caise

Ecsite-uk

Visits to science centers and museums can elicit powerful emotions, which help create memorable learning experiences, reinforce existing knowledge, and encourage positive attitudes toward learning and careers in science. This was the conclusion of a review of the evidence undertaken in 2006 by Ecsite, the U.K. Network of Science Centres and Museums. Established in April 2001, the network represents more than 50 science centers and a similar number of discovery centers in museums, botanic gardens, aquariums, and zoos. (Throughout this article, the term science center is used to refer to all of these types of institutions.) This article summarizes the evidence reviewed in Ecsite-uk's full report.

Knowledge and skills

Research into learning in science centers has largely focused on cognitive outcomes since these are often the easiest both to define and assess. Many studies have shown at least short-term increases (over weeks or months) in the range and depth of visitors’ conceptual understanding. For example, Anderson et al. (2000) studied the impact of various interactive exhibits on school children’s understanding of the principles behind electricity and magnetism. The researchers found that what was experienced in the museum was actively interpreted by the pupils (rather than just passively accepted) and incorporated into their existing mental models. Subsequent experiences of electricity and magnetism were likewise incorporated into the mental models developed during the museum experience. Similarly, Beiers and McRobbie (1992) found evidence for the impact of a series of interactive exhibits upon children’s understanding of the scientific principles of sound.

Numerous studies of visitors conversations during or immediately after science center visits have shown evidence of visitors extending and enriching their conceptual understanding. For example, Allen (2002) recorded visitors’ conversations at an exhibition about frogs at the Exploratorium, San Francisco. The quality of these conversations was impressive, with content-focused conversations occurring at 83% of the exhibits and representing 97% of all of the talk recorded. Much of the conversation recorded included visitors reading aloud or paraphrasing the label text. Visitors were found to engage in conceptual conversation (hypothesizing, making generalizations, or making reference to previous knowledge) at over one-third of the exhibits.

In addition to the evidence indicating the development of knowledge and understanding, considerable evidence has been amassed of visitors to museums, zoos, and science centers practicing and developing skills of exploration, observation, interpreting data, sharing ideas, and other skills directly related to scientific thinking (e.g. Allen, 2002; Ash, 2002; Borun, Chambers, & Cleghorn, 1996; Tunnicliffe, Lucas, & Osborne, 1997; Schauble et al., 2002; Crowley et al., 2001; Crowley & Jacobs, 2002).

School field trips to science centers also have a measurable effect on youth. Hooper-Greenhill et al. (2005) conducted a large-scale survey of 26,000 school children and 1,600 teachers visiting 69 museums across England. They found that both teachers and children were extremely positive about their museum visits and felt that they had benefited educationally. Teachers were confident that their pupils gained new knowledge, skills, and inspiration from their visit. In a follow-up study of 762 secondary school pupils from nine schools visiting different museums and galleries, 60% of pupils achieved higher marks in a postvisit assessed piece of work compared with work they had completed prior to the visit (Watson, Dodd, & Jones, 2007).

Attitude and emotion

A review of 180 studies of the impact of science centers in North America, Europe, and Australasia (Garnett, 2002) found that 87% were concerned with learning/personal outcomes, of which 54% focused on science learning, 18% on attitudinal change toward science, 14% on enjoyment, and 7% on science centers influencing career choice. Overall, the studies showed science centers to have a positive effect in a number of areas.

Among the studies focusing on attitude toward science learning and career choice are four case studies describing the motivation of school students visiting Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre, Vantaa, Finland (Salmi, 2003). The findings suggest that the situational motivation of students could be changed to intrinsic motivation by well organized programs linking schools to the informal, open learning environments of science centers. In addition, a survey taken among 1,019 first- and second-year students at the University of Helsinki attested to the impact of informal learning sources such as science centers on the academic career choices of students.

An in-depth survey of 450 teachers (Winterbotham, 2005) revealed that teachers visiting museums expected students to gain skills and develop positive attitudes toward the subject matter and believed students would acquire enthusiasm and new conceptual understanding considerably faster than they could in the classroom. Indeed, handling artifacts and using interactive exhibits produced a profound attitudinal response, with the lasting impact being one of a far more favorable predisposition to the subject area than before the visit.

