This research explores the perceptions, ideas, and understanding about science of the staff and adult visitors to an interactive science center. Data were collected from 63 staff and 102 visitors through interviews and a survey designed for the study. Visitors' perceptions about science were more limited than those of the Center staff, especially in terms of the nature of science. For example, after their visit, visitors were more likely to think that scientists always agree with each other, that scientific explanations are definite, and that science has the answers to all problems. Staff were more skeptical than visitors about scientists' ability to communicate their work clearly and that scientific knowledge would not be misused. Staff were more positive and confident about their own use of science than were visitors. The research suggests that visitors to the science center have a positive experience, most of them recognize a change in the way they think about science, and this change represents not just learning new knowledge, but a step toward a change in their relationship with science. This outcome is consistent with one of the major roles the staff saw for the Center: that visitors should become more aware of and interested in science, and leave feeling more comfortable with it. Although the staff were very enthusiastic about what they saw as a positive impact on visitors' science-related experience, many also felt there was room for improvement, especially in terms of how the nature of science was portrayed, and the representation of controversial aspects of science.

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This study investigated visitors' and staff's perceptions about the communication of science in a traditional natural history museum. The research examined the science-related outcomes for adult visitors and explored visitors' and staff's ideas of science and how it is portrayed at the museum. Data were collected by questionnaire and interview from 84 staff and 102 visitors. Both groups held positive views about science, its importance and the need for everyone to understand it.

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John: Lé onie and Gina's article represents an important initial effort to address the role that museums in general and natural history museums in particular play in supporting the public's understanding of science. Certainly it seems totally reasonable to use traditional views on science literacy-practical, civic, and cultural (and economic) as a framework for assessing museum's impact. That said, I wonder if taking this orthodox approach to defining scientific literacy is really all that helpful. Given the brief and typically a-contextual nature of most natural history museum visit experiences, what expectations should we have that these unique experiences would dramatically and measurably influence public understanding and beliefs? The implication in this article is that they should, but is this really a fair question to ask?Lé onie and Gina: We are pleased John has drawn attention to a question of central importance: Is it reasonable to expect the impact of a brief visit to a cultural institution such as a natural history museum to produce an immediately measurable impact on the public's understanding and beliefs about science? This question is particularly salient for three reasons. First, because most visitors do not attend for the explicit purpose of learning about science (for example, only 28% of our visitors gave their purpose as education), is it reasonable for us, in a sense, to ''go fishing'' for findings that indicate such an impact? Second, as John points out, is our orthodox approach to scientific literacy a reasonable way to quantify change in understanding and beliefs? Third, how reasonable is it to expect an almost ''instant impact'' from the museum visit, which is what a pretest-posttest design like ours is limited to measuring?We can only partly answer these questions. Our approach to scientific literacy drew from several sources. First, we were impressed with the sensible approach suggested by St. John and Perry (1993) to investigate impact in terms of how visitors