The museum is a physical setting that visitors usually freely choose to enter. The physical context for all museum visits (Falk and Dierking, 1992) includes the architecture and "feel" of the building as well as the objects and exhibits on display. A significant percentage of museum research has considered how visitors respond to the physical context, at both the macrolevel of visitor pathways, orientation, and museum fatigue and the microlevel of exhibit label font size and content. As museums continually strive to communicate better with their publics, a relevant physical context concern is
GLOBAL WARMING: UNDERSTANDING THE FORECAST. American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY (May 15, 1992 - January 19, 1993); Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County (April 3 - July 25, 1993); Carnegie Science Center, Pittsburgh, PA (September 24,1993 - February 13, 1994); Denver Museum of Natural History (November 24, 1994 - March 26, 1995); St. Louis Science Center (May 26 - October 15, 1995); National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC (December 15, 1995 - May 5, 1996).
Millions of people visit science museums every year (Kimche, 1978; Koran & Dierking-Shafter, 1982). Accordingly, a great deal has been written in the last few years about hte value of out-of-school learning experiences, museum experiences in particular, for enhancing scientific literacy (c.f. Kimche, 1978; Koran & Baker, 1978; Tressel, 1980; Falk, 1982a). In this paper, [the authors] will discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses of museums as agents for science learning.
Every year, millions of people stream through museums--young people and old people--people with varying degrees of education, people alone and in groups. How can museums best serve this diverse audience? One kind of service that museums try to provide is education. Unlike schools, which have age-graded classes and compulsory attendance, museums come face to face with the realities of "free-choice" learning. These realities ensure that predicting what and how visitors learn--let alone if they learn--will be very difficult. One useful index of visitor behavior in a museum becomes an important
A study to assess the impact of school field trips on attitudes, behavior, and learning was conducted with 196 third and fifth grade children. Half the children went on an all-day field trip to a nature center to learn about the biology of trees; the other half were taught the same lesson outside their classroom during their regular science period. As measured by pre- and posttests, field experiences resulted in significant immediate learning and 30-day retention for all groups. Observational measures revealed that student behavior varied as a function of age and environmental context. A model
Reports effects of an outdoor field trip on learning within the context of a community-based Summery Ecology Program for children between 7 and 13 years of age. Results include the finding that novel environments are poor settings for imposed task learning when compared with familiar environments.
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W. Wade MartinJohn H FalkJohn D. Balling
Discusses the objectives of Outdoor Biology Instructional Strategies (OBIS), one aspect of the program (lawn communities) and the evaluation of this activity. Includes resultant recommendations. The evaluation criteria are suggested as a model to be used in either designing or in evaluating curricula.
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University of California-BerkeleyJohn H Falk
Both metacognitive and associative models have been proposed to account for children’s strategy discovery and use. Models based on only metacognitive or only associative mechanisms cannot entirely account for the observed mix of variability and constraint revealed by recent microgenetic studies of children’s strategy change. We propose a new approach where metacognitive and associative mechanisms interact in a competitive negotiation. This approach provides the flexibility to model the observed variability and constraint.
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Kevin CrowleyJeff SchragerRobert Siegler
Tourism and leisure patterns are changing in the 21st century; increasing numbers of people view leisure and tourism as an opportunity to expand their understanding of themselves and their world. A research model is described herein that utilizes the construct of identity-related visit motivations as a tool for understanding tourists' visits to free-choice learning settings such as aquariums, coastal preserves, and whale-watching cruises. The model could have important implications for both future tourism research as well as improved tourism practice.
Zoos, aquariums and ecotourism experiences have the potential to positively impact visitors’ awareness, appreciation and actions in relation to the wildlife they encounter and the environment in general. This paper presents findings from a three-year study of the impacts of wildlife tourism experiences on visitors’ environmental learning.
Despite originally being almost exclusively focused on the school context, the National Science Education Standards (NSES) emerged as an amazingly relevant document for the informal context as well. All four of the Standards—Teaching Standards, Content and Inquiry Standards, Professional Development Standards and Assessment Standards—can, should, and as the chapters in this volume clearly attest, have been adapted for use in and by informal education institutions. The importance of debate and discussion, collaborative and shared responsibility for learning and data-based inquiries, and an
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Institute for Learning InnovationJohn H Falk
Free-choice learning, a new paradigm for the learning that youth and their families engage in outside school, can play an important role in the healthy development of youth, their families, and communities.