Education as Science Communication

Posted by Christina Roberts on June 9, 2021

A Spacemobile Lecture-Demonstrator shows a NASA spacecraft model to students. ca. 1965. Courtesy of Oklahoma State University AESP Archive.

Educating is Communicating

The academic field of Science Communications formed at the end of the twentieth century when researchers began to focus on how science learning happened in informal settings. Science educators, science museum professionals, science journalists, and communications researchers realized that they shared similar concerns about how to improve and increase scientific literacy, also referred to as the public understanding of science; they acknowledged that disciplinary boundaries and professional practices had long separated them.1 Science Communications could be more interdisciplinary if it included a historical perspective of the development of science communications in all its forms, including science education.

With this blog post I provide a historical view of the early years of space science communication to K-12 students during the first decade of the space age. Obviously educators in the past did not have the same principles devised by present-day Science Communications scholars. However, a brief review of early space science education shows that some of these fundamentals, as they were expressed in the pedagogy of the 1960s, were deployed in classrooms across the country. Here, I will highlight how early space science educators cared very much about Audience, Purpose, and Tone and how they used visual, auditory and tactile learning methods, what science communicators term Multimodal Learning, in their classrooms. My example is from a collaborative curriculum project between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) the Lincoln Nebraska School District in 1966. 2

An image of the front cover of the Lincoln Nebraska Public Schools curriculum project “The Lincoln Plan” was supported by NASA, published in 1966.

Audience, Purpose and Tone

Present-day science communicators prepare materials with their audience in mind. Their presentation of scientific research, facts and principles depends on whether their audience is made of laypersons, professionals or experts, or some combination thereof. Science communicators also consider the purpose of their presentation, such as if it is to inform, educate, warn, persuade or present an argument to their audience. Finally, the tone of their presentation aligns with audience and purpose, in that they choose a communication style such as playful, academic, businesslike, humorous, cautious or creative. 3

Science educators of the 1960s displayed similar concerns, as expressed in their curricular handbooks. The Lincoln Plan is a “Space Handbook” created for grade K through 6 teachers. The lesson plans are oriented towards maturity levels and not strictly by grade level, which shows how sensitive science educators were to their intended audience. The educators could choose to mix and match content and activities from different maturity levels to suit student needs in their individual classrooms. The handbook contains many pictures of teachers and students participating in space science lessons.

A teacher introduces basic concepts about outer space, lunar exploration and rocketry to students at the year five maturity level. The Lincoln Plan, page 1.

The handbook contains lessons organized by three categories. The teacher is provided with Instructional Materials, such as books, pamphlets, brochures, and kits, from which to choose information in specific Content Areas, and suggested Activities for student learning. For example, for the year five maturity level, teachers could choose content from Art, Language Arts, Arithmetic or Music to help students make connections to space science concepts. Optional activities such as drawing and painting pictures of rockets, counting down rocket launches, constructing rockets made from blocks, or creating a word/picture dictionary of space terms were all designed for the year five maturity level.

The purpose of the various content areas was to make scientific principles visible and understandable to students across the content areas of the curriculum. This would give students the opportunity to learn about space in a way that suited their interests, learning styles and personal capacities. The lessons are conveyed in an informative, calm and scholarly tone, but also provide an outlet for student excitement in the Activities category of Dramatic Play. For example, children could act out taking a trip to the moon or create and wear a space suit. The tone of the lessons indicates to students that it is appropriate and fun to learn about outer space and teaches them that the scientific principles of space exploration are personally meaningful, such as inspiring them to dream about being an astronaut when they grow up.

Children at year five maturity level draw and paint rocket ships under a banner that says “An Astronaut I’ll Be”. The Lincoln Plan, page 2.

Space science educators adjusted their materials for different maturity levels. At the year eleven maturity level, the Content Areas and Activities in The Lincoln Plan handbook are more sophisticated, which corresponds to the skills, interests and capacities of a more mature audience. Students at this maturity level are instructed in Science, Health and Social Studies in addition to Art, Language Arts, and Arithmetic. The purpose of the handbook remains focused on providing connections to space science information and principles broadly across the curriculum, but prompts students to consider not only their own relationship to outer space, but the role and purpose of the U.S. space program in world affairs. For instance, students debate the wisdom of spending money on space travel research.

