ABSTRACT:In this paper, we examine the interactional ways that families make meaning from biological exhibits during a visit to an interactive science center. To understand the museum visits from the perspectives of the families, we use ethnographic and discourse analytic methods, including pre-and postvisit interviews, videotaped observations of the museum visits, and coding and analysis of utterances from naturally occurring conversations. We employ an Everyday Expertise framework to understand how families use ideas and materials to make meaning from the scientific content presented in exhibits. We argue that individual and cognitive aspects of learning are fundamentally connected to the social and cultural aspects of learning; therefore, we analyze the intertwining role of individual cognitive resources, situated activities, and cultural toolkit resources that support learning interactions and processes. Findings indicate how families use a variety of knowledge types (epistemic resources) to make sense of exhibit content, how they make sense of biological content by transferring cultural epistemic resources from prior experiences, and how families use two types of scientific epistemic resources-biological facts and perceptual descriptions-as the primary means to make sense of biological exhibits.

No abstract

No abstract

A large-enrollment, undergraduate cellular biology lecture course is described whose primary goal is to help students acquire skill in the interpretation of experimental data. The premise is that this kind of analytical reasoning is not intuitive for most people and, in the absence of hands-on laboratory experience, will not readily develop unless instructional methods and examinations specifically designed to foster it are employed. Promoting scientific thinking forces changes in the roles of both teacher and student. We describe didactic strategies that include directed practice of data analysis in a workshop format, active learning through verbal and written communication, visualization of abstractions diagrammatically, and the use of ancillary smallgroup mentoring sessions with faculty. The implications for a teacher in reducing the breadth and depth of coverage, becoming coach instead of lecturer, and helping students to diagnose cognitive weaknesses are discussed. In order to determine the efficacy of these strategies, we have carefully monitored student performance and have demonstrated a large gain in a pre-and posttest comparison of scores on identical problems, improved test scores on several successive midterm examinations when the statistical analysis accounts for the relative difficulty of the problems, and higher scores in comparison to students in a control course whose objective was information transfer, not acquisition of reasoning skills. A novel analytical index (student mobility profile) is described that demonstrates that this improvement was not random, but a systematic outcome of the teaching/learning strategies employed. An assessment of attitudes showed that, in spite of finding it difficult, students endorse this approach to learning, but also favor curricular changes that would introduce an analytical emphasis earlier in their training.

No abstract