The impacts of science are felt across all socio-ecological levels, ranging from the individual to societal. In order to adapt or respond to scientific discoveries, novel technologies, or biomedical or environmental challenges, a fundamental understanding of science is necessary. However, antiscientific rhetoric, mistrust in science, and the…

The purpose of Project LISTO is to support the instructional capacity of science educators and to validate innovative practices and strategies via previously developed interventions that address literacy-infused science and technology integration with standards-aligned curriculum. The evaluation of LISTO involved a multisite cluster randomized…

Energy concepts are taught in many schools, but children rarely have an opportunity to grapple with energy problems and work on their own solutions. This study explores the impacts of Connect Science, a service-learning (SL) program developed to enhance elementary students' energy literacy in the United States. Program impacts were explored within…

Many science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) outreach programs focus on children, but relatively few efforts are dedicated to voting-age populations. These groups are important to reach because misinformation about science is widespread and difficult to detect, often interfering with informed voting on science-related issues. Science…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is one of the United States' leading federal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) agencies and plays an important role in the landscape of STEM education. In 2015, NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) created the Science Activation (SciAct) program to increase the…

This study is an examination and evaluation of the outcomes of a series of courses that I helped build to create a graduate certificate. Specifically, I wanted to evaluate whether or not the online iteration of the "Informal Science Institutions Environmental Education Graduate Certificate Program" truly provided the long term…

Background: Scientific literacy development is widely emphasized as the overarching goal of science education. It encompasses development of understanding of the nature of science as well as knowledge, attitudes, and values that contribute to empowering adolescents to engage with and make evidence-based decisions about socioscientific issues.…

High-quality after-school programs devoted to science have the potential to enhance students' science knowledge and attitudes, which may impact their decisions about pursuing science-related careers. Because of the unique nature of these informal learning environments, an understanding of the relationships among aspects of students' content…

Energy literacy is a broad term encompassing content knowledge as well as a citizenship understanding of energy that includes affective and behavioral aspects. This article presents explicit criteria that will serve as a foundation for developing measurable objectives for energy literacy in three dimensions: cognitive (knowledge, cognitive…

Understanding ecosystems is challenging, but important for becoming environmentally-literate citizens of today's society. People have difficulty considering how different components, mechanisms, and phenomena, both visible and invisible, are interconnected within ecosystems. This research presents both the design and initial testing of an…

This dissertation serves as a call to geoscientists to share responsibility with K-12 educators for increasing Earth science literacy. When partnerships are created among K-12 educators and geoscientists, the synergy created can promote Earth science literacy in students, teachers, and the broader community. The research described here resulted in…

Establishing literacy in science is often linked to building knowledge about the Nature of Science (NOS). This paper describes and evaluates an inservice program designed to build elementary teachers' understanding of NOS and an awareness of how NOS impacts science classroom instruction. Data sources consisted of surveys, action research plan…

Current domestic and international comparative studies of student achievement in science are demonstrating that the U.S. needs to improve science education if it wants to remain competitive in the global economy. One of the causes of the poor performance of U.S. science education is the lack of students who have developed the formal thinking…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report results from an evaluation of an online abstract mentoring programme to support early career and less experienced human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) researchers improve their chances of acceptance to International HIV/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome Conferences. Design/methodology/approach: An…