The tone of the lesson plans conveys the sense that space science is more challenging than entertaining, and the tone remains scholarly and calm while it promotes the potentially dramatic outcomes of space travel for humanity. One lesson asks students to research and report on the dangers of space travel; another to scientifically demonstrate the difficulties of hitting a moving target from a moving object. These activities help students at a higher maturity level realize that the space age is not only personally significant, but that they can help solve scientific challenges related to an entirely new human endeavor.

Two girls demonstrate what they have learned about life-support systems on spacecraft, ca. 1965. The Lincoln Plan, page 145.

Multimodal Learning

Science communicators convey scientific information in visual, auditory and tactile modalities that stimulate human learning. They design interactive programs that teach scientific principles through touching or tinkering along with traditional visual and auditory channels. Multimodal learning helps students synthesize knowledge, leverage their learning abilities, and facilitates problem solving.3

Students at year 8 maturity level prepare a demonstration and presentation about the future prospects of the NASA Apollo program, ca. 1965. The Lincoln Plan, page 49.

There are historical examples of science educators from the 1960s using similar methods in The Lincoln Plan space science handbook. We’ve already shown that students observe and listen to a teacher write space-related definitions on a large paper pad. They draw and paint rockets. Year six maturity level students could listen to music as they pretend to be rockets zooming to space. They could taste food that has been prepared and then blended together and squeezed through a bag to simulate eating like an astronaut. They could conduct experiments that teach that gravity is not needed to swallow, such as eating a cracker while standing on their head or drinking milk through a straw while upside down. Children at year 8 maturity level could build informational displays about the Apollo program with models they constructed and give oral reports based on news stories and classroom sources that they reviewed. Students at year 11 maturity level could use mathematics to study aerospace principles and calculate things like ground speed for an aircraft dealing with various head and tail winds.

Students at the maturity level of year 11 work on a space-related math problem. The Lincoln Plan, page 138.

This brief review of space science education from the 1960s for grades K-6 shows that the methods and modalities that science communications professionals rely on were used in an early form during the 1960s. Science communications also take place in the formal education setting and a more interdisciplinary approach to the field could be improved by including a historical approach to science communication in all of its many forms.

References

1 Lincoln Nebraska Public Schools. (1966). Introducing Children to Space. The Lincoln Plan. U.S. Government Printing Office.

2 Lewenstein, B. V. (2015). Identifying what matters: Science education, science communication, and democracy. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 52(2), 253-262. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21201. 253-254.

3 Bradley, Norman Douglas, “Doug” Lecture. UCSB. April 8, 2021.

4 Bradley, Norman Douglas, “Doug”. Lecture. UCSB. April 22, 2021.

Knowledge Infrastructures in the History of Science Education – Part 2/2

Posted on December 14, 2020 by Christina Roberts

Robust Networks Emerge

I begin excavating Knowledge Infrastructures (KIs) in the history of NASA’s science education program by reviewing a week-long conference held in Los Angeles in June, 1964. The conference, “Science Education in the Space Age” was sponsored by NASA in cooperation with the U.S. Office of Education (USOE) and was hosted by NASA’s Western Operations Office. The committee in charge of the conference included representatives from NASA, the USOE and their Council of State Science Supervisors, members of the Subcommittee on Institutes and Conferences of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Cooperative Committee on the Teaching of Science and Mathematics (AAAS), and of course, many of the educators employed as Spacemobilers.

The conferenced allowed attendees to establish relations and build mutual assistance in space science education and to learn about emerging science education problems. The State Science Supervisors learned about NASA’s objectives, programs and educational services. NASA personnel and Spacemobile educators learned what the formal educators thought it was appropriate for them to undertake in science education. The different groups proposed a collaborative environment in which to configure NASA”s role in teaching space science. They supported NASA’s effort to improve and increase the public understanding of science overall.

