HR: 1340h
AN: ED23B-1282    [Abstracts]
TI: Exploring Student and Scientist Experiences in a Novice-Expert Partnership
AU: * Bowman, C D
EM: bowmanca@gse.harvard.edu, cbowman@mail.arc.nasa.gov
AF: Raytheon/NASA ARC/Harvard, NASA Ames Research Center, M/S T27B-1, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000, United States
AB: The creation of student-scientist partnership (SSP) programs is one response to the call for greater attention to scientific literacy and science inquiry in schools (COSEPUP, 2006; NRC, 1996; NSTA, 2004). SSPs engage students in authentic scientific investigations as they work alongside scientist mentors engaged in research. The scholarly literature suggests outcomes and benefits to participants in terms of enhanced content learning, as well as gains related to motivation and self-efficacy (Abraham, 2002; Lawless and Rock, 1998; Ledley, Haddad, Lockwood, and Brooks, 2003; Markowitz, 2004; Means, 1998, p. 98; Richmond, 1998). Continuing development of and research into these programs is slow, however, in part because SSPs are resource-intensive (requiring access to scientists and laboratories) and difficult to scale up, creating a perception that they are limited in their application. To begin to reach the goal of scaling up, it is necessary to develop a deep understanding of how each aspect of SSPs contributes to student motivation and learning. To this end, this study provides an in-depth analysis of interviews with the student and scientist members of mentoring dyads that participated in NASA's Athena Student Interns Program associated with the Mars Exploration Rover missions. Crafting a picture of how these students and scientists experienced working closely in a science mentoring dyad contributes to the growing body of work focused on understanding the nature, benefits, and challenges of SSPs and provides potential lessons for SSP practitioners. Considering the participants' insights in the context of career and psychosocial mentoring highlights the complex nature of student-scientist relationships and points to the need to address and encourage both types of mentoring in SSPs in order to foster the most successful partnerships. Such knowledge takes an important step toward informing the development of programs that may introduce greater numbers of students to scientific careers and research, while providing similar benefits as those conferred through small-scale student-scientist collaborations.
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 0815 Informal education
DE: 0840 Evaluation and assessment
DE: 0850 Geoscience education research
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting