Guided dialogues in science centres

NAFADISE

Presentation (in English) by Nana Quistgaard, IND

Data presented in this seminar involves asking questions to 15-16 years old students during a science center visit. The hypothesis was that it is possible to create a room for reflection at a science center by using an inquiry approach and thereby stimulating and facilitating a mutual dialogue. The background was the vast amount of studies showing that free-choice, unstructured school trips result in little (if any) student reflection. The underlying theoretical perspectives of the project are Bakhtin's concept of dialogism supplemented by Dewey's ideas of learning exchange and mutual communication. Each of six participating students constitutes a case and data consists of audio recordings during the visit and following-up interviews conducted one year later. Data was conducted in a one-one situation with the guide/facilitator and a student except for one event with the guide and two students. All data are analysed according to the phenomenological analysis model. The analysis gives an outline of how each student reacts to and is impacted by the guided dialogue and of what scientific level and cognitive style their responses are. The findings indicate that guided dialogue indeed holds potential to create high-level reflections both in the situation and in a long-term perspective as demonstrated by the following-up interviews. The six students show clear differences though in how they react to the guiding. The survey shows how the inquiry approach can be adjusted in the guiding situation in order to maximise the outcome for each type of student. These findings can serve as a first step into gaining knowledge of how school visits to science centers can seek to maximize the learning potential through a teacher and/or explainer led facilitation of mutual dialogue. It is clear though that the survey has limitations due to the one-one or one-two situation of guiding.