OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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Shawn Rowe

Submitted by simsk on Fri, 04/27/2012 - 2:01pm
Shawn Rowe
STEM
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: 
  • Free-choice learning outside of school settings, specifically how choice is constrained, structured, shaped etc, by language, activity and settings.
  • Investigating how talk and activity work together to help people make sense of what they see in history and science museums
Biographical Info
Biography: 

Shawn's background is applied linguistics (that is, studying how humans learn languages) and developmental psychology in education, specifically the cultural historical activity theory of Vygotsky. Most of his work is with museums, both history museums and science museums looking at family group interactions and at how exhibitions are structured to support or undermine certain kinds of learning. His Sea Grant Extension position combines academic work on free-choice learning with practice-based research in the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Visitor Center. He also works closely with graduate students in the Free-Choice Science Learning Ph.D. and M. S. programs as well as in the Environmental Sciences and Marine Resource Management programs at OSU.

Degrees

  • Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
  • M.S., Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL.
  • B.A., Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA