Engagement in a Science Museum – The Role of Social Interactions

Abstract

This qualitative research explores the interactions of elementary school students during free-choice activity with science museum exhibits. The study participants were 39 students, who visited a science museum on six occasions during a three-year-period (from 4^th to 6^th grades). Our study showed that most interactions around exhibits are social in nature. Within these social interactions, students mainly discuss the technicalities of operating the exhibits and rarely engage with their scientific content. On occasion, exhibits are no more than settings for social interactions that could equally occur, for example, in the schoolyard. The main implications of this study concern exhibit design and pedagogy. Because students find ways to create their own social interactions in museum settings, museum pedagogy should leverage this social interaction into cognitive engagement with the scientific content of exhibits.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation, Research Grant Application no. 562/15.

About the authors

Neta Shaby got her MA and PhD from the department of Science Education and Technology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Her PhD research, under the supervision of Prof Orit Ben-Zvi Assaraf and Prof Tali Tal, focused on interactions in Science Museums. Today, Neta is a Postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University, currently working on the SYNERGIES: Customizing Interventions to Sustain Youth STEM Interest and Participation Pathways project, researching the learning ecosystem approach under the supervision of Prof. Lynn Dierking. Address correspondence to: Neta Shaby, Department of Science and Technology Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O. Box 653, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel. E-mail: [email protected].

Orit Ben-Zvi Assaraf is Professor in the Science Education Department at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. Her work in science education focuses on the issues such as: Design of informal outdoor learning environments; Cognitive based research into system thinking in the field of Biology, Ecology and Earth sciences and development of environmental literacy and nature conservation within science education.

Tali Tal is a professor of science and environmental education at the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion, Israel Institue of Technology. Her research focuses on learning science in informal settings, inquiry-based learning, environmental education and learning with socioscientific issues. Dr. Tal is the current president of NARST, a Worldwide Organization for Improving Science Education through Research.