There has been, and continues to be, an explosion of interest in developing new small science centers that is changing the world of museums. This handbook is designed to be a one-stop source for future and current centers, and anyone interested in the important roles these institutions play in their communities. With articles-all written by leaders in field-covering everything from administration, staffing, finance, marketing, exhibit design, and beyond, this comprehensive resource will be...

Connecting Research and Practice for Educational Improvement presents powerful arguments and richly illustrated cases for how more collaborative relationships between researchers and educators can yield more relevant research that impacts practice. This book can be useful for anyone teaching or learning about research–practice partnerships, in both school and out-of-school settings. The chapters highlight the different dispositions and skills needed to cultivate ethical relationsh...

Theorizing Equity in the Museum integrates the perspectives of learning researchers and museum practitioners to shed light on the deep-seated structures that must be accounted for if the field is to move past aspirations and rhetoric and towards more inclusive practices.Written during a time when museums around the world were being forced to reckon with their institutional practices of exclusion; their histories of colonization, both cultural and intellectual; and, for man...

Learning in informal settings is attracting growing attention from policymakers and researchers, yet there remains, at the moment, a dearth of literature on the topic. Thus this volume, which examines how science and mathematics are experienced in everyday and out-of-school-time (OST) settings, makes an important contribution to the field of the learning sciences. Conducting research on OST learning requires us to broaden and deepen our conceptions of learning as well as to better identify...