ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Finding number one of How People Learn, an excellent report from the
National Academy of Science (online at www.nap.edu or just Google How
People Learn), is that all learners bring existing preconceptions with
them.  We ignore those at our very great peril.  If you doubt this or
just want a fascinating view of how these conceptions influence
learning, get a DVD of Minds of Our Own, an update on Private Universe,
from Phil Sadler of the Harvard Smithsonian Astrophysics group.

Explanations, no matter how clearly worded or wonderfully illustrated,
will frequently fail to convince those whose experience or intuition has
taught them otherwise or who perceive that the explanation conflicts
with or negates their values (even if it does not, really - See Finding
Darwin's God for an excellent exploration of this issue in evolution).
They may become able to give you the answer you expect on an assessment
question, but they may retain the alternative concept quite firmly in
their minds as the way "the world really works".  This means that you
can't even evaluate the effectiveness of your exhibit without great
effort to craft the questions, since only questions in which the
misconceptions are used as distracters will give a true picture of
people's understanding.  

I really like the following quote, that I think is relevant to how much
we try to explain.  "Perhaps one of the greatest problems in science
education is that we ask far too much by asking learners to accept the
collective efforts of the entire history of humankind to understand the
world." -Bonnie L. Shapiro, 1994, "What Children Bring to Light"  This
book is a wonderful detailed study of children as they go about
constructing meaning from experience.

David L. Smith, Ph.D.
Director of Professional Development
Da Vinci Discovery Center, Allentown, PA 
http://www.davinci-center.org
"Who will pick up where Leonardo left off?"



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Informal Science Education Network 
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of martin weiss
> Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2006 8:40 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Naural selection computer interactives?
> 
> > 	I think the problem with evolution exhibits in our museums 
> (science and natural history) are manifold; and the soon to be 
> published ASTC Dimensions will document some of these.
> 
> 	In short, knowing more about our visitors underlying 
> understanding of evolution will go a long way to our developing 
> meaningful and effective exhibitions on evolution. I think this 
> discussion, while useful, is top down. What exhibits can we use (do 
> we have) to explain evolution or natural selection? I think we should 
> be asking the question(s) from the bottom; what do our visitors, 
> children more so than adults, understand and what can they understand 
> about the principles underlying evolution? And how do we effectively 
> develop exhibits and programs to help them understand-and perhaps 
> accept-evolution.
> 
> Martin
> 
> snip<

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