The article, Art As a Way of Knowing, talks about a conference that was held, under the same name. Its purpose was to gather artists, scientists and educators to think about history and art as conduits into inquiring and questioning about the natural world.  It was a conference that was interested art practice relating to public engagements with science, including programs for children in community based organizations, schools, museums and other learning environments.

I liked that the conference was a discussion about the role of art in learning and in science learning, that it can be used as a form of inquiry and that it discussed on ways that artists are working in science and interdisciplinary contexts presently, including that of informal public learning environments. I liked that the conference was one that shifted away from comparing art and science and instead concentrated on how the arts expands our engagement and comprehension of the natural worlds. Its good to hear that conferences about art and science are doing more than just discussing what the similarities and differences are between the two areas and are actually trying to think how this may be a medium through which science learning can be improved and enhanced.

I agreed with the article when it said that art is rarely talked about in conversations about learning and teaching and when it is, it is discussed in relation to something artistic.  There are many people that believe art as something that does not actually teach anything or is not something that someone can learn something from. There is less and less funding for the arts in schools as more money is being used to fund scientific education. However, I think people should really think about the potential benefits that art can have on learning and science learning. One thing I like about this conference is that it sought to understand and articulate how art as a tool to advance human insight can be used to support learning and in particular learning in science.

I like the list towards the end of the article that demonstrates the benefits of art and how essential it is to learning. This list includes that art challenges habits and certitude, frames familiar problems in new ways, invites participation and engages all the senses. I think what struck me the most that artists and scientists pursue the big questions of their times. This is true, just that these two groups may pursue them in different ways, and perhaps, at times in similar ways.

It was interesting to learn about art and science in the article, The Art of the Brain, by Ashley Taylor. I enjoyed learning about the different hypotheses and the conclusions drawn from them. The first one is that science is done for scientific purpose; art is done for an artistic one and the conclusion is that the distinction becomes blurry.  Lichtman makes an argument that artistic and scientific purposes are equivalent. In one way, they both seek to try to understand something. Artists, like scientists, are focused on a particular idea that they want to understand and their art is about a particular thing.

The second hypothesis in the article is that science uses a prescribed method and art does not. This is false because artists also have methods, perhaps not set method like the scientific method, but they do follow some rules. It is also false because sometimes scientists don’t follow prescribed methods.

The third hypothesis is that science simplifies things and art renders their complexity. This is a false hypothesis because science can also appreciate complexity. Often times, when one is trying to learn something in science, more questions are raised than answered. Science is not always so simple. We may find answers to some things, but in finding those answers we also may have more questions.

The fourth hypothesis that I learned about is that science is some notion of right and wrong, whereas art is just art. In the article, it seems to say that there right and wrong hold much over science.  In science, everything is up for debate. However, in art, according to the article, it seems that right and wrong don’t particularly belong. It seems that the author tends to shift away from logic and reasoning and more towards instinct and feeling.

Overall, it was very fascinating to learn about science and art bases on someone else’s point of view. The article was constructed in an interesting way; it was formatted so that there were hypotheses, information that was against or supporting that hypothesis and then a conclusion after each one. In the end, the author states that this may not be the best approach to this topic because it leaves the author unsatisfied. There are just some things that are not explained well enough using hypotheses and conclusions.

The first article I read, Learning in Your Own Backyard: Place-Based Education for Museums by Janet Petitpas, was very interesting.  It was nice to see what museums are doing to incorporate place-based education tactics to maximize their benefits and fulfill their own institutional goals.  The article focuses on three particular places that encourage the practice of using place-based education in order to provide real experiences that are relevant to its visitors that come to the sites.  Two of these institutions, Turtle Bay Exploration Park and The Bay Area Discovery Museum, take place in what many people deem the site of typical place-based institutions, the natural environment. However, interestingly enough, there is such a thing as having place-based learning  for those that are not surrounded by the natural world. Place-based learning can occur in an urban setting, as demonstrated in the example at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Place-based education is defined in the article as a process that uses local environments to teach concepts in  various subjects, such as social studies and science. This type of education tends to focus on hands on experiences that apply to the real world. This type of approach also helps one to develop stronger community ties, enhances one’s appreciation for the natural environment and even fosters a sense of commitment service. The three institutions mentioned in the previous paragraph all demonstrate this definition; however each institution has done and achieved it in different ways.

