School visits to natural history museums: Teaching or enriching?

Abstract

This article describes a 3‐year study of school visits to four natural history museums and addresses the research agenda with regard to out‐of‐school learning. More specifically, the findings focus on the process of learning in museums. Comprehensive data collection allowed for an analysis of patterns of guided visits, the way the scientific content was conveyed to students, and the extent and types of social interactions thus enabled. Observations of 42 guided visits (grades 3–11) indicates that the main visitation pattern consisted of guide‐centered and task‐oriented activity. Analysis of questions asked by museum guides reveals that most of these questions required mainly lower‐order thinking skills. A common questioning pattern was to ask rhetorical questions as a means of carrying on the lecture. Detailed analysis of the scientific vocabulary used by the guides indicates that they used much scientific jargon, with limited explanation. There was only limited social mediation provided by teachers and museum guides. A minority of teachers were involved in the activities or in helping the guide to clarify or in helping the students to understand the explanations. The overall data indicate limited opportunities for meaningful learning, suggesting that the museums should shift from the traditional knowledge‐transmission model of teaching to a more socioculturally contextualized model. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 747–769, 2007

Learning in a personal context: Levels of choice in a free choice learning environment in science and natural history museums

“…Class visits to museums are conducted either by teachers (Griffin & Symmington, 1997;Kisiel, 2003) or by museum educational staff (Cox-Petersen et al, 2003;Tal et al, 2005;Tal & Morag, 2006). We studied guided visits conducted by museum educational staffs, which encompass the vast majority of museum visits in Israel.…”

The work of science museum educators

“…Nonetheless, observational studies that have examined the design and implementation of science programmes for school groups indicate that the programmes tend to be educator-directed and structured in a similar manner to school lessons, with the educators predominantly lecturing, asking close-ended questions, and using excessive vocabulary with minimal explanations (Tal and Morag 2007;Tran 2002). Consequently, there is a perception that the way educators develop and deliver science programmes fails to acknowledge the pre-existing knowledge of the learners, which is contrary to constructivist views on learning.…”

The potential of extended cultural residencies for young children

“…DeWitt & Storksdieck 2008;Kisiel 2006;Tal and Morag 2007), our findings also point to the central role played by the teacher and to the importance of creating conditions in which teachers or educators can notice, respond to and build upon children's interests. As highlighted by research on young children's learning in informal settings (Crowley et al 2001;Crowley and Jacobs 2002;Graham 2008;Haden et al 2014), such conditions can be critical for the kinds of adult-child interactions that truly support learning.…”