Parents committed to bringing their children to zoos ascribed the value of the visits to promoting altruism to prepare their children for future social encounters; transferring their own environmental values; encouraging self-esteem; and inculcating cultural norms. This article suggests that ISE educators can attract/engage parents through appealing to moral development for children.
This paper will be of value to ISE professionals interested in designing communication strategies to influence visitor behaviour. The author draws on persuasive communication theory to discuss the design and delivery of messages to target behaviours. This study reflects on the difficulties encountered during a process of identifying and prioritising behaviours to target in zoo contexts.
This study outlines the learning goals, expectations, and perceived outcomes of a zoo field trip from the perspective of students, classroom teachers, and informal educators. They find, among other things, that that students most highly valued the social aspects of the field trip – opportunities to be with their friends and to discuss the field trip events with their friends. They also find that informal educators did not quite understand the needs or interests of the students and therefore missed opportunities to engage students with the science in the zoo. The authors close with several
The purpose of the study was to investigate how situational interest was triggered for high-school students on an aquarium field trip. Although actual learning was not itself measured in this study, the author investigates how the museum setting triggers interest, which in turn influences learning and is therefore important to cultivate. As the author admits, some of the findings are intuitive but the study empirically confirms some approaches, which can spark situational interest. Five areas that triggered situational interest were identified through student interviews: social involvement