ActLab Retreat Day 2 - Designers Final 360 by marti

SCIENCE ACTIVATION LAB RESEARCH AGENDA
How can we activate children’s interest and curious minds in ways that ignite persistent engagement in science learning and inquiry? The synthesis of past research, in conjunction with the theory‐building process described above resulted a theoretical framework that positions us to investigate this question in systematic ways across learning settings. This framework has multiple components: the activated learner, the trajectory of predicted outcomes, and the features of the learning experiences that support or maintain activation. Together these components posit a setof hypotheses that the Activation Lab study seeks to investigate. We seek to test five emerging hypotheses:
1. Activation is real: there are clear, persistent individual differences towards science learning
2. Activation is decomposable: there are distinct components of activation
3. Activation is measurable: reliably and affordably
4. Activation is predictive: activation by age 11 is predictive of consequential future pathways
5. Activation is supportable: learning experiences can be designed to create and sustain activation.

For a project description see www.lrdc.pitt.edu/projects/pdetail.asp?Proj_ID=62