ABSTRACT
When, where, and how do people learn science? In response to this question, the
National Academy of Sciences report, “Learning Science in Informal Environ-
ments” (Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder, 2009) stressed the importance of
everyday experiences, designed spaces like museums and science centers, non-
school science education programs, and science media. The report built on an
array of scholarship attuned to science learning as a lifelong, often self-motivated
endeavor. The findings are not surprising. In all cases, we spend more of our lives
learning outside of classrooms and other formal learning institutions than we
do inside them (Gerber, Cavallo, & Marek, 2001). The situation is analogous
when we think about when, where, and why people engage public science. Often
the scholarly literature focuses on deliberation in related normative forums,
yet most of us engage science issues in ways (and in places) less structured and
more connected to circumstances of daily life (Barron, 2006; Falk, Storksdieck,
& Dierking, 2007). Indeed, in these less structured forums, what we do would
not often be considered “deliberation” at all by scholars. This is particularly
true for learning and engagement online, which can be easily understood as too
messy to be useful (Grabill & Pigg, 2012).
