School visits to Science and Technology Museums: Education and Research

Petros P. Kariotoglou
(Assistant Professor, Department of Primary Education, University of Thessaloniki)

Paper in National Conference proceedings

Greek

The document presents in review-format the main results of a long-term research programme, which aims at investigating the roles of the pupils and their teachers during a school visit to the Technology Museum of Thessaloniki (TMT).
The authors are interested in the role of out-of-school education to the enhancement of scientific and technological literacy. They reach to the following main conclusions:
i) Both pupils and teachers have a strong positive attitude toward the visit to a Science and Technology museum
ii) Pupils have rather high expectations on the possible profits both at the knowledge and the emotional/fun level. These expectations seem to be confirmed.
iii)Students attitudes toward science do not seem to change significantly after the visit to the museum
iv) Teachers do not usually organize thoroughly the visit to the museum and do not give significant effort to the enhancement of knowledge (meta-knowledge) after the visit.
v) Teachers should attend training courses relevant to organization of out-of-school educational activities

The paper presents interesting findings related to the role of non-formal education to scientific literacy

www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/aestit/3rd/contibutions/45.pdf

Dr. Dionysios Koulougliotis

T.E.I. of Ionian Islands

Associate Professor