important outlet for highly creativetalents. The need for self-motivated continuingeducationinformal rlucationis made clear tostudents who watch the process through the jun-ior academies.

Most junior academies have an annual meeting,usually in conjunction with the senior academy ofscience, to present student research and to con-duct academy business. Senior scientists performan important service by evaluating presentedresearch. Usually, outstanding students from thestate meeting are invited to attend the AmericanJunior Academy of Science meeting, often with full


financial support from the sponsoring stateacademy.

Most state academies have sources of money forencouraging and supporting student research.Since 1961 the AAAS has operated a programof competitive grants (AAAS Student ResearchGrants) to stimulate and improve science researchby high school students. This program is adminis-tered through state junior academies. Active jun-ior academies enjoy support from a variety ofsources, including electric and gas utilities, com-munication firms, manufacturers, high-technologyfirms, foundations, civic and service clubs, andindividuals. These funds usually are distributedon a competitive basis as either "startup" grantsfor beginning students or "continuation" grantsfor advanced students. The awards range from$25 to $200 and can be used for expendablematerials or equipment that schools do not nor-mally have.

Each state gives students awards for completingresearch projects successfully. Some states divideawards into categories by grade level or subject.Awards are usually plaques, trophies, medallions,certificates, university scholarships, or trips toscientific meetings, including the AJAS annualmeeting or the International Science and Engi-neering Fair. Banquets presided over by a gover-nor or scientist are a popular form of recognitionin some states. The AAAS recognizes studentresearch achievement by giving honorary highschool student memberships; some state acade-mies also provide honorary memberships.

Without the hard work of countless teachers,many of these research programs would not suc-ceed. Many state academies have begun to recog-nize and honor teachers in the same way that theyrecognize students: with scholarships, trips tonational meetings, recognition banquets, andcertificates.

Renzulli's Enrichment Triad ModelWhat the junior academies of science try to

accomplish is consistent with most models for

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working with talented students, who are above thenorm in intellectual ability, specific academic apti-tude, creative or productive thinking, leadershipskills, visual and performing arts, or psychomotorskills. Researchers estimate that three to five per-cent of all school-age children fit this definition(Thomas, 1976).

Because these students have high capabilities,educational programs need to be fluid anddynamic Teachers must serve as facilitatorsrather than as directors of learning by providingnew learning opportunities that challenge thestudents. Joseph Renzulli developed the Enrich-ment Triad Model, a theoretical model for talentedand gifted students that is the basis for junioracademy programs and many school-basedprograms.

The rationale behind the Enrichment TriadModel is Renzulli's characterization of giftednessand the ways eminent persons create productsuseful to society. He believes that creativity andthe effort students put into a project, not just highIQs, should be the criteria for admitting studentsinto special enrichment programs. Advancedcourse work may not be sufficient or appropriateif it is intended for all children. For example, astudent could be advanced two grade levelsbecause he or she is gifted. The course work forthis new grade placement may not be appropriatebecause it has not been designed specifically forgifted youth.

According to Renzulli, with some advancedcourse work everyone marches to the beat of thesame drummer, albeit at different rates. Further-more, Renzulli believes learning should result fromactual inquiry, and students need to work in thesame ways as professionals in specific fields(1977). The only difference between a student'sand a professional's work is in degree, not in kind(Bruner, 1963).

Tht Enrichment Triad Model consists of threeactivity types that provide a unique opportunityfor schools and junior academies to work togetherto educate the talented and gifted. Type I activities

involve students with people, interests, andavenues outside the normal curricula. These activi-ties include listening to guest speakers; takingfield trips; participating in special assemblies; orwatching films, videotapes, or television programs.Very little structure exists in these activities; theyare designed to give students a bona fide idea ofwhat an independent research project mightinclude. Students explore activities purposefully,and after a given time period each studentanalyzes his or her own experiences and comes upwith alternative suggestions for further study.Elementary and secondary teachers arrange theseactivities, often in cooperation with local or stateacademies of science, to help students becomeaware of the scientific world. Teachers can usetype I activities for all children, such as to begin anew science unit or to suggest science fair or clubprojects.

