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For what its worth, I think the learning sciences would have to significantly advance in order to be able to create any kind of meaningful metrics at all for measuring learning in informal science settings. Here's why. What do we measure? If we try to map the intellectually barren learning objectives of formal K-12 teaching, we would have to strip out any of the meaningful experiences that deepen and inspire learners and rather just give them drill and kill in a public setting, something we can reduce and assess with a Scantron.

But if we want to somehow "prove" and measure the kind of learning that happens in science museums according to the kinds of things we believe in, we need a different kind of learning science, one that intimately maps to some of the most complex functions in brain networks (at least in my estimation). Perhaps I am overcomplicating things, but the neuroscience is not there yet. there are still too many black boxes in the way of understanding this kind of learning, and unless we start hammering away at them with really smart theories, we will not be able to accurately predict anything in a systematic way. 

Its a little like the BRAIN project recently announced and so widely touted to solve complicated brain disease through mapping all the neuron connections in the brain. These systemic brain diseases have many causes and it is likely only in looking at the system that we will have any chance of solving them. Similarly, once you have mapped all these connections will we have discovered a neural basis for consciousness? Inspiration? Meaning? No, because in lifelong learning, these kinds of things are likely emergent and not reducible. 

Just my 2 cents.


Stephen Miles Uzzo, PhD.
VP, Science & Technology
New York Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Flushing Meadows Corona Park, NY 11368 USA
V +1.718.595.9177
F +1.718.699.5227
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