Evidence for long-term learning

There is substantial evidence to suggest that positive outcomes of visits to science centers endure over time. Spock (2000) and Anderson (2003) found evidence for extremely powerful memories from science center visits dating back years and sometimes even decades. These memories include content of the displays, social aspects of the visit, layout of the exhibitions, emotional responses, events subsequent to the visit that led to recall of the experience, and memories about the visitors’ sociocultural identity at the time of the visit. Indeed what visitors remember seems to be profoundly influenced by who they were at the time, e.g., child, pupil, parent, volunteer, or staff member (Anderson, 2003).

Falk and Dierking (1997), for example, interviewed adults and children aged 9–10 and 13–14 years about past trips to science centers. They found that even after a gap of several years, both adults and children could recall many aspects of the experience, including content or subject-related information (77% of memories), details of the physical setting (56% of memories), emotional responses to the experience (55%), and details of the social aspects of the visit (47%). Of the adults and children interviewed, 80% claimed to have thought about the science center experience afterwards. Similarly, Anderson et al. (2002) assessed pupils’ memories four to six years after visits to various types of museums and science centers. They found a diverse range of memories, especially about large-scale objects as well as kinesthetic and multisensory experiences.

Stevenson (1991) looked at the impact of a major interactive science exhibition immediately after the visit, a few weeks later, and then after six months. It was found that even after six months, visitors were able to recall spontaneously details of their experience. Around half of the memories elicited either spontaneously or with prompts were detailed and clear: 60% of the exhibit memories were descriptions of what the visitor did at the exhibit, 14% referred to their feelings about the experience, and 26% reflected visitors’ subsequent thinking about the exhibit’s content, suggesting that there was at least some cognitive processing of the experience rather than just the recalling of isolated episodic memories. Interestingly, visitors quite often linked their experiences to what they had seen on television. Similarly, Beiers and McRobbie (1992) found evidence of children integrating the science center experience into pre- and postvisit mental models over the course of a few weeks.

Experiences that generate powerful emotions have been shown to be more memorable and easier to recall (Reisberg & Heuer, 2004). For example, exhibits and live events in science centers that generate powerful emotions have been shown to be highly memorable. Interviews with 75 museum professionals yielded more than 200 anecdotes, which Spock (2000) described as pivotal museum learning experiences. Many of these pivotal learning experiences had occurred many years previously—often dating back to childhood—providing vivid and lasting memories and, in 30–35 cases, genuinely life-changing incidents.

In a study of the long-term impact on 300 children aged 10–11 years immediately, three months, and five months after a visit to the National Space Centre in Leicester, United Kingdom, Jarvis and Pell (2005) found that the pattern of impacts was complex. Children who were already interested in science remained enthusiastic over the five months of the study. Another group of showed significant increases in their levels of interest, but for the majority of the children (62% of the boys and 71% of the girls) showed no overall change. Despite an initially positive impact upon attitudes and enthusiasm for science created by the visit to the science center, in-depth interviews with the children revealed that the positive experience of the visit was subsequently undermined by negative school experiences. In other cases it was found that the impact of the visit was dramatically affected by the quality of the teacher’s preparatory and postvisit work with the children and whether or not the children received encouragement at home. These studies appear to indicate that science centers can have lasting impacts and that much of what visitors have learned is retained long after the time of their visit.

Overall, this review indicates that there is a growing body of evidence from around the world that points toward the many, varied, and substantial impacts of learning experiences occurring in science centers.

This article was adapted from The Impact of Science & Discovery Centres: A Review of Worldwide Studies. The full report is available at the Ecsite-uk website.

References

Adelman, L. M., Falk, J. H., & James, S. (2000). Impact of the National Aquarium in Baltimore on visitors’ conservation attitudes, behavior and knowledge. Curator, 43, 33–61.

Anderson, D. (2003). Visitors’ long-term memories of World Expositions. Curator, 46, 401–420.

Anderson, D., Lucas, K. B., Ginns, I. S., & Dierking, L. D. (2000). Development of knowledge about electricity & magnetism during a visit to a science museum and related post-visit activities. Science Education, 84, 658–679.