Type II activities develop high-level thinkingprocesses. Materials, methods, and instructionaltechniques used in these activities improve thestudent's creativity and problem-solving, decision-making, or thinking skills. During this phase, tal-ented and gifted students meet with the resourceteacher at least once a week to learn how to usethe computer, gather and sort local rocks andminerals, conduct an interview, organize andinterpret data, or design an experiment. BenjaminBloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives(1956) and J. Paul Guilford's Structure of the Intel-lect Model in The Nature of Human Intelligence(1967) are helpful aids for preparing these activi-ties. Workshops sponsored by local or state scienceacademies can help teachers focus on skillsneeded to conduct scientific investigations. Someteachers use science academy resource personlists to help them with type II enrich mentactivities.

In type III activities, which are a marriage of typeI and type II activities, each talented and giftedstudent conducts an individual interest project.The student actually investigates a real problem byusing appropriate methods of inquiry. Examples


of type III activities indude topics (on areas suchas human medicine and behavior, astronomy,physics, biology, and chemistry) presented at AJASmeetings. The examples I listed previously showthat type III students become experts in their fieldand develop creative products worthy of sharingwith interested audiences. When students func-tion on the cutting edge of science, teachers canlighten the load by helping to identify resources,but cannot direct learning. At this stage, teachersmust seek help outside the classroom; most stateacademies are capable and willing to provide thiskind of help. Many successful, school-basedtalented and gifted programs rely upon partner-ships with state science academies, businesses,and industries to accomplish their objectives.Through these shared partnerships, schools canreceive advice from academic and industrialscientists, use laboratory facilities, or borrowexpensive or unusual equipment and materials(Glass, 1983).

Most students, when asked what they did withtheir completed research project, say, "I pt.. '4 inmy folder and waited for the teacher to grade it."But as a final activity in the Enrichment TriadModel, students demonstrate their newly acquiredprofessional skills by communicating the resultsof their research project& Students learn toinform, entertain, or influence a relatively specificaudience, just as composers write symphonies forlovers of classical music; consumer advocatescarry out research to bring about legislation; andscientists communicate their findings to others.In Renzulli's word&

It seems nnthing short of criminal negligenceto do everything in our power to encourage

youngsters to develop the highest levels ofcreative thinking, and then overlook the stepwhich is a natural consequence of real-worldproductivitycommunication of results toappropriate audiences (1977).

It is our responsibility as teachers to find realaudiences for students to communicate their find-ings. Local and state junior science academies, inconcert with the AJAS, provide a real-world forumfor students to develop the highest levels of cre-ative thinking and to share their research results.

ReferencesBaker, C.L. (1970). Academy conference 1926-

1970. Columbus, OH: National Association ofAcademies of Science.

Bfising, S.W. (1934). Science dubs in relation tostate academies of science. Science Education,18, 162-167.

Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of educationalobjectives: Handbook I cognitive domain. Isle::York: David McKay.

Bruner, J.S. (1963). The process of education. NewYork: Vintage Books.

Glass, LW. (1983). Business and industrial sup-port of high school science education. SchoolScience and Mathematics, 83, 91 -95.

Guilford, J.P. (1967). The nature of human intelli-gence. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Renzulli, J.S. (1977). The enrichment triad model:A guide for developing defensible programs forthe gifted and talented Mansfield Center, CT:Creative Learning Press.

Thomas, D. (1976). Gifted and talented children:The neglected minority.1VASSP Bulletin, 60,21-24.

Helpful HintsContact your local junior academy of sciencedirector. Request he name of your director fromLynn E. Either, Archivist, National Association ofAcademies of Science, 445 King Ave., Columbus,


OH 43201, or R Dean Decker, Director, Ameri-can Junior Academy of Science, BiologyDepartment, University of Richmond, Rich-mond, VA 23173.

Request a copy of your local junior academyhandbook These handbooks contain rules forlocal junior academy activities, guidelines forresearch grant applications, and dates for stu-dent and teacher workshops and meetings.

Request lists of active students and teachersnear your school. Active students and teachersare contagious. Their enthusiasm spreads toothers.

