Investigating Science Concepts in the Museum Like Treasure Hunting

Nihal Doğan, Seda Çavuş, Savaş Güngören

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DOI: 10.4236/ce.2011.21001                

Abstract

In this research, the impacts of school trips on learning science subjects are studied with colorful science cards and a writing activity. These trips are aimed to be made in the informal learning environments such as Science and Technology Museums. In total, 34 pre-service teachers (21 female and 13 male) participated in this research. The trip was made to the Rahmi Koç Museum in Istanbul and before this trip, the participants were given some concepts and questions which were written on colourful cards in order to search in the museum regarding Science and Technology. After the field trip, they were asked to write and present an explanatory essay including the knowledge that they found about the questions and concepts written on the colorful science cards. At the end of this study, Activity Evaluation Scale, of which Cronbach’s α coefficient is 0.78, is applied in order to evaluate the participants’ efficiency in colorful science cards and the writing activity. According to the results, nearly all the participants stated that colorful science card activity was like treasure hunting and they found it quite enjoyable and didactic. In addition to this, the majority of the participants also stated that with the help of the essay writing which is performed after the trip, they learned how to summarize the knowledge they got dur-ing the trip, how to put their thoughts in order and associate the key thoughts which are defined in each subject, that is they learned how to organize the knowledge and how to arrange them.

Keywords

Informal Learning, Writing to Learn, Science Teaching, Museum Education

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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