We think you’ll likely agree that what we do in our field is exciting and rewarding—informal learning via participatory sciences opens up so many diverse opportunities for people to explore our world. This means it also opens up just as many diverse opportunities to support that exploration through career paths, from volunteer coordinator to university researcher.
Yet this flexible and wide range of potential professions means it can sometimes be challenging to identify career goals and the right learning to help you meet those goals. Our friends at the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC), alongside COSI’s Center for Research & Evaluation, Oregon State University’s STEM Research Center, and other partners, just released a new tool to help our field meet this challenge.
Professional Pathways in Informal STEM Learning (ISL) is a suite of tools that supports professional learning and career development for anyone who works in ISL, whether they are just starting their careers or leading an institution. Three free tools make up Pathways:
- A Framework that identifies the skills and knowledge (i.e., competencies) identified by ISL professionals as being important to their daily work, whether it’s grant writing, exhibit development, or welcoming visitors.
- A Self-Assessment that helps you reflect on which competencies you use in your work and which you’d like to develop and/or finetune.
- A Learning Plan that guides you in identifying your professional development goals and a path for how to reach them.
Lastly, a hand-picked selection of resources—including professional organizations, articles, online courses, and more—provides further support.
Informal learning is an important component of participatory science projects. How you describe your project, how you recruit, train, and retain volunteers, and how you share the results of your science outcomes all can benefit from lessons learned from the informal learning world. Having access to the ISL Pathways framework, competencies, and resource guides to help you develop these skills will only strengthen your project team, volunteer experience, and science outcomes.
We hope you will explore and apply Pathways and let us know what you think.