Participate in meetings and workshops run by

your local science academy or junior academy. Ifyou do not have an active local or state junioracademy of science, take the initiative and startone. After all. active junior academies existbecause teachers like yourself saw the need forthem and invested the energy necessary tocreate an organization that helps others.

Encourage students to develop scientific talentby collaborating with scientists in yourgeographical region to initiate, conduct, andreport independent scientific research.


Wollasi mo/

ibys, Books, andOther Science GiftsE. Wendy SaulUniversity of MarylandCatonsville, Maryland

Mrs. B.'s fourth-grade class had spent the lastseveral weeks working on a model of the "village ofthe future." The teacher was impressed with theproject and wanted to contribute to her students'efforts. She had an idea for a "g,ift"batteries.Mr.!, small light bulbs, and directions for complet-ing a circuit. The children wired the houses, thehospital, and the airport, and were apparently asthrilled by the gift of light as any resident whofirst saw the crews of the Tennessee Valley Author,


ity making their way down the road.Every year countless newspaper articles and tele-

vision commentators bemoan the sony presentswe provide for future citizens. In few instances.however, do they suggest alternatives to purchas-ing the latest gizmos weaponry for laser tag ordolls who repeat kindly messages directed at noone.

Teachers, parents, librarians, scout leaders, andmuseum personnel all search for gifts that not

1'-id C.)

only please the child, but stir the imagination.Excellent science gifts are available, but simplybuying the gift does not ensure that it will fulfillits purpose. One must find the right gift for theright child at the right time, and then introduce itwith care, curiosity, and concern. What an adultsays about or does with a gift is as important asthe gift itself.

What is a "science toy?" I use the term to meanany item that helps in the playful (though perhapssystematic) observation and classification of thenatural world. Science toys are more than chemis-try sets and toy microscopes. I include bird feed-ers. balances, protractors, magnifiers. buildingsets, flower presses, and, of course. books.

Matching the Gift to the ChildScience toys and books are not just for children

already interested in science. The good scienceshopper finds items that help children see theconnection between their interests and scientificknowledge and processes. For Judy, who likes artand beautiful things, a perfume - making kit maybe just the thing. If Judy especially likes the odorsextracted from lavender or chamomile, she mighteven plant a small garden. From there, the carefulgift -gig er might move on to a book about wildflow-ers and herbs. Working with greenhouse plants isdifferent from working with outdoor plants. Hereagain, tools and books become necessary items forengaging in science play.

Aaron, on the other hand, may not show suchkeen enthusiasm for plants, or on the surface, foranything else. Though his classwork comes easily,Aaron is unhappyhe has nothing "interesting"to do with his free time. But when his school prin-cipal invites members of the American Radio RelayLeague (ham radio operators) to speak at a schoolassembly, Aaron is fascinated. He writes for moreinformation ond becomes an active member of agroup that appreciates and uses his abilities.

The point here is that finding the right item forthe right child at the right time involves morethan reading a box that claims "Fun for All" or

"Recommended for Ages 10 and above." One mustknow the children and their individual interests;one also must understand, to some extent, theskills and dispositions that various sciences, orscience items. require. For instance, wildlife watch-ing requires patience; the observer has little con-trol over what happen% In addition, finding goodplaces to sit and watch, and coming up with alter-native explanations of why a certain insect seemsto be attracted to particular flowers, or theorizingwhere it will alight next takes a speculative crea-tivity. An electronics set, in contrast, requires a dif-ferent kind of attention. This gift is best for thechild who enjoys following directions. Mastery isevidenteither the constructed item works or itdoesn't Feedback is immediate and satisfying.

Don't Shoot for the StarsYetIn working with science toys and books, one

point is dear. Although there are some "bad"materialsthey don't work or are dangerousworth is largely determined by what the childbrings to the experience. Suppose Jamie, who hasshown no previous interest in astronomy,requests a telescope. If Jamie really wants to studyastronomy, however, a book on naked-eye astron-omy, a star chart, and a pair of wide-angle binocu-lars will serve her purpose better. Not only canbinoculars produce excellent views of the moon,but they can also be used for birdwatching or atrip to the ballet. People who buy telescopes areoften frustrated to find that although the moonand some planets make good targets, starsthrough a telescope usually look like stars withouta telescope, only brighter. The fascination ofastronomy comes in finding one's way around theheavens, observing changes over a period of time,and relating what one knows about an object tothat speck in the night sky.

