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ABSTRACT:Museums are favorite and respected resources for learning worldwide. In Israel, there are two relatively large science centers and a number of small natural history museums that are visited by thousands of students. Unlike other countries, studying museum visits in Israel only emerges in the last few years. The study focused on the roles and perceptions of teachers, who visited four natural history museums with their classes. The study followed previous studies that aimed at understanding the role teachers play in class visits

This article describes a 3‐year study of school visits to four natural history museums and addresses the research agenda with regard to out‐of‐school learning. More specifically, the findings focus on the process of learning in museums. Comprehensive data collection allowed for an analysis of patterns of guided visits, the way the scientific content was conveyed to students, and the extent and types of social interactions thus enabled. Observations of 42 guided visits (grades 3–11) indicates that the main visitation pattern consisted of guide‐centered and task‐oriented activity. Analysis of questions asked by museum guides reveals that most of these questions required mainly lower‐order thinking skills. A common questioning pattern was to ask rhetorical questions as a means of carrying on the lecture. Detailed analysis of the scientific vocabulary used by the guides indicates that they used much scientific jargon, with limited explanation. There was only limited social mediation provided by teachers and museum guides. A minority of teachers were involved in the activities or in helping the guide to clarify or in helping the students to understand the explanations. The overall data indicate limited opportunities for meaningful learning, suggesting that the museums should shift from the traditional knowledge‐transmission model of teaching to a more socioculturally contextualized model. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 44: 747–769, 2007

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In light of the literature that deals with challenges of outdoor education, this paper presents exemplary practices in field trips to natural environments. We offer an analysis of 62 field trips of students in grades 4-8 (age 10-14), guided by professional guides or by teachers. In aiming at elucidating the qualities of exemplary fieldtrips, we analyze five examples of high quality field trips. Each of the five was exemplary in several aspects, but not necessarily in all. Data were collected though observations and interviews with teachers, guides and students. Interpretative analysis was used in addition to an analytic framework that we developed previously. In general, we stress that good collaboration between the guide and the teacher, who enact active learning and psychomotor activity, and make much use of the environment for student exploration and interaction, are the key to high quality outdoor learning experiences. We provide several examples to support this claim. Other aspects we highlight are a sense of freedom, time and opportunity to enjoy nature and the opportunities to have meaningful social interactions. In light of the prevalent critique toward current outdoor education practice, we suggest the research community learn from good practices. What is good practice in outdoor teaching? How might we recognize it? What are its specific characteristics? We keep asking these questions, realizing how complex the learning experience we study is and acknowledging that the answer is not simple. Since we ask the questions with reference to guided school visits that our research group studied in the last decade, we focus on the broad question of how to understand, frame and design outdoor learning that corresponds with school-based learning. We use a systemic approach to outdoor learning that considers as many variables as possible that affect the quality of the activity and its outcomes. These variables include (1) the context-the school curriculum, the physical environment, the group's background and so forth; (2) the pedagogy and the agents who implement this pedagogy-teachers, field guides, the students and their interest, and (3) the content of the field trip. Although there is much literature that describes challenges and misuse of outdoor education experiences, we believe that the contribution of this body of literature to identifying high quality practices is limited. We already know much of what's wrong, but we know little of what works. In this paper we used a different approach than we used in previous studies by attempting to identify, present and discuss high quality practices of outdoor education, by looking at how the interplay between different aspects