Making Meaning of Science: An Experience of a Science Museum in Fostering Dialogue Between Young People and Science
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Making Meaning of Science: An Experience of a Science Museum in Fostering Dialogue Between Young People and Science Gonzalo Peñaloza1 · Lina Quijano2 · Sigrid Falla2 · Sara Márquez2 Received: 7 July 2020 / Revised: 21 August 2020 / Accepted: 16 September 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Science and technology museums have been adopting a science communication perspective that goes beyond the simple presentation of information. Through engagement, museums also facilitate the creation and exchange of political and cultural meanings, ideally among diverse social groups. The current study explores students’ views about the relationship between science and technology and everyday life. The research was carried out as part of the assessment of an after-school program led by a science museum and oriented by the situated learning theory. Over 1900 urban public-school students in 5th to 9th grades completed questionnaires and were observed in the activities. Analyses revealed that the students identified different practices associated with scientific work, which allowed them to explore how science works and how it could be related with their everyday life. Further, results suggested that non-formal educational environments could foster interest in science and technology by involving socio-cultural context. Keywords Situated learning · Science museum · Science teaching · Learning
Introduction Education is a social process that could take place in different spaces, around diverse situations and in which different social subjects can participate. Although traditional and commonly it has been considered that education occurs basically at school, a detailed reflection leads us to recognize that it occurs in different social spaces in which learning, an action concomitant to education, can happen (Akiva et al. 2020). Therefore, there is no single way to learn and no single place to learn (Falk, 2002). This issue
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s4208 7-020-00143-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Gonzalo Peñaloza [email protected] 1
Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Unidad Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
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Maloka Science Center , Bogotá, Colombia
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has inspired different pedagogical and educational studies about the characteristics, importance and role of the social agents involved and the interactions among them. In this sense, the metaphor of ‘environment’ could be useful to denote that educational processes take place in a situation in which various objects and subjects participate and interact according to a common objective. This metaphor highlights that in any educational process, diverse meanings, beliefs, interests and representations are intersected. It also highlights the relationship between the situations and the roles that the actors could play. The science museums are one of possible educational environments and c
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