The rule of thumb is not to inflate a child'sexpectations unrealistically. Chemistry sets, forinstance, no longer allow the user to make mini-explosions or stick bombs. (The old Gilbert Chem-istry Cupboard of your youth is no longer availa-

I 23

lbys, Books, and Other Science Gifts 133

ble!) On the other hand, some sets challenge thechild to understand that chemistry involves vary-ing conditions in order to produce specificchange& Some children find pleasure in seeingthat changes are not magic, but predictable andreplicable.

The manufacturers of science products are atleast partially to blame fcr the "failure" of scienceplay. Store-bought microscopes, like telescopes,build on the misconception that increased powermeans increased optical clarity. Unsuspectingconsumers set up their 1200X device, for whichthey have paid twice the price ofa comparable300X microscope, and are disappointed to findan image blown up beyond recognition and sodark that no detail is evident Only the preparedslides from the manufacturer can be viewedreliably. Children eager to study salt crystals,dirty fingernails, pond water, and dandruffaretold, in effect, that their interests aren't the stuffof which science is made. Young children domuch better with a hand magnifier or an illumi-nated pocketscope.

Books, on the other hand, are ccnstantlyreviewed and evaluated, and thus standardsappear to be less of a problem. Except for the legalaspects of safety. little is made of a given toy's poorinstructions or shoddily constructed parts. Therecently published Science Fare: An IllustratedGuide & Catalog of Toys, Books and ActivitiesforKids (Saul, 1986) is one of only a few publications(along with Consumer Reports) to take toy review-ing seriously.

Choosing a BookI count books among the list of science toys for

three reasons. First, a number of books, such asJim Arnosky's extraordinary Secrets ofa WildlifeWatcher (1983), or Grace Marnor Spruch's SuchAgreeable Friends: Life with a RemarkableGroup of Urban Squirrels (1984) are every bit ashelpful in observing as a pair of the best binocu-lars. Field guides are also indispensable aids forthe would-be naturalist


Second, books often provide directions for creat-ing toys. For example, Mollie Rights' lively textBeastly Neighbors: All About Wild Things in theCity (1981) gives directions for constructing a bet-ter terrarium than those commercially available.Similarly, Vicki Cobbs' Chemically Active (1936)functions as an excellent chemistry set for thosewho engage in the suggested experiments withreadily I- ailable materials

And third, books provide the reader with amodel of scientific curiosity and an approach tothinking about the physical world perhaps notavailable at school or at home. Biographies suchas Six Little Chickadee& A Scientist and HerWork with Birds by Ma Graham (1982) describesthe motivation and activities of Cordelia Stanwoodin a way young people can comprehend, while aclassic work such as Michael Faraday's TheChemical History of a Candle (1960), first pub-lished in 1861, is a model of scientific reasoningand skill.

Books on nature, physical science, and mathe-matics are so varied and numerous it is difficult tochoose the best examples. A work such as VirginiaLee Burton's Life Story: The Story of Life on EarthFrom Its Beginning Up to Now (1962), though notentirely up-to-date in scientific detail, is so rich inits sense of geologic time and such a good invita-tion to science that it is a welcome addition to anylibrary. Other presentations use children's ownqueries as the organizational format of the textsee, for instance, Roy Gallant's 101 QuestionsAbout the Universe (1984), which is based largelyon answers to actual questions children ask at theplanetarium where he works.

