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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.
>
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>
>
> 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

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