ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Free-Choice Learning and the Environment: A Learning Innovation Conference
June 1-2, 2005

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Organized by the Institute for Learning Innovation with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Disney’s Animal Kingdom Theme Park®, National Environmental Education Training Foundation, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Environmental Education Research, the North American Association for Environmental Education, and the Ohio State University Extension
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Free-Choice Learning and the Environment: A Learning Innovation Conference will gather free-choice environmental learning educators, evaluators and researchers, environmental policy makers and funders to develop frameworks for improving the practice, evaluation, and future research efforts of the free-choice learning environmental education community. The result will be a significantly improved understanding of how to best utilize cutting edge learning research to improve lifelong learning practices and environmental programs in free-choice settings such as parks, refuges, museums, zoos and aquariums and on television and in print media.

The conference represents one component of an on-going effort by the Institute for Learning Innovation to regularly feature an important aspect of free-choice learning.  In addition to this conference, the Free-Choice Learning and the Environment: A Learning Innovation Initiative includes a pre-conference special issue of the journal Environmental Education Research, focusing specifically on contemporary understandings of free-choice environmental learning, as well as a post-conference white paper and book describing outcomes of the conference. 

This two-day meeting will be held at the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, and will host approximately 100 individuals representing a variety of federal and local agencies, community-based and non-governmental organizations, professional associations, and institutions working in and/or investigating or evaluating environmental free-choice learning activities. With the exception of a few people who have already been identified because of their leadership in the field, conference participants will be recruited and selected though an open application process. Selection will be competitive with an effort to choose participants representing a variety of sizes, types and locations of institutions, different focus areas (research, practice, evaluation), and a mix of emerging professionals and researchers, as well as established individuals.  All participants will be expected to prepare for active involvement at the conference and to assist in the dissemination of conference findings and implications. 

Applications are available at www.ilinet.org and are due by March 15. 

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