Many museums attempt to connect museum activities to classroom learning goals by creating "before" and "after" suggestions for the classroom teacher. Therefore, when doing out of school activities it is common to organize and plan such activities from a before, during and after perspective. The present study primarily rests on…

A STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) analysis project undertaken in the context of a historic visitor site is described. The project offered different types of opportunity for scientific working, and involved four distinct groups of participants. Two distinguishing features of the different groups of participants were their…

The purpose of this study was to examine the education of gifted children in Turkey during 1923-2020 from an historical perspective and to evaluate the current practices in gifted education. Drawing from the literature review, we first report on the policies and the legal and corporate advancements implemented in the field of gifted education…

Field courses are a critical component of many post-secondary programs in British Columbia and an important option in many others. They are widely recognized for their pedagogical value, mostly because it has been found that students generally achieve more high-level learning, and they retain more of what they learn, in a field-course setting than…

The participation of children in the management of science museums, following the theoretical approach of psychologist and educator Francesco Tonucci, is an effective tool both for the improvement at an internal level of the organization itself and for the implementation of a series of significant changes in the child's most immediate…

The goal of this research was to explore cognitive, self-determined learning and autonomous motivational effects in the context of a mobile science exhibition (N = 256) in Finland. The pupils were sixth-graders with an average age of 12 years 6 months. Autonomy experience, as measured by the Relative Autonomy Index (RAI), had an effect on how the…

Science festivals are seen as a success story for public engagement with science, with numbers rapidly growing. However, research has shown that attendees at such events tend to be more affluent, better-educated and more interested in science than populations at large. This has led to calls for research into how festivals can widen participation…

Student-scientist-teacher interactions provide students with several advantages. They provide opportunities to interact with experts and professionals in the field, give students a chance at meeting a role model that may impact students' career choices, and increase awareness of available career options combined with an understanding of how their…

Outdoor learning experiences can invoke feelings of uncertainty and discomfort, acting to disrupt human-environment narratives. In this article, the "performance" of nonhuman nature and discomfort in outdoor learning is considered, told through two vignettes from residential field trips with secondary age students, held at Slapton Ley…

Hands-on digital interactivity in science centers provides new communicative opportunities. The "Microcosmos" multi-touch table allows visitors to interact with 64 image "cards" of (sub)microscopic biological structures and processes embedded across seven theme categories. This study presents the integration of biological…

In this paper we highlight the issues and opportunities of a participatory action research (PAR) and co-design project, currently being undertaken as engaged research between academics at Durham University and practitioners at the UK's International Centre for Life in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (CfL; see creativescienceatlife.com for more information and…

Engaging students in conversations around science and engineering design can be challenging. Sparking such conversations during field trips at an interactive science center has additional challenges. First, students vary considerably in age from day to day: science center employees might work with first graders one day and sixth graders the next.…

The aim of this study was to explore how purposeful educational design using mobile learning might enable integration of classroom and outside of classroom teaching and learning. It was based on a marine reserves learning experience at a primary school which connected with a marine science and conservation visitor centre. The researchers'…

This article explores how using mobile learning-focused mixed reality (MR) can complement and reinforce learning experiences outside the classroom. Our study involved one primary school class, the teacher, and a marine reserve visitor centre and was based in the co-design of digital tools which were contextually relevant to all educators and…

This study aims to determine the effect of using out-of-school learning environments in science teaching on motivation for learning science. It is a quasi-experimental study and it has been designed as pre- and posttest experimental study. The study was carried out with seventh grade students enrolled in a secondary school in the city centre of a…