Turtle Bay Exploration Park located in Redding, California, tells the story of its people and about the area it is located. It emphasizes on the relationship between people and nature. Here the exhibits are meant to encourage exploring and questioning. It hopes to change the way you see a familiar object. For example, a visitor can see the roots of an oak tree and their extent so hopefully next time the person sees it above ground, they will think about or view the tree in a different way. An important statement made in this section was that people are better able to understand new ideas when they can connect them with an earlier experience. This is definitely true for me. I often learn and remember things better if I can connect to them somehow in my own life or to an experience I had. This is also true for many other people because it is much easier to remember something that you experienced or did personally than it is to just remember and understand an extraneous fact that has no meaning or context for you.

The Bay Area Discovery Museum is also set in the natural environment. It is located in a National Park beneath the Golden Gate Bridge.  The mission of the museum is to engage and educate children through the exploration of the local environment.  They had to present an authentic exhibit while still taking into account that it was targeting young children. They provided an authentic experience by offering real protective gear and real plant material to build with.  I liked that this museum took into account the audience it was targeting when designing its exhibits and had the understanding that kids like and need to be outdoors.  Children need to discover things on their own and they often will if given the opportunity to observe and think for themselves.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum presents and interprets the history of a specific place and seeks to engage visitors in the richness of the neighborhood presently.  At this museum, place-based education is not focused on a local ecological setting, but rather on a local socio-cultural and economic setting. Here, visitors can make connections between the past and the present, challenge their assumptions about immigrants today, while also think about questions like why people immigrate.  I thought an interesting statement in this section was place connect people over time, which I think is true.  No matter how many generations of people will come and go to a particular place, they will all be connected through that one place. This particular place provides a connection to the past as well as to the present. I liked the way that this place engaged people and allowed them to reflect on their perceptions and thoughts.  The visitors’ impressions were used to engage them personally with the neighborhood and to help them learn more about the socio-cultural and economic factors that have shaped the neighborhood.  It was interesting to learn that this experience is designed to help people learn outward, first focusing on issues close to home, neighborhood and community and then focusing on issues on a larger scale. Ultimately, place-based learning in an urban setting can help students better understand the issues in their community and perhaps even play a role in shaping how those issues are dealt with locally, nationally or globally.  A very important aspect of place-based learning in an urban environment is that very different people can come together to build and improve their communities.

All these institutions provide unique environments and create experiences that that help people to learn more about a particular area or a particular issue. They offer learning experiences that focus on what is relevant to us and allow us to make connections and reflect on our ideas and thoughts.

The second article, The Best of Both Worlds: Critical Pedagogy of Place by David Gruenewald, was a challenging read. What I understood from reading is that critical pedagogy, and place-based education should be blended together, to form a critical pedagogy of place.  The article discusses several things; it analyzes the critical pedagogy, which focus the spatial parts of a social experience. It later states that a critical pedagogy of place includes reinhabitation, which is learning to live in an area that has been previously exploited, and decolonization, which is learning to recognize when an area is injured or disrupted and attempting to find the causes of the disruption.  I also learned that this critical pedagogy of place calls us to reflect on the kind of education we seek and the places we choose to live and later leave for others in the future. I hopefully learn more about what the author has to say on this topic as I read the article over and as we discuss it in class.

The main point that Chapter 4 in Surrounded by Science emphasizes is that communicating and interacting with other people plays an important role in learning. People can learn from each other about topics they did not have previous knowledge or about a subject that someone else had a deeper understanding.  As stated in the text, engaging with people who are more knowledgeable in a particular area and exchanging of ideas and reflections supports our own individual learning.  We do not know everything about a topic; engaging and talking with others allows us to uncover more information about that topic and perhaps think about things that we did not think about before.  Some individuals may be more knowledgeable than others can help others learn by pointing out things that they may not have noticed, provide knowledgeable input or structure a discussion that focuses on science.  I know that for me it is sometimes more helpful to talk to other people about certain topics than just reading about it.  For example, it was much easier to understand about coronary bypass surgery, the machine used during the procedure and all the technical stuff by talking to someone about rather than just reading about it from a book that has so much confusing terminology. I definitely learned and understood much more about the operation by talking with a perfusionist and a cardio-thoracic surgeon than from reading about it.

Interaction with others definitely plays an important role in learning. Throughout the chapter it has been stated the importance of parents, adult caregivers, peers, educators and mentors in science learning. These people help us throughout our lives to learn about science and the world around us.  Children learn from parents and siblings about topics that are relevant to science even though the activity that they are doing may not have a designated purposed to teach them about science. Children learn things about the world and question things they see and touch without immediately being in a formal education setting. Also, older siblings can help their younger siblings learn by helping them understand plot lines in education programming and answering questions that their siblings may have.  My older sister has definitely helped me understand things that I have seen on television or read about in books. She has answered my many questions, from things that are simple to topics that are complex, that have aided my understanding of them and have encouraged me to delve deeper into that area.

