To support learning across settings, educators need to develop ways to elicit student interests and prior experiences. McClain and Zimmerman describe how, during outdoor walks at a nature center, families talked about prior experiences with nature, which were mostly from non-school settings. They used the prior experiences to remind, prompt, explain to, and orient one another during shared meaning-making activity.
Current science education reforms emphasize the ways in which students’ scientific practices, such as experimenting, collecting data, and interpreting results, develop over time. Bricker and Bell suggest that practices develop not only over time, but also across multiple settings and opportunities. Their study shows how, over several years, one youth’s identification with science was shaped by many everyday moments, social configurations, and collaborators.
Briseño-Garzón analyzed interviews with 20 families after they visited Universum Museo de las Ciencias. She concluded that the benefits of visiting a science museum are “much more than science,” including spending quality time together as a family, interacting with others, learning about local culture and history, learning from each other, and, of course, learning science.
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Kerri Wingert
resourceresearchMuseum and Science Center Programs
The Australian Museum, Sydney, has been working with students aged 5–18 from a coalition of around 20 schools to gain advice on the development of exhibitions, programs, and the design of learning experiences, particularly regarding the use of digital environment. This paper discusses some of the results of this working relationship.
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.
Informal science programs have potential for engaging audiences from non-dominant communities in unique ways. This article investigates specific elements of programs that African American mothers participating in this study preferred for their elementary-aged girls. For ISE educators, this research points out several elements to address when planning programs for African American audiences, including practical issues and content delivery methods, many of these elements could perhaps be applied more broadly for other non-dominant populations.
In this paper the author proposes a theory of development that integrates society, institutional practice and the child's activity. The goal is to inform efforts to create more developmentally supportive settings and opportunities for children. The proposed theory focuses on the everyday practices of children that take place in specific institutional settings (e.g., schools, afterschools, families) reflecting dominant cultural-societal views and arrangements. The paper provides a theoretical lens that could be of interest to educators who are seeking to understand how the particular
Many informal science institutions design exhibits to encourage inquiry and experimentation. But the authors of this paper suggest that often museums have found that visitors lack the expertise or confidence to engage in coherent inquiry. They report here on their efforts to equip visitors with key inquiry skills through providing families and groups with focused trainings on how to use inquiry-based exhibits.
This study looks at how characteristics of parent-child dyads, in combination with exhibit qualities, contribute to their interactions in a science center. Parent schooling, parent and child attitudes toward science, and the type of activity supported at the exhibits play a role in how they interact together. For ISE professionals, this study shows that parents exert a great deal of influence over what and how their children feel and learn about science.
Informal science educators are seeking ways to support scientific reasoning. This study of touch tanks at four different museums found that, although the exhibits were not designed to do so, they supported families in engaging in scientific reasoning practices. Specifically, they engaged family members in making claims, seeking evidence, devising tests, seeking information, testing claims, and challenging claims made by others.