Pacific CRYSTAL Science Education and Literacy Evaluation Workshop

28 February 2008

How do we know if our efforts in science education and outreach are having an effect?

This is an on-going challenge for educators and researchers alike. Pacific CRYSTAL held a workshop to discuss ways to evaluate effectiveness of educational programs. It was attended by 23 enthusiastic members of Pacific CRYSTAL, as well as Rick Warner, Manager of NSERC- Pacific, and representatives from World Fisheries Trust and WILD BC.

The Pacific CRYSTAL group has substantial expertise in evaluating the effects of science literacy projects on students' interest in science, their attitude towards science, and their academic achievement. However, simple but effective strategies to help overworked teachers and outreach facilitators to monitor and evaluate the long term effects of their programs on learning and behaviour are still not available. Yet these criteria are central not only to pursuing ongoing funding to support these programs, but to allow educators to refine and build their programs as effectively as possible. The creation of NSERC's nationwide CRYSTAL projects was a first step towards recognizing this need. The purpose of this workshop was to share ideas and methodologies and foster communication on the issue of evaluating science education.

Four presentations on evaluating science literacy projects were given by Todd Milford, Leslie Frances Pelton, Eileen Vander Flier-Keller, and David Blades (University of Victoria members of the CRYSTAL Pacific project). These researchers shared their experiences with best practices, ideas, tools and methodologies in the CRYSTAL project.

Presentations

Comparative overview of options for carrying out evaluation PDF	Todd Milford
Evaluation results of the enriched mathematics program in a Qualicum Beach high school PDF	Leslee Pelton
Evaluation of enriched laboratory use in teaching teachers-in-training and about ethics considerations in doing evaluation PDF	Eileen Van der Flier-Keller David Blades
Use of large-scale PISA databases in researching the determining factors for student performance PDF	Todd Milford

Questions and insightful discussion followed the presentations, and led to some very interesting and useful dialogue around how we can move forward with promoting science and technology literacy.

Priority next steps indicated by the workshop are to:

Gather and document our collective experiences concerning the apprehension in teachers to do science teaching;
Form a graduate student focus group to facilitate communication among our science, engineering and education graduate researchers
Work with NSERC Pacific to share our experiences with science outreach groups in BC.

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