Linking Scholarship and Practice: Narrative and Identity in Science

Neeley, Liz; Barker, Erin T.; Bayer, Skylar; Maktoufi, Reyhaneh; Wu, Kai; Zaringhalam, Maryam

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2020.00035

Cited by 19 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…The diverse skillsets among the MMM team facilitate an annual “SciComm spring training” for messaging to the public. Scientists learn to prioritize story-telling ( Neeley et al, 2020 ) and accessible accuracy in science communication ( Yong, 2010 ), and these techniques are more effective with audiences than the compounding obfuscation generated by pedantic attention to inaccessible precision, indecipherable jargon, and overwhelming comprehensiveness. Contributors to MMM gain visibility, a wider audience through new followers, and an expanded social media network.…”

Section: March Mammal Madnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Narrative-centered learning has important motivational benefits by promoting learner self-efficacy, interest, presence, and perception of control ( McQuiggan et al, 2008 ). Moreover, narrative-based educational activities enhance learning and memory by working within cultural frameworks and cognitive architecture ( Mott et al, 1999 ; Neeley et al, 2020 ). Due to computational demands of content processing, the effectiveness of narrative-based education is contingent on scientific information being integral to the story ( Fisch, 2000 ).…”

Section: Narrative Facilitates Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Additionally, children engage in ecological reasoning, referring to habitat relations when presented with pictures of biological species, though cultural differences likely shape children’s spontaneous reasoning about food chain relations and biological needs ( Medin and Bang, 2014 ). Notably, humans are characterized by a particularly extended period of juvenility ( Crittenden and Meehan, 2016 ) that involves substantial social learning via story-telling, a pedagogical approach disrupted in Western schooling practices ( Scalise Sugiyama, 2017 ; Neeley et al, 2020 ). Cross-culturally, children readily attend to learning from knowledgeable individuals (reviewed in Boyd et al, 2011 ; Kline, 2015 ).…”

Section: Human Adaptations At Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Moreover, although we routinely select cute, familiar, and dangerous mammals that appeal to content biases among children and adults, the inclusion of rare taxa and their ecosystems raises their visibility and familiarity for hundreds of thousands of students and the general public. By weaving together elements of the humanities and social sciences into the tournament, both in the delivery and design, March Mammal Madness models important approaches to science communication ( Bush et al, 2018 ; Neeley et al, 2020 ), scientific literacy ( Roth and Lee, 2002 ), and biodiversity conservation ( Bennett et al, 2017 ; Lenda et al, 2020 ). Importantly, by crafting stories of organisms and the rich details of their lives, and highlighting the exquisite work of well-known and emerging naturalists, March Mammal Madness contributes to a necessary “revitalization of natural history” ( Tewksbury et al, 2014 ) that fosters curiosity-driven learning ( Farris, 2020 ).…”

Section: Human Adaptations At Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

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March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

Hinde

Amorim

Brokaw

et al. 2021

eLife

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March Mammal Madness is a science outreach project that, over the course of several weeks in March, reaches hundreds of thousands of people in the United States every year. We combine four approaches to science outreach – gamification, social media platforms, community event(s), and creative products – to run a simulated tournament in which 64 animals compete to become the tournament champion. While the encounters between the animals are hypothetical, the outcomes rely on empirical evidence from the scientific literature. Players select their favored combatants beforehand, and during the tournament scientists translate the academic literature into gripping “play-by-play” narration on social media. To date ~1100 scholarly works, covering almost 400 taxa, have been transformed into science stories. March Mammal Madness is most typically used by high-school educators teaching life sciences, and we estimate that our materials reached ~1% of high-school students in the United States in 2019. Here we document the intentional design, public engagement, and magnitude of reach of the project. We further explain how human psychological and cognitive adaptations for shared experiences, social learning, narrative, and imagery contribute to the widespread use of March Mammal Madness.

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Section: March Mammal Madnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Narrative Facilitates Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Human Adaptations At Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Human Adaptations At Playmentioning

confidence: 99%

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March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

Hinde

Amorim

Brokaw

et al. 2021

eLife

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“…Stories commonly told about science convey a selective picture of the scientific enterprise as a predominantly white, Western endeavour, thus marginalising and erasing the contributions of others [Neeley et al, 2020]. Science communication is no exception to this rule [Orthia, 2020].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From the margins to the mainstream: deconstructing science communication as a white, Western paradigm

Finlay¹,

Raman²,

Rasekoala³

et al. 2021

JCOM

Self Cite

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In this commentary we are concerned with what mainstream science communication has neglected through cultural narrowness and ambient racism: other practitioners, missing audiences, unvalued knowledge, unrecognised practices. We explore examples from First Nations Peoples in the lands now known as Australia, from Griots in West Africa and from People's Science Movements in India to help us reimagine science communication. To develop meaningfully inclusive approaches to science communication, we argue there is an urgent need for the ‘mainstream’ to recognise, value and learn from science communication practices that are all too often seen as at ‘the margins’ of this field.

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Tactics of just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive scientific research

Kyonka,

Subramaniam

2024

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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The principles of social justice, equity, diversity, inclusion (JEDI) have received increasing attention in behavior analysis circles, but the conversation has largely centered on implications for applied behavior analysis practice and research. It may be less clear to researchers who conduct basic and translational research how JEDI principles can inform and inspire their work. This article synthesizes publications from behavior analysis and other scientific fields about tactics of JEDI‐informed research. We organized this scholarship across five stages of research from developing the research question to sharing findings and curated sources for an audience of behavioral science researchers. We discuss reflexive practice, representation, belongingness, participatory research, quantitative critical theory, and open science, among other topics. Some researchers may have already adopted some of the practices outlined, some may begin new practices, and some may choose to conduct experimental analyses of JEDI problems. Our hope is that those actions will be reinforced by the behavior analysis scientific community. We conclude by encouraging the leadership of this journal to continue to work toward the structural changes necessary to make the experimental analysis of behavior just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive.

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Linking Scholarship and Practice: Narrative and Identity in Science

Cited by 19 publications

References 46 publications

March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

March Mammal Madness and the power of narrative in science outreach

From the margins to the mainstream: deconstructing science communication as a white, Western paradigm

Tactics of just, equitable, diverse, and inclusive scientific research

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