Meeting a Need for "School at Home": An Evaluation of Informal Institutions' Pandemic Resources for Teaching Science at Home

Abstract

With the advent of the COVID-19 outbreak, many public institutions were forced to close their doors around the world in order to protect the citizens, including K-12 schools. In response to these closures, informal institutions began providing at home materials for students and families to supplement the at home learning that they were doing. Because of how quickly the demand for these “at home” learning materials arose, there is very little understanding as to the quality of these lessons in regards to formal schooling. This is important because formal schools may rely on these materials to supplement or replace the at home learning students are now required to do. Science learning from home is particularly challenging due to the need for students to have access to concrete representations of scientific phenomena to support their learning of abstract concepts. Using a qualitative approach, this study evaluated the “science at home” materials developed by 12 selected informal institutions in order to answer two primary questions: 1) To what extent do the informal institutions’ “science at home” instructional materials align with what is known about effective science instruction?; and 2) To what extent do the instructional materials align with school science learning goals?