However, it is important that interaction with others does not hamper the learning of others. In the text, it is stated that while children can learn from their parents while visiting informal science institutions like museums, at times, parents may become too involved and limit their child’s ability to learn and discover things on their own. It is important, therefore, to know how much mediation is really needed for children in order for them to reap the optimal benefits of a particular activity.  Parents should guide and aid their children during informal experiences, but not to a point where their guidance actually hinders their cognitive learning.

Communicating and interacting with others is importance in informal science learning. Therefore, these types of experiences should be created with groups of people in mind so that optimal engagement between people is taken advantage and capitalized.  Studies have been conducted in order to optimize the benefits of interacting with others, particularly through listening to conversations of people in informal settings. This in itself can be difficult to do, as researchers have to find appropriate ways to record conversations, transcribe them, and then ultimately come to a conclusion about what they mean.  Although a challenging task, this information can be used to create meaningful experiences which will help those who participate to learn about science.  Hopefully, with this information, those creating informal science learning activities will design experiences that encourage interaction, communication, discussion and reflection.

Chapter 3 in Surrounded by Science emphasizes the importance of creating experiences that will ultimately enhance the understanding of people and allow them to be more flexible in their learning.  I think that it was interesting to learn about the importance and necessity of creating and designing good informal education experiences. Even good programs need constant improvement so that the people that participate in them reap the maximum benefits. One way to improve programs was based on how learners responded to the activity they engaged in.  They used the feedback of people to add or change something about a particular activity so that the people are not just having fun, but are also learning something in the process.

The chapter also focuses on the facets of learning, which are the development of expertise, the role of intuitive ideas and prior knowledge in gaining a deeper understanding, and the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as a way to build one’s understanding. It was fascinating to learn that experts are not just people who think well or are extremely intelligent, but people who know how to organize their knowledge and understand relationships between facts and also are able to distinguish central ideas.  All this enables them to be flexible in their learning and apply their knowledge in different contexts. This means that people like you and me can also be experts in a particular field if we know cultivate the skills needed to organize our knowledge and to apply it to several different settings.  I agree with the text that our childhood does develop some level of expertise in an area because when we are little we learn to figure out things for ourselves.  We are not placed immediately into a classroom; rather we interact with people and come up with our own intuitive ideas about the things we see and feel without any formal education.  This prior knowledge helps up to delve deeper into topics as we seek to understand certain things about the world around us.  We become more aware of our ideas and express them.  Our reflection and awareness of our ideas allows us to understand how we think about something and perhaps even challenge ideas that we have and expand on them.

To expand on the previous thought, I think one of the most interesting things I learned from this chapter was metacognition. This is the ability to reflect and monitor one’s own thinking. It is specific to a particular area, but it can supported and taught.  I think this ability, to be aware of how we think, can ultimately lead to greater understanding.  Once we know how we think we will be better able to find ways to help aid us in our understanding of science.  Also, reflecting on our thinking will help us discover what we know so that we are able to delve deeper in to an area of a subject that we may not have known before or were wrong about.

In hand with these facets are ways that learning can be encouraged and supported. The text tells of various ways to engage people in a way that they can cultivate their minds and ultimately gain a deeper understanding of what they are doing.  These strategies are juxtaposition, multiple modes and interactivity. Juxtaposition is beneficial when informal environments are created that juxtapose peoples’ understanding of the natural world with the formal ideas they have been taught that explain the world.  This juxtaposition will hopefully lead learners to examine their own understanding of a particular subject and work towards improving it.  Multiple modes is beneficial in learning because it allows there to be different ways for learners to utilize concepts and practices in activities and supports a flexible transfer of knowledge from one area to another.  Interactivity in learning encourages learners to discover things for themselves by actively participating in events. People should be interested and engaged in what they are learning in order to increase their knowledge and their ability to reason out information in science.

Throughout the chapter, examples are provided in informal education experiences in which these strategies are present.  One example is an exhibition called Cell Lab, which is located at the Science Museum of Minnesota.  This activity allows visitors to use real laboratory equipment to conduct experiments in order to learn about genetics, cell biology, microbiology and enzymes.  They work at stations, testing their hypotheses and interacting with other participants.  This opportunity allows its participants to engage in an authentic science lab experience.  Participants even wear lab coats, goggles and gloves to make the experience more real.  Experiences like these allow people to be actively engaged in the activity and have fun doing it while also allowing them to share ideas and learn together about science.