Anderson, D., Piscitelli, B., Weier, K., Everett, M., & Taylor, C. (2002). Children’s museum experiences: Identifying powerful mediators of learning. Curator, 45, 213–231.

Beiers, R. J., & McRobbie, C. J. (1992). Learning in interactive science centres. Research in Science Education, 22, 38–44.

Allen, S. (2002). Looking for learning in visitor talk: A methodological exploration. In G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley, & K. Knutson (Eds.), Learning conversations in museums (pp. 259–303). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Ash, D. (2002). Negotiations of thematic conversations about biology. In G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley, & K. Knutson (Eds.), Learning conversations in museums (pp. 357–400). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Borun, M., Chambers, M., & Cleghorn, A. (1996). Families are learning in science museums. Curator, 39, 123–138.

Crowley, K., Callanan, M. A., Jipson, J. L., Galco, J., Topping, K., & Shrager, J. (2001). Shared scientific thinking in everyday parent-child activity. Science Education, 85, 713–732.

Crowley, K., & Jacobs, M. (2002). Building islands of expertise in everyday family activities. In G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley, & K Knutson (Eds.), Learning conversations in museums (pp. 401–423). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Davies, S. R., McCallie, E., Simonsson, E., Lehr, J. L., & Duensing, S. (in press). Discussion dialogue: Perspectives on the value of science dialogue events that do not inform policy. Public Understanding of Science.

Dierking, L. D., Adelman, L. M., Ogden, J., Lehnhardt, K., Miller, & L., Mellen, J. D. (2004). Using a behavior change model to document the impact of visits to Disney’s Animal Kingdom: A study investigating intended conservation action. Curator, 47, 322–343.

Falk, J. H., & Dierking, L. D. (1997). School field trips: Assessing their long-term impact. Curator, 40, 211–218 Falk, J. H., Scott, C., Dierking, L., Rennie, L., & Cohen-Jones, M. (2004). Interactives and visitor learning. Curator, 47, 171–199.

Garnett, R. (2002). The impact of science centers/museums on their surrounding communities: Summary report. Retrieved June 25, 2007, from Association of Science-Technology Centers website: http://www.astc.org/resource/case/Impact_Study02.pdf

Hooper-Greenhill, E., Dodd, J., Gibson, L., Phillips, M., Jones, C., & Sullivan, E. (2006, April). What did you learn at the museum today? Second study. Retrieved July 19, 2007, from University of Leicester, Research Centre for Museums and Galleries website: http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/research/Reports/Whatdidyoulearn2.pdf

Jarvis, T., & Pell, A. (2005). Factors influencing elementary school children’s attitudes towards science before, during and after a visit to the UK National Space Centre. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 42, 53–83.

Reisberg, D., & Heuer, F. (2004). Memory for emotional events. In D. Reisberg & P. Hertel (Eds.), Memory and emotion (pp. 3–41). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Salmi, H. (2003). Science centres as learning laboratories: Experiences of Heureka, the Finnish science centre. International Journal of Technology Management, 25, 460–476.

Schauble, L., Gleable, M., Lehrer, R., Bartlett, K., Petrosino, A., Allen, A., et al. (2002). Supporting science learning in museums. In G. Leinhardt, K. Crowley, & K. Knutson (Eds.), Learning conversations in museums (pp. 425–452). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Spock, M. (2000). When I grow up I’d like to work in a place like this. Curator, 43, 19–32.

Stevenson, J. (1991). The long-term impact of interactive exhibits. International Journal of Science Education, 13, 521–531.

Tunnicliffe, S., Lucas, A. M., & Osborne, J. (1997). School visits to zoos and museums: A missed educational opportunity? International Journal of Science Education, 19, 1039–1056.

Watson, S., Dodd, J., & Jones, C. (2007, September). Engage, learn, achieve: The impact of museum visits on the attainment of secondary pupils in the East of England 2006–07. Retrieved March 19, 2008, from University of Leicester, Research Centre for Museums and Galleries website: http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/research/Reports/EOE.pdf

Winterbotham, N. (2005). Museums and schools: Developing services in three English counties 1988–2004. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nottingham, UK.