This article describes how two inquiry games promoted student science skills in a museum setting while minimizing demands on teachers, fostering collaboration, and incorporating chaperones. Students who played these games engaged in more scientific inquiry behaviors than did students in control groups.
This chapter discusses learning through the manipulation of three-dimensional objects. The opportunity to touch and interact with objects is helpful for young children as they attempt to understand abstract concepts and processes. How might parents guide children in coming to understand the complex and abstract symbolic nature of representational objects?
One issue of interest to practitioners and researchers in science centres concerns what meanings visitors are making from their interactions with exhibits and how they make sense of these experiences. The research reported in this study is an exploratory attempt, therefore, to investigate this process by using video clips and still photographs of schoolchildren’s interactions with science centre exhibits. These stimuli were used to facilitate reflection about those interactions in follow‐up interviews. The data for this study were 63 small group interviews with UK primary school children (129
After establishing an argument for attention to the role of beauty and aesthetics in science and scientific inquiry, this paper reviews literature in four areas that contributes to an understanding of a "scientific-aesthetic" space: (1) beauty in ideas and their form; (2) beauty in wonder, awe, and sublime; (3) beauty as it relates to cosmology and understanding God's design, and; (4) beauty in experience with science and scientific ideas. Following this, research exploring connections between aesthetics and science, including related conversations like interest, out-of-school transfer, and
This article explores analogy as a communicative tool used by parents to relate children's past experiences to unfamiliar concepts. Two studies explored how similarity comparisons and relational analogies were used in parent-child conversations about science topics. In Study 1, 98 family groups including 4- to 9- year-olds explored two science museum exhibits. Parents suggested comparisons and overtly mapped analogical relations. In Study 2, 48 parents helped first- and third-grade children understand a homework-like question about infections. Parents suggested relational analogies and overtly
This article offers findings from a learning sciences-informed evaluation of a nanoscience and nanotechnology exhibition called Nano-Aventura (NanoAdventure), based on four interactive-collaborative games and two narrated videos. This traveling exhibition was developed in Brazil by the Museu Exploratório de Ciências for children and teenagers (ages 9 to 14), but it was also open to the general public. We report findings from a mixed-methods study incorporating questionnaires completed by visiting school children (n=814) and the general public (n=338) and interviews with school visitors (n=23)
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Museu Exploratorio de CienciasSandra MurrielloMarcelo Knobel
What meaning visitors make from their interactions with science center exhibits— and how they do so — is an issue of enduring interest in the field of learning in informal contexts. In order to explore what resources schoolchildren bring to bear in making meaning, this study used video clips taken during school trips to prompt reflection in stimulated recall interviews. The results indicated that students utilized their existing science understandings to interpret and explain their interactions with exhibits. Such findings provide evidence for the educative value of the experience as well as
In this paper we present a way to study science learning on a discursive level in a teaching activity designed for a museum of natural history. We used here an analysis of practical epistemologies. The method, which allows a description of students' meaning making in socially shared practices, has been used previously to analyze learning in various school practices. The data presented in this study proceeded from a videotaped activity of the educational program for student teachers at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. The activity utilizes a variety of dioramas with preserved
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Swedish Museum of Natural HistoryJesus PiquerasKarim HamzaSusanna Edvall
This essay begins by considering museum studies in relationship to curriculum studies and new museology. The author notes that traditional museum and school learning modes have focused more on measurement than meaning, while curriculum studies and new museology urge a broader exploration of the social purposes of education. Drawing on the work of Myles Horton and the Highlander Folk School, popular education is offered as a model for exhibitors and other museum educators. The essay closes with examples from an exhibit project by graduate students. This section shares analyses of traditional
This is a poster that was presented at the 2014 AISL PI meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a project that takes advantage of the charismatic nature of arachnids to engage the public in scientific inquiry, dialogue, and exploration.
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University of Nebraska LincolnEileen Hebets
This paper discusses three case studies – an exhibition on biodiversity, a hotel water conservation program, and a partnership between a nature center and urban public schools – to establish parameters for designing learning experiences that accommodate the varied worldviews and attitudes of learners. Positive outcomes occurred in all three cases, but could best be interpreted if sub-samples of participants were distinguished based on their readiness to embrace conservation messages. The studies demonstrated the limitations of narrowly defined learning outcomes as benchmarks for success or
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It discusses a project that connects rural, underserved youth and families in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho to STEM concepts important in sustainable building design.
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Palouse Discovery Science CenterKathleen RyanChristine BervanKathy DawesPatty McNamara