By 1964, several of the NASA field centers began regional coordination of the Spacemobile program in concert with the Department of Education’s State Science Officers. There were also contractor companies who managed the Spacemobile program after the Franklin Institute’s inaugural year. The contractor companies hired, trained, and deployed the Spacemobilers to communities often suggested by the State Science Officers. Educational Services Corp., a Washington, D.C. company, took over from the Franklin Institute in 1962, and Unitec Corporation from Maryland took over in 1965/1966 until the the Spacemobile contract was awarded to Oklahoma State University beginning in 1968. The Spacemobile contract remained with Oklahoma State University for several decades, with a brief interlude in the 1970s at Chico State University in California. The Spacemobile employees were contractors, not government employees.

It is apparent that there were robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions functioning along with the nascent Education Division. They crossed institutional boundaries to mutually generate, share and maintain scientific knowledge about outer space. The 1964 conference is where individuals, established science popularizers and federal organizations came together. The subsequent reorganization and focus of NASA’s education program shows that they were willing to adapt routines and shared norms and practices to mutually improve science education.

Co-Production

The 1964 conference discourse shows that science education stakeholders reacted to the pressures of the space age by promoting and maintaining a scientifically-oriented society. We learn about the motivations, values and world view of the NASA Educational Division administrators who perceived that the space age accelerated educational problems, but also provided opportunities for improvement. The popularity of the space program maximized the so-called mid-century knowledge revolution. Administrators touted the economic benefits of higher education to justify NASA’s interest in space science education.

The Education Division understood that space science was popular. They intended to merge popularization efforts with formal and informal education to improve the general state of science education and to increase the status of space science in the American school system. They believed that the developing space age had social repercussions that required well-educated students to play their part in a rapidly changing world.

Co-production is a Science and Technology Studies (STS) theory that investigates and formulates how scientific knowledge “embeds and is embedded in social practices, identities, norms, conventions, discourses, instruments and institutions.” (Jasanoff, 2004). There are four site of co-production referenced by Jasanoff that are also represented in the Spacemobile program. Educators of all types were involved in “making identities, making institutions, making discourses, and making representations.” I suggest that the NASA Education Division wanted to create scientifically trained students and teachers (identities), raise the stature of NASA and the division itself (institutions), create social discourses about the relevance of space science, and represent NASA as the educational authority for all things related to space.

Demonstration

Lecture-demonstrations were the main event of each Spacemobile visit, as well as a vital part of teacher training workshops and summer institutes.

A typical 1960s-era display of models demonstrating NASA missions conducted with rockets, satellites, spacecraft and aircraft. Image courtesy of Aerospace Education Services Program (AESP) Archive.

In Science and Technology Studies, demonstrations are one of the tools of the co-production of scientific and social orders. Sociologist Claude Rosental studies how democracies use public demonstrations to manage public affairs. He explains that demos (a certain type of demonstration) are used across many domains in economic life, politics and science and technology. Demos induce people to make investments, purchase products, and support public spending. Demonstrations have rhetorical power in their materiality and are viewed as sources of credibility and persuasion. They are also spectacles and entertainment, and performances that teach viewers and provide evidence. Demonstrations exhibit technological devices or conduct experiments in front of an audience. The demonstrator usually follows a script to show that the science or technology is feasible or valuable. Demonstrations also show that public spending produces results. (Rosental, 2013). The lecture-demonstrations conducted by the Spacemobile educators had all of these features.

Students observe a model demonstration, c. 1965. Image courtesy of Aerospace Education Services Program (AESP) Archive.

In fact, the Spacemobile program pre-dates Rosental’s discussion of NASA’s later online public demonstration of the Alpha project, a collaborative software program. He explains that the Alpha demos attempted to build credit with the public and the educational community after the Challenger disaster. The project used demos, lesson plans, and educational software to increase public support for the agency. Rosental notes that “using demos for educational purposes induces specific relationships between the public…and science and technology institutions like NASA…”. My research about Spacemobile shows that NASA already had this kind of experience in the analog world. They relied on public demonstrations to build and create relationships through the Spacemobile program for at least two decades prior to doing it online.

Model rocket launches were popular Spacemobile activities that directly involved students, c. 1970. Image courtesy of Aerospace Education Services Program (AESP) Archive.

The Stack

Recall sociologist Benjamin Bratton’s research about the internet Stack. He views stacks as a kind of platform of interoperable layers with generic, extensible and pliable properties that provide modular recombinancy within synthetic planes (52). Bratton describes platforms as generative mechanisms that set terms of participation through fixed protocols. They grow and strengthen by mediating unplanned interactions. They can be technical or institutional models. (44). The platform-as-stack instructs my thinking about how NASA interacted with so many layers of public science education.

NASA’s interoperable layers meant that it could recombine as needed into a new form of science educator. As noted in the first blog, NASA was also a science popularizer at public events and on television and radio. The Education Division also generated participation through fixed protocols such as auditorium lectures, teacher training workshops, and summer conferences. It generated activity beyond its own synthetic lecture-circuit planes to enroll state boards of education, school districts and educators into curriculum production projects that sometimes took several years to reach fruition.

This is the cover of a K-6 curriculum handbook created by Lincoln Nebraska public schools and NASA, c. 1965.
This is a K-12 curriculum example from the Massachusetts Department of Education’s 1968 collaboration with NASA’s Education Division.

Bratton suggests that actors are drawn into a common infrastructure by a simultaneously centralized and decentralized platform that distributes autonomy at the edges of its network, while standardizing conditions of communication from center to periphery. (46), NASA is easily considered a platform because of its “cultural, political, and economic” function in American life. It was historically central to the development of the space age, and tried to standardize space science pedagogy. The agency’s role in the education system was masked by the autonomy it provided to its educational network, to whom it seamlessly provided supplemental science curriculum resources and pedagogical training. NASA positioned itself neutrally as an assistant to formal public education. Bratton notes that platforms are often “formally neutral” but retain their own ideological strategies for organizing their publics.

Teachers became one of the Education Division’s most important ‘publics’. Ken Wiggins gives a talk at a teacher training workshop, c. 1970. Image courtesy of
Aerospace Education Services Program (AESP) Archive.

In fact, the Education Division really claimed to be neutral at the 1964 conference. Frederick Tuttle, the Deputy Director of the Educational Programs Division, said “We have no point of view to espouse, no bill of goods to sell.” Rather, he said that all the members of the conference committee had “one all-embracing purpose” to lead all of the participants to “a greater understanding of space science developments and of space science education, Grades 1 through 16.”

This brief excavation of the Knowledge Infrastructures (KIs) of NASA’s historical Spacemobile shows that the concepts of co-production, the sociology of public demonstration and the stack are productive research tools in the history of science education.

References

“Mission And History”. 2020. American Association For The Advancement Of Science. https://www.aaas.org/mission.

Bratton, Benjamin H. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016.

“Council Of State Science Supervisors – History”. 2020. Cosss.Org. http://cosss.org/history.

Jasanoff, Sheila. “The Idiom of Co-Production.” In States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge, 2004

Oklahoma State University College of Education. “Hall of Fame 2012. Dr. Kenneth J. Wiggins.” June 6, 2012. Youtube.Com. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELrgqWBGu6A&feature=youtu.be.

“OSU/NASA Education Projects: PDC Conferences”. 2020. Nasaweb.Nasa.Okstate.Edu. http://nasaweb.nasa.okstate.edu/AESP_40th

Messer, Todd and Steve Garber, and SA 10.08.04. 2020. “Challenger STS 51-L Accident January 28, 1986”. History.Nasa.Gov. https://history.nasa.gov/sts51l.html.

Rosental, Claude. “Toward a Sociology of Public Demonstrations.” Sociological Theory 31, no. 4 (2013), 343-365. doi:10.1177/0735275113513454

Knowledge Infrastructures – A Toolkit

Posted by Christina Roberts on December 7, 2020.

Introduction

My suggested toolkit about Knowledge Infrastructures is inspired by reading, thinking and research conducted during the Fall 2020 English 238 Critical Infrastructure Studies class. The class was taught synchronously on Zoom by Distinguished Professor Alan Liu of the UCSB English Department.

