SUMMARY
It is very important for the future of biology that pupils
learn about organisms, plants and animals, These exhibits in
natural history museums, zoos and botanic gardens tell a story
which is interpreted in a different way by the visitors. The
visits do not always interpret the organism and exhibits in the
way intended and bring their existing knowledge to this. This
is the challenge of the new century biology education. To learn
about living things
Key words
plants, animals, children, learning, biology, education
RESUME
C’est très important, pour le future de la biologie,
que les élèves apprennent a partis des organismes,
les plantes et les animaux. Ces expositions, le musée
d’histoire naturelle, le jardin zoologique et un jardin
botanique, nous racontent un passé qui peut être
interprété d’une manière différente
par les visiteurs. Cependant les visiteurs ne peuvent toujours
pas interpréter la nature d’une exposition de manière
objective, compte tenu des idées préconçues,
basées sur leur connaissances personnelles acquises au
préalable. C’est le défi du siècle
qui s’ouvle, apprenent a partis des organismes.
Mots cles
les plantes, les animaux, biologie, les élèves,
éducation
Homerton College, Cambridge, UK
email sue_dale_tunnicliffe@cms,
compuserve.com
postal address
18 Octavia, Bracknell, Berkshire, RG12 7YZ
____________________
Introduction
As a biology educator I wanted to find out:
Before people can appreciate biological advances they need
to have an understanding and familiarity with living organisms.
This knowledge is obtained through a variety of means but particularly
through school and, more often, home (Tunnicliffe and Reiss 1999).
This paper is concerned with the effectiveness of ‘museums’
in getting across a message about biodiversity of living things.
It is important to appreciate that learning about biology occurs
not only in the classroom but outside them too.
Although some schools do use their school grounds for studies
in biology and environmental education nearly all schools organise
visits to sites such as natural history museums, botanical gardens,
zoos, aquaria and nature and field centres. Such visits may form
part of the teaching for a particular topic or they may be primarily
regarded as social trips. When the visits are organised for curriculum
purposes what do the groups, pupils, chaperones and teachers,
talk about. Is biology education happening or are the participants
just looking and commenting in an everyday way? Are visits to
places to view biological organisms missed educational opportunities?
It is important for biology education that we know what is happening
on such visits so that we can develop strategies for the 21st
century and effective biology education.
Method
There are a great many ways of analysing conversations e.g.
Tunnicliffe and Reiss, 1999). In the study reported in this paper,
the same method, that of a systemic network, was used. A systemic
network is a means of grouping or categorising things, in this
case conversations, to be a parsimonious representation of the
data, while preserving the relationships between categories in
such a way that comparisons can be made between groups.
It is a type of analysis that changes qualitative into quantifiable
data and each topic of conversation was coded according to the
systemic network designed for the studies. The network can be
regarded analogously as the sets of nested boxes into which the
researcher puts each part of the conversation and sections are
presented in Figure 1. There were 56 categories in this network
some of which are shown in figure 1. A bar, ‘[’, indicates
that an attribute may be either/or but not a member of both categories,
whilst a bracket, ‘{’, indicates one of a number of
categories which an organism may have. A theoretical ‘waste
basket category’ for topics such as security alert announcement
comments and which were uncategorised was provided.
Plants
The conversations of small groups within school parties the
Royal Horticultural Society Gardens, Wisley, Surrey, were listened
to and recorded by hand. Tape recording had proved too difficult
in a pilot study because of interference, in particular the distance
between young visitors and other noises.
Results
Plants
The data show that overall 95% of conversations were focused
on the exhibits- the gardens and the plants- and 79% of the conversations
contained a comment about a plant. Anatomical features of plants
occurred in 51% of all conversations whereas only 9% referred
to a physiological function and 54% named in some ways a plant.
Emotions and affective attitudes are not predominant in conversations
and only 19% of the exchanges expressed an ambition. Overall
, 64% of conversations were of some type of interpretative nature
with 48% being of ‘other interpretative nature’ which
includes 47% being a knowledge source comment- a question or
a statement, 3% discussing the reality of the specimen. Only
3% mentioned an environmental issue, such as the natural habitat
or the conservation issues associated with the plant- which is
a feature of Wisley Horticultural Gardens. However, 23% of the
conversational exchanges considered the human plant relationship,
most often as in the second conversational example, these were
about the speaker’s relationship with the plant through
gardening at home.
The groups commented mostly about anatomical features of the
plants of which 13% of all conversations mentioned leaves, 20%
flowers or fruits whilst 4% mentioned the stem. The features
mentioned had to stand out from the rest of the plant. As for
example do the leaves of Gunnera.
| 358 |
Boy ( 8 year
old)
|
Wow! Look at those leaves. I have seen one plant like that
but not
such big leaves!
|
The dimensions of the plants, their colour or size, were mentioned
most of all and this occurred in 26% of all conversations. Other
comments occurred in 7% of conversations and were about items
such as prickles. The most frequent function of plants which
was mentioned was growth, in 9% of conversations, followed by
food at 3% and ‘other’ including reproduction in 5%.
Sometimes the teachers gave the children the information but
on occasions they drew the As other researchers have found, the
opportunity to interact with the plants with more than the sense
of sight is an important part of the experience of visiting the
gardens and part of learning about biodiversity Animals stole
the limelight from plants if they were present. If there were
an animal moving, the attention of the groups was immediately
diverted from static plants.
The data show that the visitors comment about salient features
and seek to explain that which they see from their previous knowledge
and understanding. Adults and pupils feed the conversation of
each other on occasion but also speak in statements with a series
of statements which may not be linked in thought development.
