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hi,

First off, sorry for such a poorly written post yesterday. I was on my way
out, but had to respond. My haste killed my grammar.

Second, David, I agree that the ideal is to find the marriage of content and
skill, but I do think that it helps to break things down a bit when you
start developing/ designing an exhibit. Unfortunately, in my experience,
that break down has usually meant starting with a content point and then
building from there. I feel that, usually...not always, building from
content can limit the thinking about what an exhibit can do or be.

Hope this hasn't muddied the waters or beat a dead horse.

Ben

Ben Dickow
310-614-6048
[log in to unmask]
Coming Soon! a blog: *museum101.blogspot.com*



On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 7:59 PM, David Smith <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
>
> *****************************************************************************
>
> On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 7:28 PM, Scott Pattison <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> > Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> > institutions.
> >
> >
> *****************************************************************************
> >
> >
> > We're interested in learning more about exhibits that focus on skill
> > building (e.g., science process skills, critical thinking skills),
> > rather than communicating content messages.  What are some recent
> > examples of these type of exhibits?  Any thoughts on what makes these
> > exhibits more or less successful?
> >
>
> It's an interesting question, but as a scientist and science educator I
> have
> some concerns about the continuing assumption in science education that
> science is or can be bifurcated into content on one hand and process on the
> other.
>
> In reality, the content and the process are indivisible.  We tend to think
> about content in terms of factual statements such as "the acceleration due
> to gravity at the earth's surface is 9.8 m/s^2" or "F=ma," but such
> statements are a form of insider shorthand and are problematic when we
> start
> dealing with novice science learners.  Expert physicists know that F=ma is
> an empirical relationship, deriving its status as law from repeated high
> precision measurements, but they also know that it is at some level only an
> approximation to those measurements and that the approximation breaks down
> badly when speed get sufficiently high.  All of that context is lost when
> we
> make the shorthand statement to novices and so students learn to think that
> F=Ma just is what the law is.  They totally miss the idea that it is
> derived
> from observation and is prone to errors, but corrected by multiplicity of
> measurements.  Every "fact" of science has process embedded in it -
> observing, hypothesizing, designing experiments, analyzing, etc.
>
> Likewise, process cannot be decoupled from content.  You cannot learn to
> hypothesize or observe or communicate in the abstract.  You must observe
> something, you must hypothesize about some relationship based on some
> existing knowledge.  You can't hypothesize or plan experiments about
> changes
> in the arrival of spring due to global warming without knowing that some
> spring changes are day-length dependent and could be hypothesized to be
> unlikely to change, whereas others are temperature dependent and could be
> hypothesized to be likely to change.
>
> So rather than looking for exhibits on process per se, I would encourage
> you
> to look for exhibits that recouple process and content - exhibits that
> promote scientific inquiry.  Put away the sign with the crystal clear
> explanation that is devoid of process and get one that reflects what is
> really going on, or better yet, asks the visitor to develop and share her
> own ideas.  If you must put Newton's law on a sign, at least make it clear
> that it is based on repeated observation with careful measurements.  Better
> yet, attach force and acceleration probes to an object and push it to
> generate a graph of F vs a where people can see, with guidance)  that the
> slope is the mass.  This is a very important definition of mass and much
> more physically meaningful than the usual statement about "the amount of
> stuff in an object." Of course, this is very hard to do in an unmoderated
> exhibit, which is why we have so many exhibits that are lovely
> demonstrations accompanied by a sign telling the visitor what to observe
> and
> how to understand those observations.
>
> The Exploratorium's Institute for Inquiry (www.exploratorium.edu/ifi) has
> a
> very helpful professional development activity on process skills and the
> development of those process skills, based on important work by Harlan.
>  The
> developmental chart of process skills could be very helpful in planning for
> exhibits to engage those skills.
>
> David Smith
>
> --
> David L. Smith
> Da Vinci Science Center
> Allentown, PA
> http://www.davinci-center.org
>
> Please consider the environment before printing this email.
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