Professor Liu described the purpose of the class and provided a snapshot of the various types of infrastructural forms to be considered. He wrote, ” This course explores the hypothesis that critical infrastructure studies is one of today’s renewed forms of cultural criticism and media theory. Looking at the world from the point of view of infrastructure — and of the people (and creatures) who at once shape and are shaped by infrastructure — allows us to ask different questions than those posed in the frame of “culture” or “media.” We’ll think broadly about the things, platforms, passageways, containers, and gates — material, mediated, and symbolic — that structure who we are in relation to the world and each other.”

One of the things we learned about the field of Critical Infrastructure Studies is that more historical cases are needed. As an historian-in-training my toolkit is historically grounded. Even though much of the Critical Infrastructure Studies literature is about recent transitions from bricks and mortar to virtual infrastructures, I use the theory of Knowledge Infrastructures to help organize and describe my historical research project about the National Aerospace and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) traveling science education program, the Spacemobile, c. 1961-2015. See my blog for more information.

The Research Problem

The issue with a highly decentralized organization such as NASA, when paired with the decentralized social function of public education, is that it is hard to get a comprehensive overview of how it all worked. To date, I have identified at least four layers of networked interest groups involved in the history of NASA’s Spacemobile program. From a historical perspective any one of the groups would be a rich subject to explore. But the fact is, the Spacemobile program represents the crossroads where they met to increase and improve science education during the 1960s.

These groups worked independently of each other to improve and increase science education, but sometimes they also collaborated with one another. The Spacemobile program represents both aspects of this dynamic.

It is clear to me that what was at stake in this historical time period was the distribution and reception of new scientific knowledge produced, facilitated and shepherded by many affinity groups. The theory of Knowledge Infrastructures is therefore an excellent organizing tool for my research.

Knowledge Infrastructures

The key source for conceptualizing Knowledge Infrastructures is Edwards, et. al. (2013), who suggest that Knowledge Infrastructures are robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds. They include individuals organizations, routines and shared norms and practices. The historical background of information distribution (cyberinfrastructure) is discussed briefly in Bowker, et. al. (2010) and Downey (2002) provides a historical example of information distribution via the telegraph system.

Bowker, G. C., P. N. Edwards, and S. J. Jackson. “The Long Now of Cyberinfrastructure.” In World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010.

Downey, G. Telegraph Messenger Boys: Labor, Technology and Geography, 1850-1950. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Edwards, Paul N., Steven J. Jackson, Melissa K. Chalmers, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Christine L. Borgman, David Ribes, Matt Burton, and Scout Calvert. 2013. “Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and Research Challenges”. Deepblue.Lib.Umich.Edu. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/20

Sociology of Public Demonstration

Rosental (2013) is the key conceptual source for the sociology of public demonstration in that democracies use public demonstrations to manage or direct public affairs related to science. Laurent (2011) identifies “technologies of democracy” that organize public participation in science with the goal of treating public problems. Shapin and Shaffer (2011) provide a classic case study of historical debates over demonstration and experimentation in the history of science.

Laurent, Brice. “Technologies of Democracy: Experiments and Demonstrations.” Science and Engineering Ethics 17, no. 4 (2011), 649-666. doi:10.1007/s11948-011-9303-1.

Rosental, Claude. “Toward a Sociology of Public Demonstrations.” Sociological Theory 31, no. 4 (2013), 343-365. doi:10.1177/0735275113513454.

Shapin, Steven, and Simon Schaffer. Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.

The Idiom of Co-Production

Jasanoff (2004) is a key source for conceptualizing co-production of the natural and social orders with respect to science and technology. Dennis (2004) provides a science history case study of co-production from the mid-twentieth century and Byrnes (1994) provides a classic example of NASA shaping the political order and in turn being shaped by it.

Byrnes, Mark E. Politics and Space: Image Making by NASA. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994

Dennis, Michael Aaron. “Reconstructing sociotechnical order: Vannevar Bush and US Science policy.” In States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge, 2004.

Jasanoff, Sheila. States of Knowledge: The Co-Production of Science and the Social Order. London: Routledge, 2004.

