Professional Development in the Education and Public
Outreach Community
Questions posed by Isabelle with my (LMP's) answers:
A) what are the potential audiences for "internal" professional
development (e.g. EPO leads, scientists, program managers, etc.)
- EPO leads
- scientists
- program managers
- engineers
- graduate students
B) what are the topics of professional development (e.g. evaluation,
product development, etc.)
- What is E/PO? Provide general
overview, such as Cheri Morrow's diagram
with Formal/Informal Education, and Public Outreach. Parts of SSI
workshop in Boulder good for this. And "NASA 101" class that Isabelle
gives including what are the big missions currently funded? It would also be
good in this type of PD to learn about the science of other missions - a
science section similar to science conferences with 10 minute talks or using
E/PO materials to demonstrate the mission science.
- How do we succeed in Formal Education?
Provide lists of teacher/principal contacts in 50 states; provide all 50
states science standards and national standards; learn about what other E/PO
groups are doing and what has worked and what has not: i.e. curriculum
development and evaluation; learn about inquiry based learning and teaching;
SSI workshop in Boulder also covered some of this. If we can get our own
professional development standard, then we can better develop an overarching
plan to make sure that we teach DEPTH instead of BREADTH. I think this
will be a very effective and important way of succeeding in sharing our
knowledge to students and teachers in K-12 classrooms. In this type of
PD, we should visit a classroom and talk with teachers (as done in the SSI
workshop).
- How do we succeed in Informal Education?
Provide book (or web page) of contacts with lists of museums, project
astro, girl scout... etc for E/PO to use in Informal Education; learn about
what other E/PO groups are doing and what has worked and what has not: i.e.
museum projects. In this type of PD, we should visit a museum and talk
with after school organizers or girl/boy scouts or other informal education.
- How do we succeed in Public Outreach?
Provide web pages that are especially well known to the public (nasa.gov,
spaceweather.com...); provide contacts public television and radio
stations that are broadcast in 50 states (NPR...etc); actually I don't
know much about this public outreach except the web idea - so I could use some
PD in this area already! We should learn about what other E/PO groups
are doing and what has worked and what has not: i.e. ???. In this type
of PD, we should visit some public area - a park? - and also talk with the
general public about where they would like to most hear about NASA missions
and such: it'd be nice to really talk with people who have no experience with
science in their lives nor NASA. I'd like to know how to approach the
public with public outreach without using 2-3 above and how to do it in a
leveraged way. Books? Should some of us write popular science
books? Talk on NPR? Write magazine articles?
C) who has expertise, within NASA and outside of NASA, to deliver such
professional development?
Forum directors, Brokers, E/PO leads are all candidates for organizing the
above workshops. SSI has experience with some of the elements mentioned
above in their SSI annual workshop. As long as experts are also brought in
during the workshop and the participants go out into the field (classrooms,
museums, public) as was done in the two meetings I have attended (SSI and SECEF
meeting), then I think there are many who have the expertise to run these
workshops. Experience and success stories would define it, maybe?
D) what should be the next steps in formulating the plan? (e.g. A next
step might be to bring in our nearest neighbors, such as the Sonoma State and
Stanford E/PO leads, LHS staff, etc.)
I agree that bringing in our nearest neighbors would be good, including the
scientists here at SSL. This would be my approach if I were in control:
- Develop a plan: what PD workshops do we need? How many? Where?
For whom? What are the goals? How will we evaluate if we have met our PD
goals? (what we are doing today)
- Draw up the plan - write it up into a book eventually to distribute to
NASA code N and all E/PO leads.
- Test the plan with workshops with nearest neighbors - and have other E/PO
or Forum directors do the same
- Meet again with those who have given workshops to rework plan and the PD
book
- Rewrite the book - now with examples of workshops included
- Send the book to NASA code N so that they can then distribute it to all
E/PO leads or whomever will be in charge of ensuring that those involved in
E/PO get some PD.
- Evaluate the PD process by determining if people understand and meet the
goals made in question B) (1-4) and statement D.1.