In th, past, children were given almost anyscience book that was accurate and accessible.Books were written for those who alreadyexpressed an interest in (or were assigned) a topic.Recent works, though, have consciously sought ahook to intrigue children and awaken their scien-tific interests. Have you ever wondered, forinstance, what goes on beneath a busy streetcorner in a large metropolitan area? Read David

Macaulay's Underground (1976) for an indepth,visual description of what takes place there. Or try

Blassingame's The Little Killers: Fleas, Lice,Mosquitoes (1975) for amazing tales of the majorhistorical events wrought by these tiny parasites.Moreover, the illustrations and design features ofchilchen's science books compare with the moststunning picture books available. Check out, forinstance, Your Future in Space; The U.S. SpaceCamp Training Program by Flip and DebraSchulke and Penelope and Raymond McPhee(Schulke et aL, 1986) or Patricia Lauber's Volcano:The Eruption and Healing of Mount Si: Helens(1986). Also worth mentioning is Seymour Sim-on's spectacular new series on the solar system(1985),

Science books, which are sold predominantly tolibraries, are reviewed by a press accountable toboth the public and the scientific community.Sources of such reviews are given at the end ofthis chapter.

Curiosity: The Greatest GiftWhat can teachers and parents do to promote

aggressive curiosity? I am not talking about ananxiousness to touch, although that may well beinvolved, but rather an interest in grasping theprinciples underlying the organization of scientificfact. Although some children seem to be blessedwith scientific aptitude the way others demon-strate artistic talent there are things adults cando to foster whatever gifts are in evidence.

Nothing is more important than encouragingchildren's questions, Unfortunately, the sameadults who are delighted to answer their children'squeries about definitions or spellings of wordsoften inadvertently discourage science questions.A child who asks why a crusty coating of snow ison the ground on winter mornings deserves more"-an a story about Jack Frost. If you don't knowthe answer to a question, remember you are notaloneeven the most scientifically literate indi-viduals are not familiar with the entire body ofknowledge we call science. Visit your local library,

ask experts, undertake experiments with yourchildren; but most importantly, show them thattheir queries are worthy of adult attention.

You can also model questioning. In listening tothe questions of scientists, certain recurrent que-ries can be noted: why, how, how much, andwhat would happen if are the scientist's stock-in-trade. Make them yours. too.

For instance, scientists assume that things inthe physical world have afunction. If you are look-ing at a llama, you might ask, "Why is it woolly?"or "What are the functions of its hooves?" Whyquestions don't have to be limited to naturalobjects; while studying a faucet for instance, invitechildren to consider what function each partserves. You can also ask questions about howthings work. How does the woolly coveting of ananimal provide warmth? What happens if thisseemingly useless ring on the faucet is removed?Numerical descriptions also interest scientists.How long does the typical llama live? Pow longdoes the mama llama take "to grow a baby?" Howdoes that compare to the gestation period of agoat? How long will it take to fill this sink vt ithwater? How long will it take to siphon the sameamount of water? Scientists like to play withvariables as a way of questioning how thingswork. In biology, this often leads to questionsabout genetics and adaptation. In other instances,it may lead to the construction of an experiment.Which takes longer to freeze, orange juice orwater? Will baking soda fizz the way bakingpowder does when added to vinegar? Will lemonjuice work as well as vinegar?

Assertiveness also figures into this formula Ivividly remember watching two children approacha chemistry set. One, who had already identt fledherself as science-interested, almost ripped intothe kit. She wanted to know exactly what each ofthe chemicals would and would not do, and thisoverriding question, which she was able to verbal-ize, helped her decide which experiments toundertake when. The other child was less sure ofhimself. He saw the instruction guide as law, and

Thys, Books, and Other Science Gifts 135

any alteration or extension of it as a violation.When a particular experiment didn't work he wasdisappointed, perhaps even angry, and put the setaway. Although he was unsure of where the"blame" laywas it the set's problem or had hedone something wrong?he surely had no interestin further chemical explorations. For the first child,the same "failures" were deemed "interesting."

Finally, the well-timed introduction of fact ortheory often helps children formulate their ownquestions. For instance, if a young child is given amodel of a woolly mammoth, she typically makesmonster noises while skipping it along the carpet.After reading a book such as Aliki's Wild andWoolly Mammoths (1977) however, the play oftenreflects scientific knowledge. The child moves themodel more "manunothlike." and the dramaticstory about finding the frozen beast in Siberiamay even be reenacted. As the child needs to knowmore to make the story her own, her questionsdevelop.