Similarly at the gardens the same type of pattern of comments
were heard but there were less comments about gardening and active
involvement with plants. Human /plants relationships were mentioned
in 14% overall of conversations but the environment, including
conservation, only 8%. Just over a quarter of conversations contained
at least one affective comment. The visitors talked about the
plants in 87% of conversations.
Animals in the Natural History Museum and
Zoo
The data suggest that the museum presented an environment
more conducive to looking and discussing the specimens without
additional distractions or need for control. In contrast the
school visitors to live zoo animals generated significantly more
conversations that contained at least one reference to exhibit
access, (77%) presumably because the live animals were more difficult
to locate within exhibits, which in turn is a reflection upon
the design of the exhibits. Both groups generated emotive comments
to the same extent ( 31 % and 35%).
The significantly higher number of comments about environmental
issues in the museum (11%) at the preserved specimens is also
surprising (4% in zoo. All conversations focused on observations
of animals, a prerequisite of biodiversity understanding. However,
the data show that the difference in the type of specimen, preserved
and static, or live and potentially moving, engendered a difference
in emphasis of conversational content. Overall naming comments
did occur in similar amounts, * 87% zoo, 86% museum) the groups
in the museum had a similar variety of specimens to observe as
did the zoo groups, but the traditional museum specimens were
readily visible, and the museum visitor categorised and compared
animals significantly more, although the associations were weak
in absolute terms (41% museum; 19% zoo).
Specimens were located nearer to each other in the museum
which may account for some of the comments that compared animals.
Unfamiliar parts of animals were noticed significantly more than
in the zoo (17% compared to 7%) because these parts were easily
viewed on a static specimens in an exhibit designed for visitors
to observe closely. Attracting behaviour such as fighting
and movement were, not surprisingly, mentioned significantly
more for the live animals (25% and 28%) and behaviours were referred
to more (66% compared with 37% in the museum which is a surpassingly
high proportion of conversations because the animals did not
move). The museum exhibits tended to generate longer conversations
than did those of the zoo.
DISCUSSION
The main points drawn from these studies are that
Lack of biological education focus amongst conversations
of school groups
Since pupils are visiting the exhibits as part of their formal
educational entitlement, ascertaining the content of the conversations
of the three sub-groups of primary school parties is important
in order that an effective educational experience can be provided
for subsequent primary school visitors. There is a everyday commentary
generated at plant and animal exhibits. This commentary is altered
somewhat either when there is a definite educational objective
that is stated by the teacher or the group is led by a
teacher used to focusing the attention of pupils.
Lack of talking science
Children do not spontaneously and are not encouraged to raise
questions formulate hypothesise and observe, gather data and
then evaluate. Very occasionally children were thinking at this
level and with appropriate support from a teacher could have
developed the theme.
Visits are missed opportunities for learning biology
Categorisation and hence knowing about biodiversity requires
comparison with other species to identify whether the animal
has the criterial attributes essential for its class and relies
on observing anatomical features and behaviours. Pupils can maximise
learning by using observational opportunities to reinforce school
work. School visits have a surprising uniformity in content of
conversations irrespective of the composition of the groups.
Scientific concepts have to be developed by pedagogic techniques.
The visit experience itself, whilst highly enjoyable, is overwhelmingly
a missed opportunity when schools and museums fail to capitalise
on its learning potential.
Being a member of a social group is not sufficient alone to
bring about learning, additional interpretation and guidance
to the subject being studied is required. Providing or facilitating
an affective experience is an insufficient warrant for institutions
whose primary mission is above all else, educational. The affective
domain could serve as the starting point in an educational programme
which would lead pupils into learning other aspects of zoological
science relevant to their ages. Visitors to and zoos, natural
history museums and botanical gardens construct their own meaning
about the organisms from their own knowledge and experiences,
including allocating the specimen to a familiar category when
they do not know the scientifically correct one. The role of
the teacher who organises a school visit should be to help their
pupils enter into meaning; part of the way to achieve this objective
is to ensure that all other adults who will be working with pupils
whilst the school parties are in the zoo, natural history museum
or botanical gardens have an understanding of both the subject
matter and the key teaching strategies which can be applied to
assist the pupils in their learning. Neither children, nor the
majority of adults accompanying them, do not spontaneously notice
the features important to biologists and used in taxonomy nor
do they approach the identification of organisms in a systematic
way.
If biodiversity education is to advance and be key in conservation
education, zoos, museums and botanical gardens need to be more
effective in assisting their visitors in establishing the rudiments
of biodiversity knowledge. The first step in this process is
establishing, as I have done in this paper, what it is the visitors
note and subsequently, through various techniques and strategies,
building on this base. Promoting the effective study of living
things is the basic challenge for biological education in the
21st century. Without success in this area there will be little
biological understanding in our societies.
Footnotes
1. Tunnicliffe, S.D. & Reiss, M.J. (1999) Building a model
of the environment: how do children see animals? Journal of Biological
Education. 33 (4) 142-148
2. Tunnicliffe, S.D., Lucas, A. M. & Osborne, J. F (1997).
School visits to zoos and museums: a missed educational opportunity?
International Journal of Science Education, 19 (9), 1039-1056.
3. Tunnicliffe, S.D. & Reiss, M.J. (1999d) Talking about
Brine Shrimps: Three Ways of Analysing Pupil Conversations. Research
in Science & Technological Education. 17 (2) 203-217
4. Tunnicliffe, S.D. (1995). Talking about animals: studies
of young children visiting
zoos, a museum and a farm. Unpublished PhD thesis, King's College,
London.
