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Lisa,
        You've come across one of the really difficult parts
of museum and classroom research... how to tell the
long term effects of a single exposure to an experience
or concept.
        How do you differentiate the student who would have
gotten that answer right without the exposure to the experience
without a doing a pre-test to see if they already knew it... and if
you give the pre-test are you 'priming' the student to pay attention
to this factor that they might not have remembered otherwise.
        I (and I'm sure many others) have been struggling with
knowing how to really measure the kind of long term effects
(particularly cognitive gain) from their museum experiences.
And how do you know that the hands-on experience of making
the gumdrop and toothpick pyramid was any more effective
than if they had heard someone tell them it in a demonstration,
or in an IMAX movie?  Are they just reciting back a fact or do
they have real understanding of the concept.

        Sorry for the long response... but it is something that
really frustrates me compared to being able to replicate a
physics experiment and isolate the factors... we humans
are difficult to study...

David

David Taylor
AHHA Museum Services
  "Now I Understand"
    (206) 363-8126
   e-mail:   [log in to unmask]
http://www.AHHA-MuseumServices.com
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> From: Lisa Jo Rudy <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Informal Science Education Network
> Subject: educational research query

> Can anyone steer me in the right direction re research findings?  Here's my
> question:
>
> I know that there's plenty of research that says that kids learn from
> hands-on science experiences.  Is there any research that show that kids can
> translate what they learn in a hands-on setting into correct answers on a
> standard
> worksheet or test?
>
> For example -- a child learns from experience (by building with gumdrops and
> toothpicks) that a pyramid is stronger than a cube.  Two weeks later, he/she
> is presented with a formal in-school test in which a pyramid, cube and
> cylinder
> are pictured in two dimensions.  The question asks: which is strongest?  Can
> the child go back in his mind to the hands-on experience and translate the
> hands-on experience into an abstract test response?  And... is there any
> technique by which this kind of retention and translation can be facilitated?
>
> Thanks a million!!
> Lisa Jo Rudy, Writer/Consultant

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