The Stack

Lastly, I include a nod to the concept of The Stack. Even though I do not discuss internet infrastructures in my project, the layered modularity of The Stack evocatively instructs my perception of the layers of science education infrastructure that supported and interfaced with the Spacemobile program. Some instrumental quotes from Bratton:

“Stacks are a kind of platform that also happens to be structured through vertical interoperable layers, both hard and soft, global and local. Its properties are generic, extensible, and pliable; it provides modular recombinancy but only within the bounded set of its synthetic planes…”. (52)

“Paths between layers are sutured by specific protocols for sending and receiving information to each other, up and down, that do the work of translating between unlike technologies gathered at each plateau. In this sense, each layer can then simulate and countersimulate the operations of the other…”. (67-68)

Bratton, Benjamin H. The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016.

People, Artifacts, and Institutions

Here I provide a few documents and images that represent the way people, artifacts and institutions worked together in or near the Spacemobile program to generate, share and maintain specific knowledge about outer space with students and teachers in the early 1960s.

Documents

“Science Education in the Space Age”, Conference Proceedings, Los Angeles, June 1964. The conference brought the NASA Education Division, the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Education’s State Science Supervisors and the American Association for the Advancement of Science together for a week to determine how best to include NASA’s offerings in science education.

“Teaching to Meet the Challenges of the Space Age” A Handbook in Aerospace Education for Elementary School Teachers from 1963. This is a curricular product of collaboration between the NASA Education Division, the New York Board of Education, and public school teachers in the Bronx.

“Aerospace Curriculum Resource Guide” from the Massachusetts Department of Education in cooperation with NASA. This is a comprehensive education plan for teaching space science and training teachers. Note on page viii the Advisory Committee and Education Consultants involved, on page ix the NASA resource personnel and the chapter Writers. Note also the Appendix listing which refers to Teacher Training. Sample schedules and topics for institutes and workshops are provided in the Appendix.

Images

One of the original Spacemobile vehicles, after some time spent on the road, c. 1965. Courtesy of CollectSpace.com
A map from the 1960s of NASA’s field centers, some of whom were regional overseers of the Spacemobile program. Courtesy of NASA.
This is ‘Spacemobiler’ Roscoe Monroe, holding a model spacecraft while speaking to children outside of Unitec Corporation, c 1965. Courtesy of OSU/NASA Education Projects.

Knowledge Infrastructure in the History of Science Education -Part 1 of 2

Posted November 29, 2020

By Christina Roberts

In this post I introduce my project about NASA’s Spacemobile program. At the end I identify concepts from Critical Infrastructures Studies that will be useful in my research. My next post will describe Knowledge Infrastructures theory as it relates to my research project.

Spacemobile – Traveling Science Education

The Spacemobile program was born from the popular museum science tradition at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, PA in 1961. The Franklin Institute pitched the traveling space science program to NASA, which gave them the inaugural one-year contract. It was so successful that the Franklin Institute decided it could not keep up with the demand. The Spacemobile contract was awarded to several different entities over the years, but was most notably managed for NASA by Oklahoma State University for several decades.

Image from the Franklin Institute’s newsletter, Institute News, May 1961.

By 1964, NASA’s Educational Programs and Services developed a more formal space science education program that consisted of teacher pre-service and in-service training and numerous curriculum supplements. NASA Centers collaborated with the U.S. Office of Education’s State Science Supervisors and various public universities and state colleges to administer the program. The formal name of the Spacemobile program was Aeronautics Education Services Program (AESP), and it lasted for over fifty years. A link to the AESP archive is found here.

NASA Education – Growing Pains

My project examines NASA’s dual role as science popularizer and educator. The agency’s actions were based on the 1958 Space Act which mandated that NASA “contribute materially to…the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space” and “to provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof.”  Informing the public also required educating them about space science.