Combining ResourcesThe value of pairing a toy and book can hardly

be overstated. Through the union of books andtoys, science, knowledge. and experience are con-nected. That such pairings have not been regularlysuggested elsewhere is testimony to the ways toysand books, as well as hands-on science and expla-nation, have been truncated in our schoc 'n themarketplace, and finally, in our minds.

Professor Lazer Goldberg, in a recent Library ofCongress symposium on "Children. Science, andBooks," said, "We educate children who will livemost of their lives in a time we cannot describewith :-...ny degree of accuracy. It is unlikely thatwhat we tell children today will be completelyuseful, let alone 'true,' 40 years from now" (inpress). But interest in exploring the physical worldand confidence in one's ability to engage in scien-tific play can only serve the child well in years tocome. If playthings can be used to invite sciencequestions, the gifts you have given will be gifts forlife.


How 'lb Find Science Literaturefor Young People

There are several highly regarded sources forkeeping up with children's books in general, someor all of which your local library will have. The fol-lowing journals, though broad-based in their cov-erage, include reviews of children's science books:

Booklist 22/ye4r. $51 (American Library Associa-tion, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611)

Bulletin for the Center of Children's Books,11 /year, $14 (5850 Ellis Ave., Chicago, IL 60637)

Hornbook 6/year, $32 (Park Square Bldg., 31 St.James Ave.. Boston, MA 02116)

Kirkus Reviews, 24 /year, S65 (200 Park Ave. S.,New York, NY 10003)

School Library Journal, 11/year, 656 (R RBowker. Subscription Department, P.O. Box1978, Marion, OH 43305-1978)

The following periodicals for science teachersinclude a healthy smattering of book reviews:

Science and Children, 8/year. S43 (NationalScience Teachers Association, 1742 ConnecticutAve. NW, Washington, DC 20009)

The Science Teacher, 9 /year, S43 (NationalScience Teachers Association, 1742 ConnecticutAve. NW, Washington, DC 20009)

Science Activities, 4 /year, 635 (Heldref, AlbemarleSt. NW, Washington, DC 20016)

Dedicated primarily to reviewing science litera-ture. the following books, periodicals, and awardlists get my vote for 'best bets":

Best Science Books for Children, compiled andedited by Kathryn Wolff. Joellen M. Fritsche,Elina N. Gross, and Gary T. Todd (AAAS, 1983):Children's Catalog (H. Wilson, publishedannually)

The Museum of Science and Industry Basic Listof Children's Science Books 1973 -198A, com-piled by Bernice Richter and Duane Wenzel

(American Library Association, publishedannually)

Science Booksfor Children: Selections fromBOOKUST. 1976-1983. edited by DeniseMurcko Wilms (American Library Association,1985)

Appraisal, 4/year. $24 (605 Commonwealth Ave.,Boston, MA 02215)

The Kobrin Letter: Books about Real People.Places and Things. 7/year. $12 (Dr. BeverlyKobrin, 732 Greer Rd.. Palo Alto, CA 94303)

Science Books and Films, 5/year, $32 (AAAS,1776 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington. DC20036)

Scientific American publishes an annotated listeach December of child-oriented science giftbooks written by Philip and Phyllis Morrison($2.95 at newsstands)

For free lists of award - winning books, send aself-addressed, stamped envelope to:

Children's Book Guild Non-Fiction Award (c/oWashington Post. 1150 15th St. NW, Washing-ton, DC 20017)

New York Academy of Sciences (2 East 63rd St..New York, NY 10021)

Outstanding Science Trade Books for Children(Published by Children's Book Council andNational Science Teachers Association: availablefrom Children's Book Council, 67 Irving Place.New York, NY 10003)

ReferencesAliki. (1977). Wild and woolly mammoths. New

York: T.Y. Crowell.Arnosky, J. (1983). Secrets of a wildlife watcher.

New York: Lothrop Lee and Shepard.Blassingame. W. (1975). The little killers: Fleas,

lice, mosquitoes New York: Putnam.Blocksma. Mary, & Blocksma. Dewey. (1986).

Space-crafting: Invent your ownilying space-ships. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Bu. ton, V.L (1962). Life story: The story of life onEarth from its beginning up to now. Boston:Houghton Mifflin.

Cobb, V. (1986). Chemically active. New York:Lippincott.

