This paper discusses the programs, specifically field trip programs, for young children at art museums. The author explains how programs can teach the aesthetics of art (looking, distinguishing, loving) to young children and offers suggestions on how to run a successful program.
This paper explores the usefulness of children's drawings as tools for zoo exhibit evaluation. This paper presents preliminary analysis of children's drawings of completed exhibits at Woodland Park Zoological Gardens, which show they have promise as diagnostic tools, but require refinement and development by educational/behavioral experts.
This is a brief summary of Barbara Birney's 1988 article featured in "Environment and Behavior," which discussed key findings from the formative evaluation of Brookfield Zoo's "Flying Walk" exhibit. The exhibit was designed to teach visitors the proper wing movement of birds.
In this brief article, Ruth Freeman summarizes a report of ongoing evaluation efforts of the effectiveness of the Discovery Gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum.
The National Science Outreach Network will provide school children, teachers, and the general public with highly accessible interactive exhibits dealing with popular topics in science and technology. The network, initiated as a partnership between regional science centers and public libraries, will be modeled after the highly successful statewide Oregon Library Exhibits Network established in 1987. Through this smaller network, the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, a nationally recognized pioneer in science exhibitry and outreach programming, circulates small hands-on exhibits to rural population centers through installations in public libraries, where school groups and families have free and convenient access. This national dissemination project will be initiated in five regional sites across the country (Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee, and Oregon) to further establish the model in rural, inner-urban, economically disadvantaged, and culturally diverse regions. With support from both the NSF and the regional networks, The National Science Outreach Network will design and duplicate six exhibits for circulation to dozens of local communities in each designated region. Over the next seven years, over six million individuals, many of whom do not currently frequent a local science center, will be introduced to popular science in a non-threatening, resource- rich setting. This will encourage further exploration and possible future visits to an accessible science center, and ultimately establish an ever-expanding network of museum and non-museum partners providing science and technology learning opportunities to millions of individuals each year.
The Lawrence Hall of Science proposes to develop a major public education program, including a traveling exhibition, two planetarium programs, a play, and a kit for schools entitled "Columbus' Great Experiment." Emphasizing science and technology, Columbus' first voyage is portrayed as an experiment aimed at testing the hypothesis (based on doubtful evidence) that sailing to the west was a more practical way of reaching the Indies than by sailing east around the Horn of Africa. As with many scientific experiments, the results were quite different from what the experimenter had in mind: instead of finding a sea route to the Indies, Columbus vastly expanded knowledge about our planet and spurred developments in science and technology. These events occurred within a social and cultural context that were critical to the development of modern science, and resulted in far-reaching changes in the population and ecology of the world which continue today. The National Endowment for the Humanities has recently awarded a grant for the development of the exhibits. The present proposal requests that NSF join with NEH to complete and expand the project, by funding: a) components of three additional copies of the exhibition to be constructed by other museums, thus expanding the public audience to 19 million visitors; b) two participatory planetarium programs; c) a play about the scientific aspects of Columbus' voyage; and d) school kits that will enable teachers to present the most important ideas embodied in the exhibition to students who are unable to view the exhibition at a science center. Interest in these programs will peak around Columbus Day, 1992, we anticipate that the materials will be sufficiently interesting, informative, and entertaining to be used for many years to come.
The California Academy of Sciences, a major natural history institution located in San Francisco, will develop Life Through Time, a large permanent exhibition on evolution that will inform and challenge visitors as they "walk through" a series of exhibits which encourages them to touch and explore. The exhibition will cover the history of life on earth, how scientists recognize and evaluate change through time, the scientific method and process of discovering, and the impact of evolution. A teacher's educational resource kit with hands-on materials will be developed for use in the schools along with teacher training courses. The exhibition will reach a substantial audience, over a million and a half visitors per year. Additionally, 44% of the San Francisco elementary school children are visited each year by Academy docents, the mobile classroom reaches 7,000 Bay Area residents, over 5,000 children and adults take classes at the Academy and 10,000 school children visit the museum each year.