When the agency first opened, it had a Public Information Office that communicated agency activities to the public. NASA administrators soon realized that Public Information and Education needed to separate. The organization charts below show how the dual nature of the agency evolved into separate departments, which potentially subsumed the educational aspect beneath the publicity aspect of of NASA’s mandate. The rapid reorganization of the Education Division encompasses the growth of the Spacemobile program from 2 units in 1961 to dozens of units, each crewed by two educators, during the 1960s.

This organization chart from June 1961 shows the Office of Public Information in the right corner, which initially housed press relations, public information and educational activities at NASA.
In November 1961, a new Public Affairs Office appears. Below it are the newly separated Office of Public Information and the Office of Technical Information and Education.
By March, 1962 the Office of Educational Programs and Services became a separate division of the Public Affairs office.

NASA as a Science Educator

The Education Division was staffed by educators, not technicians, entertainers, or actors. Unlike many other contemporaneous popularization efforts on television and radio, NASA required that public education be provided by experienced science educators.

This is a job advertisement for a Spacemobile lecturer-demonstrator, in the Boston Globe, January 26, 1969.

It can be strange to think of NASA as a science educator because for several years the space program was portrayed as glamorous and exciting, a perfect vehicle for space science popularization.

Even the models and props used by the Spacemobile educators represented cutting edge space science and technology that connected attendees directly to the high-tech image of the space age. Considering how entertaining the shows were, it may be difficult for us to view them as educational.

A spacemobile lecturer stands behind a table full of space age models, speaking to an audience of schoolchildren sitting on a gymnasium floor in the 1960s.
A typical lecture-demonstration at a school auditorium, c. 1965

Additionally, the educational content of the program was designed for easy and informal consumption in public spaces, lecture halls, school auditoriums and radio and television shows, and more formally in classrooms.  Several of the early Spacemobilers also staffed the World of Science NASA exhibit at the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, WA. Below is a photo of the entrance to the U.S. Science Exhibit with a model of the Mariner space probe, launched that summer.

(Image courtesy of the Museum of History and Industry)

In every instance of public education, NASA tried to improve the public understanding of the science utilized to launch rockets and maintain satellites in orbit. NASA educators hoped that children, especially, would be drawn to science at an early age, eagerly partake of science education at all levels of schooling and potentially increase the national stock of scientists available in the employment pipeline. NASA administrators suggested that people who understood science were better equipped as American citizens to make responsible choices and decisions about life in a dynamic and rapidly changing space age. 

Traveling Science Educators in the 1950s

NASA was not the first federal agency to take science education to the people. Programs were conducted in the 1950s by the National Science Foundation, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the USAF – Civil Air Patrol.

A National Science Foundation report on educational activities for 1957-1958. Traveling science education had federal support before the Spacemobile was conceived.
The caption describes the collaboration between the National Science Foundation and the Atomic Energy Commission, whose goal was to improve science teaching and education in American high schools.

Public Aviation Science Education

The cover of a 1957 Civil Air Patrol educational workbook titled Aviation and You. Federally supported corporations were involved in supplemental educational activities prior to the space age.

The accompanying worksheet for Aviation and You, an educational workbook from 1957.

Many of the early Spacemobilers were experienced public science educators who worked for these other programs in the 1950s and also appeared in regional public television and radio educational science programming. They were adept at increasing the public understanding of general, atomic and aeronautic science. Moving their skills and experience over to the NASA Education Division by the 1960s was a good fit. (See the Aerospace Education Services Program Archive “Writings” for examples.)

NASA’s Education Style – Supplement Curriculum and Train Teachers

My research shows that the Spacemobile program was only one of NASA’s tools to introduce space science into the nation’s science education infrastructure. Supplemental educational materials and immersive teacher training were NASA’s forte. The agency did not beat the drum for education reform so much as show educators that they and their curricula had to catch up to the space age. NASA then provided the tools and training to make it happen, such as this handbook of lesson plans from 1963, “Teaching to Meet the Challenges of the Space Age.”

A teacher training workshop in the 1970s

History of General and Science Education

Even though NASA doesn’t present itself as a science education reformer, science curriculum reform was a major trend in the 1950s and 1960s for many reasons. Historians cover the history of social, political, and cultural influences on educational trends of the twentieth century.1 The historians cited here have framed the issues as a federal versus local battle over reform; they have emphasized periods of significant educational change after Word War II when scientists tried to take charge of science education, after the Soviet Sputnik shock, during the Civil Rights era, and as a result of the expansion of federal education funding during the Cold War.