Faraday, M. (1960). The chemical history of acandle. New York: Viking.

Gallant, R (1984). 101 questions about the uni-verse. New York: Macmillan.

Goldberg. Lazer. (in press). E. Wendy Saul (Ed.).Vital connections: Children, science, andbooks. Washington, DC: Library of Congress.

Graham. A. (1982). Six little chickadees: A scien-tist and her work with birds. New York: FourWinds.

Lauber, Patricia (1986). Volcano: The eruptionand healing of Mount St Helens New York:Bradbury.

Macauley, D. (1976). Undergraurtd. Boston:Houghton Mifflin.

Rights, M. (1981). Beastly neighbors: All aboutwild things in the city. Boston: Little Brown.

Saul, E. Wendy, & Newman. Alan. (1986). Sciencefare: An illustrated guide & catalog of toys.books and activities for kids. New York: Harper& Row.

Schulke, F., et al. (1986). Yourfutur;in space: TheU.S. Space Camp Training Program New York:Crown.

Simon, Seymour. (1985). Jupiter. New York:Morrow.

Spruch, G.M. (1984). Such agreeable friends: Lifewith a remarkable group of urban squirrels.New York. Morrow.

ibys, Books, and Other Science Gifts 137

Helpful HintsInvite children to bring in toys with moveableparts. Use small-group discussions to figure out,describe, and map how some items work.

Suggest that children bring mechanical objectssuch as a can opener, a wire wisk, or a drill withbits. Have a child describe an object in terms ofits structure and function and see if others inthe class can "guess" the object described.

Have children design exhibits for the library/media center that pair an object or experimentwith a book, and invite others to experiment insimilar ways. For instance, Mary and DeweyBlocksma's Space-Duffing: Invent Your OwnFlying Spaceships (1986) could be exhibitedwith one of the easily constructed flying toysdescribed. Another child might exhibit a pumicestone alongside two booksone on geology andthe other on floating and sinking.

Develop a lending library of science-relatedtoolsmicrczcopes, protractors, rain gauges,litmus paper, and so on. Have students designprojects using these objects.


Try to replicate some of the experiments of earlyscientists with the equipment on hand. Mosttoy telescopes, for instance, are better than theone Galileo used, and even a moderate handmagnifier of today compares favorably to that ofvan Leeuwenhoek.

Encourage children to evaluate books on agiven topic. After comparing various booksabout dinosaurs, for instance, have them talkabout differences in the presentation of fact andthe importance of organization and style.

Have children generate questions BEFOREsearching books for a report topic. See whichquestions are easily answered and which topicsauthors fail to address. Then encourage childrento generate further questions based on theirforays into the subject. Have groups trade ques-tions, and if some can't be answered throughthe library, write to an expert.

No classroom should be without field guidesand an area map of the places where studentshave found various specimens.

=1311...12.e...Jphy

Informal LearningHeltne, Paul, & Marquardt, Linda A. (1988).

Science learning in the informal setting;1988 symposium proceedings. Chicago, IL:Chicago Academy of Sciences.

Today's problems: tomorrow's crises. (Octo-ber, 1982). National Science Board Commis-sion on Precollege Education in Mathematics,Science, and Technology.

MediaAction for Children's 'Television. (1984). TV,

science and kids. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley.

Chen, Milton. (1979). 3-2-1 CONTACT, a tv se-ries on science and technologyfor children8-12: Test show evaluation. New York, NY:Children's Television Workshop.

Friedman, Sharon, Dunwoody, Sharon, & Rog-ers, Carol. (1986). Scientists and journalists.New York, NY: Free Press.

Gastel, Barbara. (1983). Presenting science tothe public. Philadelphia, PA: ISI Press.

Newspaper Science Sections; Testing the MassAudience [issue]. (Autumn, 1984). SIP1-scope, 12(4).

Science in the Media [issue]. (Winter, 1982-83).SIPI-scope, 10(6).

MuseumsBedworth, Jacalyn. (Ed.). (1985). Science

teacher education at museums: A resource

guide. Washington, DC: Association ofScience-Technology Centers.