The Franklin Institute Science Museum, a major American Science Center serving more than 700,000 individuals annually, proposes to create a 3,700 square foot permanent exhibition that will promote public interest in and understanding of the concepts and principles of mathematics in concrete, tangible form. The exhibition will consist of five clusters of hands-on devices, interactive computer programs, models, and text on the themes of Geometry; Symmetry; Chance, Probability and Randomness; Series, Sequences and Limits; and "Modern Math"--Fractals, Knots and Braids and Topology. Museum staff will utilize several mathematicians as advisors and design participants and will develop adjunct educational materials for use by teachers, students, and family members. They will disseminate exhibition techniques and content by providing six collaborating museums with selected copies of exhibit devices and hardware for their use in developing temporary or permanent mathematics exhibits. Staff of the six museums will join advisors for a design conference during exhibition planning, and will provide evaluation reports on their use of the exhibit materials. Knowledge of mathematics is not only necessary for everyday life; it is central to public understanding of science and engineering, and a key to continued participation in science and engineering, and a key to continued participation in science education in high school and college. Increasing national interest improvement in the mathematical ability of americans at all levels, pre-college and college, make this proposed exhibition particularly timely.
The investigation of naive conceptions of science has many implications for both teaching and learning. The predominant model for past investigations has been with school children or within very formal settings. Extending investigations of misconceptions to informal settings is the challenge of this research. Museum visitors' misconceptions about two topics, gravity and mechanical advantage, will be recorded through a variety of interview formats. Twenty-five persons from each of the age ranges 9-11, 12-14, 15-18, and college students/adults will be interviewed. Information from the interview will be used to modify the current exhibit or to build new prototypes. The research will determine if a modification can be made that results in individuals moving from their previous misconceptions toward a correct conceptualization of the concepts. This research will document what individuals actually learn from museum exhibits and how "front end evaluation" can be used to redesign exhibits for maximum concept learning. The proposed research is challenging and has the potential of adding significant information to science education research on misconceptions. The principal investigator is highly respected in the field of museum education and the associated staff and consultants are the top scholars in their respective fields.
The Mississippi Museum of Natural Science proposes to build on its program of activities that involve children in science and bring them into contact with the approaches, objects and equipment that scientists use, with each activity designed to stimulate thinking and heighten interest in science. Cardinal features of the program are the development of hands-on exhibits, science kits for classroom use and a studied tie with the children's television program, "3-2-1 Contact." The goals are to coordinate these activities with hands-on science activities for students in grades 3-6, and to coordinate classroom activities with those at the museum, which conducts "3-2-1 Contact Days" throughout the year when students come to the museum and take part in experiments, observations and enrichment lessons and actively manipulate museum objects. The museum now will refine the program components, including improvement and duplication of the hands-on kits, continuation of the workshops for elementary teachers and development of new participatory exhibits dealing with insects and endangered species, and will present them to an expanded audience. One-third of the children in the state live below the poverty level, and fifty per cent represent minority populations. As most of these children lack such out-of-school experiences these informal science activities are particularly meaningful.
The American Museum of Natural History proposes to design and build a new permanent 9,000-square-foot Hall of Human Biology and Evolution over a three-year period. The exhibit is to start out with human biology and then move smoothly to human evolution and the fossil record and other evidences of early humans. The new exhibit will range from the molecular/genetic level to the emergence of human beings, and will include archeological excavations and findings, reconstruction and discussion of humanoids, early human evolution, human structure and function, and human diversity. In addition to stimulating the interests of visitors (2.7 million in 1986-87) in human biology and evolution through the use of traditional and interactive technology, the new exhibit program will provide curriculum supplement for elementary and high school classes and teacher-training guides and workshops to assist in the integration of the exhibition materials into classroom studies. The primary educational goal is to give the widest possible audience a concrete sense of where and how the human animal fits in the natural world through examination of the traits that we share with all creatures and those that are peculiar to humans. The exhibit promises further contribution by bridging the current exhibits on animal life and those on the rich ethnological collections on the diversity of human cultures. NSF dollars are to cover the costs only of planning, building and evaluating the exhibit, with no funds for staff.
The Brooklyn Children's Museum will create a 3,000 square foot natural science exhibition, "Animals Eat", that will provide interactive experiences that assist children in formulating appropriate concepts of living things. The exhibition and accompanying educational materials will be targeted at children aged 7-10 years old, and will utilize recent research on how children conceptualize biological phenomena. It will focus on familiar animals and on the processes of eating because many observable aspects of the natural world are mediated by the quest for food. The exhibit, capitalizing on existing living collections, will be developed and designed using a variety of interview techniques and formative testing of exhibit prototypes to insure that the content is both appropriate for children and that the exhibition results in successful learning experiences. A broad range of exhibition techniques, including museum objects, interactive units, games, and video will be used. The exhibition will reach more than a million visitors during its five year life. "Animals Eat" will be the first in a series of new core exhibitions at the museum. NSF's award will be supported by more than $320,000 in cost sharing.