Historians have studied NASA’s Public Affairs, but haven’t paid much attention to how NASA’s space popularization manifested in the nation’s science curriculum. Like other twentieth-century science popularizers, NASA tried to improve public science understanding and increase the scientific workforce for their own purposes. NASA also professed contemporary views about science and citizenship and the role of scientific and technological expertise in national life. To date, my research is based on digitized primary sources that include conference proceedings, speeches, newsletters, educator memoirs and papers, lesson plans, and educator resources. My contribution will construct a historical narrative about NASA’s role as not only a science popularizer, but as a science educator.

Where Knowledge Infrastructures Come In

An obstacle to research in education history is the decentralized nature of the American education system itself, because states have historically determined their own education systems. The federal government was largely hands-off until the 1955 Brown V Board of Education decision in 1955 and the 1958 National Defense Education Act. NASA’s instinct to enlist the State Education Officers was potentially quite innovative. NASA probably also took advantage of schools being more receptive to federal involvement through increased spending on all things science, a historically relevant trend during the Cold War.

In addition to the NASA/State school system dynamic, many other interested parties were involved such as educators, scientists, parents and children. Then there were networks of professional educator organizations, federal science agencies, and popular and public science boosters who all wanted to improve science education. Thus, the historic picture is much more complicated than the Spacemobile program initially signifies.

This is where the definition of Knowledge Infrastructures (KIs) becomes helpful. I take my cues from a workshop conference report from 2012, “Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and Research Challenges.” KIs are robust networks of people, artifacts, and institutions that generate, share, and maintain specific knowledge about the human and natural worlds. KIs include individuals, organizations, routines, shared norms and practices.

For now, I leave the reader to ponder the definition of Knowledge Infrastructures. I will return to excavate the KIs involved in NASA science education, and explain the relevance of other concepts from Critical Infrastructure Studies such as “the stack” and “co-production” and sociological theory about public demonstrations.

References

1Five commendable books about the period include American Education, A History by Urban, Wagoner, and Gaither (2019), Scientists in the Classroom: The Cold War Reconstruction of American Science Education by John L. Rudolph (2002), More Than Science and Sputnik: The National Defense Education Act of 1958 by Wayne J. Urban (2010), Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley by Margaret Pugh O’Mara (2005), and finally Building the Federal Schoolhouse: Localism and the American Education State by Douglas S. Reed (2014).

“Aerospace Education Texts And Workbooks, 1956-1958 · Civil Air Patrol National History Program”. 2020. History.Cap.Gov. https://history.cap.gov/document/180.

“”Atoms For Peace” Mobile Exhibits”. 2020. COLD WAR: L.A.. http://www.coldwarla.com/atoms-for-peace-mobile-exibits.html.

Edwards, Paul N., Steven J. Jackson, Melissa K. Chalmers, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Christine L. Borgman, David Ribes, Matt Burton, and Scout Calvert. 2013. “Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks And Research Challenges”. Deepblue.Lib.Umich.Edu. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/20

Messer, Todd, and Steve Garber, and SA 10.08.04. 2020. “NASA Organizational Charts”. History.Nasa.Gov. https://history.nasa.gov/orgcharts/orgcharts.html#1958.

Museum of History and Industry. “NASA Exhibit, Seattle World’s Fair, 1962”. 2020. Digitalcollections.Lib.Washington.Edu. https://digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu

NASA Space Act of 1958. “National Aeronautics And Space Act Of 1958 (Unamended) “. 2020. History.Nasa.Gov. https://history.nasa.gov/spaceact.html.

“National Science Foundation FY 1957 Annual Report”. 2020. Nsf.Gov. https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1957/annualrep

“OSU/NASA Education Projects: Aerospace Education Services Program (AESP) Archive”. 2020. Nasaweb.Nasa.Okstate.Edu. http://nasaweb.nasa.okstate.edu/index.htm