Building Bridges Between School and a Science Center Using a Flipped Learning Framework

ABSTRACT

Many museums attempt to connect museum activities to classroom learning goals by creating “before” and “after” suggestions for the classroom teacher. Therefore, when doing out of school activities it is common to organize and plan such activities from a before, during and after perspective. The present study primarily rests on observations of students from a lower secondary school class interacting with learning material developed to a science center on the basis of a framework inspired by flipped learning. Data were obtained from the students when they were preparing the visit to the science center in class, as well as during and after the visit. The aim was to document how the flipped learning setup mediates interactions with the exhibit and learning material, affect students’ visitor mode and connect school and science center. The results show that overall the formal intention behind the learning material correlates with the students observed practice. The results suggest that learning material inspired by the presented flipped learning framework successfully can link science curriculum at school and science centers visits, but not without some point of attention of which the teacher is the most significant.

KEYWORDS:

• Flipped learning
• museum education
• out-of-school learning
• science learning
• science center

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Department of Teacher Education, University College Copenhagen. It partly builds on previous experiences and ongoing work with Flipped Learning as a teaching method in different learning contexts conducted in collaboration with our colleagues Thomas D. Andersen, Kristian K. Foss and Morten Philipps from University College Copenhagen as well as with Pia Maria Lie from Experimentarium.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

About the authors

Mette Fredslund Andersen, Master in Science Education and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen, Department of Teacher Education, has teaching and research interests in science education, particularly marginalized students in science classrooms and student-generated digital multimodal representations.

Henrik Levinsen. Ph.D. and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen, Department of Teacher Education, has teaching and research interests in science education, particularly flipped learning as a teaching method in different learning contexts.

Hasse H. Møller, Master in Didactics and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen, Department of Teacher Training, has teaching and research interests in play and learning.

Anders V. Thomsen, Ph.D. and Associate Professor at University College Copenhagen, Department of Teacher Education, has teaching and research interests in science education, particularly out-of-school learning.

Notes

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2 Danmarks Evalueringsinstitut, Åben Skole – En kortlægning af skolernes samarbejde med omverdenen.

3 www.experimentarium.dk.

4 von Heijne, “The Flipped Museum”; Harrell and Kotecki, “The Flipped Museum.”

5 DeWitt and Storksdieck, “A Short Review of School Field Trips.”

6 Pedretti, “T. Kuhn Meets T. Rex.”

7 Hauan and Kolstø, “Exhibitions as Learning Environments.”

8 Bamberger and Tal, “Multiple Outcomes of Class Visits To Natural History Museums.”

9 Neergaard, Udvælgelse af cases i kvalitative undersøgelser.

10 Latour, “On recalling ANT.”

11 Latour, Reassembling the Social.

12 Svabo, “Børns medierede museumsbesøg,” 79

13 Callon, “Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is Not,” 211.

14 Abeysekera and Dawson, “Motivation and Cognitive Load in the Flipped classroom.”

15 Heijne, “The Flipped Museum”; Harrell and Kotecki, “The Flipped Museum.”