A model‐based approach to science exhibition evaluation: A case study in a Brazilian astronomy museum

Abstract

A models and modelling approach was adopted to investigate the educational potential of a science museum exhibition. It focused on patterns of relationship between the teaching models proposed by designers and students models in regard to four exhibits concerning astronomical cycles. Student’s models were elicited by interviewing 21 pupils selected from among those who showed a change of their models between pre‐visit and post‐visit questionnaires. Four patterns of relationship were identified, ranging from low to high degrees of convergence between designers and students. Exhibits designed by fragmenting the phenomena (analytical approach) tend to promote less convergent patterns than exhibits that maintain the complexity of the phenomena (synthetic approach). We argue that the two approaches are complementary: without synthetic models visitors find it difficult to identify the phenomenon addressed by analytical models, while the latter may bring to visitors’ attention aspects that otherwise might be hidden by the complexity of synthetic models.

Notes

Mental models are an individual’s representations about ideas, objects, events, processes or systems, which can be expressed through action, speech, in writing or drawings.

Consensual models refer to public, shared representations that were developed to provide scientific descriptions and explanations through rigorous formalization and testing. Relevant examples for science education include contemporary and historical models in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology.

Teaching models are prepared with the aim to support educational purposes and activities. They are developed with the aim to provide a simplification, visualization or materialization of a particular topic in order to promote meaningful learning. In this study we refer to the latter meaning of teaching models.

Syntactic—perception of graphic signals as discernible images or sets of images; semantic—recognition of the meaning of the image; pragmatic—understanding the context of the image based on prior knowledge or experience.

Unity—any area of image that might be recognized as having a separate unity; spatial—relationships among images; emphasis—hierarchical relationships among images; text parallels—relationships among images and words.

In addition, learning difficulties were also discussed with science teachers participating in the inservice teacher training programmes organized by MAST’s Educational Department.

The exhibition included three reproductions of Monet’s paintings of the English Parliament at different times: Daylight (1900), Sunset (1904), and Night (1905).

This feature can be observed by comparing the relative position of the two human miniatures, positioned on equal but opposite latitudes on the same meridian. That is, by looking ‘up and down’ the Earth globe, it is possible to observe equal light exposure in the northern and southern hemispheres, both in terms of duration and angle of incidence.

The Brazilian educational system currently includes eight years of compulsory education.

• We asked the teachers to describe how they integrated the museum visit to their classroom activities. Their answers conveyed a large range of situations. Three of them did not carry out any sort of activity at all, before or after the visit, but had differing views about the visit, as will now be shown. In a fifth‐grade class from a private school, the teacher’s focus was a typical ‘stand alone’ exhibition (each exhibit approaches a different topic, there is not a theme connecting them) comprised of mechanical and optical exhibits. A teacher of an eighth‐grade class from a state school saw the visit as an enrichment experience with no special classroom activity before or after the visit. A teacher of fourth‐grade students of a private school said he had taught about seasons before the visit; for him the visit worked as reinforcement, but he did not carried out any activity after the visit.

• Among the four teachers that did any activity before or after the visit, the strategies vary a lot. In a state school third grade, the teacher just carried out activities about day and night cycles after the visit; nothing was done about the seasons. In a private school third grade, the teacher conducted activities about aspects related to the Earth axis, building a simplified version of one of the exhibits. In a private school fifth grade, the teacher had taught about seasons before the visit and requested a post‐visit report about what students liked best. In the last, fourth grade class from a state school, the teacher had taught superficially about seasons before the visit but, after the visit, she went on teaching the topic at further levels.

The questionnaire consisted of seven questions, of which four were open‐ended and three were multiple‐choice questions. Two questions were of central importance and were used for comparison between pre‐visit and post‐visit answers. These two questions were open‐ended and asked students to explain the occurrence of seasons and of day and night. The remaining questions concerned differences between seasons, such as opposition of seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres, as well as the links between life and seasons.

All MAST researchers were directly involved in the design and conceptual organization of the exhibition.

No student modelled all phenomena, and just four modelled two of them. That is why the difference between the number of students that modelled (32 in table 1) and the total number of student’s modellings (36 in table 6).