Borun, Minda. (1980). What's in a name? Astudy of the effectiveness of explanatorylabels in a science museum. Washington,DC: Association of Science - Technology Cen-ters.

Borun, Minda et al. (1983). Planets and pul-leys: Studies of class visits to a sciencemuseum. Washington, DC: Association ofScience-Technology Centers.

Danilov, Victor J. (1982). Science and technol-ogy centers. Boston, MA: MIT Press.

Flexer, Barbara, & Borun, Minda. (1984). Theimpact of a class visit to a participatory sci-ence museum exhibit and a classroom sci-ence lesson. Journal of Research in ScienceTeaching, 21(9), 863-873.

Grinell, Sheila. (Spring, 1988). Science centerscome of age. Issues in Science and Technol-ogy.

McCormack, Susan. (Ed.). (in press). Adminis-tration report & directory. Washington, DC:Association of Science-Tech:mlogy Centers.

McCormack, Susan. (Ed.). (19,38). Educationreport & directory. Washington, DC: Associ-ation of Science-Technology Centers.

Oppenheimer, Frank & the ExploratoriumStaff. (1986). Working prototypes: Exhibitdesign at the exploratorium. Washington,DC: Association of Science-Technology Cen-ters.

Eibliography 139

Oppenheimer, Fran: & the ExploratoriumStaff. (1987). The Exploratorium cookbook,volumes I, II, & III. San Francisco, CA: TheExploratorium.

Pitman-Gelles, Bonnie. (1982). Museums,magic and children: Youth education inmuseums. Washington, DC: Association ofScience - 'technology Centers.

Pollock, Wendy, & McCormack, Susan. (Eds.).(1988). Exhibits report & directory. Wash-ington, DC: Association of Science-Itchnology Centers.

Tressel, George W. (1984). A museum is totouch. 1984 yearbook of science and the fu-ture. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

ActivitiesBlack achievers in science. (1988). Chicago,

IL: Museum of Science & Industry.Children's Book Council. (published annually).

Outstanding science tradebooksfor chil-dren. New York, NY: Children's Book Coun-cil.

140 Bibliography

Cobb, Vicki. (1972). Science experiments youcan eat. Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott JuniorBooks.

Flatow, Ira. (1988). Rainbows, curved ballsand other wonders of the natural world ex-plained. New York, NY: Wm. Morrow & Co.

Great explorations in math and science.Berkeley, CA: Lawrence Hall of Science.

Herbert, Don. (1980). Mr. Wizard's supermar-ket science. New York, NY: Random House.

Horner, John R.. & Gorman, James. (1985).Mala, A dinosaur grows up. Bozeman, MT:Museum of the Rockies.

Reid, Theodore L. (1989). Volunteers for sci-ence. 1989 yearbook of science and the fu-ture. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica.

Solinini, Cheryl. (Ed.). (1987-88). Smithsonianfamily learning project, science activitybook. New York, NY: Galison Books.

Zubroski, Bernard. (1979). Bubbles. Boston,MA: Little ,Brown.

Zubroski, Bernard. (1979). Milk carton blocks.Boston, MA Little, Brown.

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Photo CreditsStrategies

1. Children's Television Workshop2 O J Brown/G. Simon. Subjects & Predicates. Save, Spring, MD3. C J. Brown/G Simon. Subjects & Predicates. Silver Spring. MD4. Children's Televis. 1 Workshop5. Photo File6 The Exploratorium. i noto by Susan Schwartzenberg7. National Science Foundation

The Media

1. Children's Television Workshop2. The Mr. Wizard Studio3 Jerome Berkowitz4. Photo File5. Children's Television Workshop

Museums and Zoos

1 National Science Foundation. Photo by Esther Kutnick.2. c New York Zoological Society Photo3. C Zoological Society of San Diego 19874 C New York Zoological Society Photo5 Woodland Park Zoo. Photo by Chris Barth6. National Science Foundation. Photo by Richard Howard.

Projects, Competitions, and Family Activities

1.8 Joanne Meldrum2. Karen Hollweg, Denver AudclIon Society3 Jerome Berkowitz4. Bruce Jennings5 Photo File6. Carol Luszcz. Science Talent Search

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