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Charlie Carlson wrote:  "Correlations between frequencies of visits to a
science museum and school performance doesn't seem to have lots of
supporting data."

Yes, but then there just isn't much data on this, either positive or
negative, because it hasn't been well studied.  That's because school
performance tests are designed by and for people in the formal education
system.  They are very interested in relations between scores and the
things they might be able to control and change, like class size, teacher
preparation, and lab equipment.  They cannot control what happens in ISE
[editorial comment:  thank goodness!] so they don't ask many questions
about ISE activities.

However, the "background" questions on the best large standard-based
tests, like PISA and NAEP. are becoming increasingly open to asking how
scores might be affected by things outside of the classroom.  There is
some early mixed data coming in now, and some very strong positive data is
emerging, particularly on the relationship between student interest in
science, from whatever its source, and student performance on the
standards-based tests.  There are strong, positive correlations between
whether students do science activities NOT for school work and their
scores (look for a forthcoming paper by Alan Ginsburg and myself).  All
these are correlations, not causalities, and we need do do the causal
research to find out just how far we can push these results.  Longitudinal
studies like Robert Tai, et. al., showing very strong positive relations
between attitudes in school and graduation rates in STEM from college are
just what we need more of.

Cheers,
Alan
________________________________________
Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D.
Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication
29 West 10th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA
T  +1 917 882-6671
E   [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
W www.FriedmanConsults.com <http://www.friedmanconsults.com/>
 
a member of The Museum Group
www.museumgroup.com <http://www.museumgroup.com

>

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