Education: A partnership between Zoo and Visitors- is it equal?
Dr Sue Dale Tunnicliffe,
formerly Head of Education, Zoological Society of London.
Introduction
Partners are allies (McCleod 1987) and work together with a shared interest. The prospective allies in this paper are the visitors and the zoo and it is the extent to which they are partners in their interest in conservation that is the subject of debate. However, there are three main categories of visitors, the family group, the adults without children and the school groups. This paper explores the extent to which conservation features in the spontaneous conversations of elementary school children and their accompanying adults and family groups with children of the same age.
Conservation and education are cited by western zoos as their main mission (Brambell 1993; IUDZG and IUCN/SSC 1993) and they design their interpretation accordingly. The first section of Chapter 4 in the World Zoo Conservation Strategy opens with the declaration ‘in one way or another they (the visitors) have an interest in animals’. The partnership is equal, the visitors want to look at animals and the zoos provide them but, warns Bitgood and his associates (Bitgood, Formwalt, Zimmerman and Patterson 1993), visitors already hold opinions about some of the animals with which the zoos are working and may be neither interested in, nor support, projects for animals for which they feel no affiliation.
School parties come to the zoo with defined educational objectives (Marshdoyle, Bowman and Mullins 1981; Tunnicliffe 1994) which do not necessarily match the objectives of the zoos. An international survey (Tunnicliffe 1994) conducted in 1992 amongst school teachers who arranged a field trip to a zoo revealed that of 147 respondents, 110 (75%) said that they considered conservation an important aspect of their visit only 65 (44%) cited this as a focus topic. Eighty five (51%) of the respondents said conservation was not a theme they would study. The popularity of conservation cited as a reason for study in a zoo was highest amongst teachers of the 7-9 year olds (33 out of 69 or 48%). This age group were the most frequent visitors. While conservation was rated as important, it was significant that those teachers who affirmed the topic’s importance in their pupil’s education also said that they brought the children to the zoo to study it. There was no positive correlation between the teachers saying they were studying biology in the zoo and also studying conservation. It was interesting that, contrary to what one might expect from general discussions with teachers, the study of conservation was not the dominant reason for teachers bringing pupils to the zoo. The teachers who did not cite conservation as a theme for study thought it important that primary students noticed adaptations to the habitat, the real size of the animals, as well as classification and the variety of life.
However, despite the intentions and voiced opinions of the teachers, do the school groups discuss conservation during their visit? Zoos are places of conversations (Lucas, McManus and Thomas 1986) and it is the actual exhibits, not a planned agenda, that spontaneously trigger conversations (Hilke 1988). Conversations fall into four major categories : Exhibit Access, Exhibit focused, Management of the group and Social conversations (Tunnicliffe 1993).
In exhibit focused conversations about animals, visitors name, point out behaviours or physical attributes, try to instigate behaviours and occasionally engage in ‘thoughtful reflection’ (Rosenfeld, 1980: 59). Furthermore, institutions, like zoos, ‘talk’ to their visitors too (McManus 1987) and a number of zoos ‘tell’ their visitors information about conservation. However, do the visitors understand what is begin said? Indeed, do they ‘listen’ or even ‘hear’?
If visitors attend a zoo with the intention of observing, discussing and learning about conservation the topic should be heard in the ensuing conversations. Furthermore, if adults embarked on their visit with the objective of teaching their children about conservation, it would be heard in the dialogues of those groups. Moreover, it would be expected, if the teachers who chose to take their school groups to the zoo are representative of the other adults who choose to take their own children to the zoo, that conservation would be a topic talked about. Conversations were gathered and analysed to find out if the interests of visitors gauged through the content of their conversations matches the interests of the zoo.
Methods
The research project sought to establish, through ethnographic methodology, a description of what primary aged children and their accompanying adults talked about when looking at animal exhibits in zoos. Data was collected in both England (UK) and the USA. I accompanied children and their adults and tape recorded their conversations after receiving permission to do so from the teacher in charge of the party. The tapes were transcribed. Units of conversations, defined as the ‘group conversation in front of any one exhibit from the beginning of the conversation until it ceased’, were identified in the transcripts. An example of a unit of conversation is shown below. Five year old children held this conversation in the Cat House at Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens whilst looking at a caracal:
Adult: There’s that picture again. [the endangered animal symbol used throughout the zoo] What does it mean?
Girl: There won’t be much any more. It’s endangered. There he is over there.
Girl: It’s in the corner. There are two.
Adult: You can see his tail.
Girl: Oh Mum!
Each topic of conversation was then coded according to a systemic network (Bliss, Ogborn and Martin 1983) which had been worked out from pilot studies (Tunnicliffe 1993). A systemic network is a means of grouping or categorising things, in this case conversations, to be a parsimonious representation of the data, whilst preserving the relationships between categories in such a way that comparisons can be made between groups. The network can be regarded as the sets of boxes into which the researcher puts each part of the conversation. At one extreme of the continuum of categorising the conversations are highly specific items, whilst at the other end is the main descriptor, in this case ‘children’s comments’. The numbers at the right of the figure label the most specific level of table categorisation. There were 74 categories in this network (Fig 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 animal may have. Each conversation unit was categorised with the appropriate number from the networks. Hence the above conversation was represented in the following way.
71/ 19/ 13
Adult: There’s that picture again / What does it mean?
68/ 20/ 68/ 40/ 20
Girl: There won’t be much any more. /It’s endangered./ There he/ is over there
20/ 40/ 50
Girl: It’s/ in the corner./ There are two.
3/ 49
Adult: You/ can see his tail....
31/ 3
Girl: Oh/ Mum!
The data was entered into a Minitab statistics package. If there were at least one use of the category in the conversational unit a 1 scored in that category of topic. In order to assess the reliability of the network a second person independently categorised 20 conversational units which provided 434 instances of a category and there was agreement in 92% of the instances.
Fig 1 Part of the Systemic network used in coding the conversations
Results
An overall comparison of the main topics of conversations between the data collected in the USA the UK was made for both school and family visit. The proportion of conversations about either the natural habitat of the animal, conservation topics and the use of names of the animal were also identified for both groups (Tables 2 and 3). Since the categories are not mutually exclusive it is not legitimate to use a 5 x 2 contingency table, therefore each column was treated independently in each table using the total value for each country for each category in a 2 x 2 contingency table(Table 1)
Table 1 Contingency Table
USA families / English families / row totalsconversations with reference to names / 286 / 126 / 412
conversations without / 89 / 20 / 107
totals / 375 / 143 / 519
significant at 0.005 level
The category of ‘Other aspects of the exhibits’ such as labels or furniture are mentioned by children and accompanying adults more by the UK school groups. However, children and their adults talk about conservation more during a school outing in the two USA zoos than in the UK (Table 3). Family groups (Table 2) commented in similar proportions about the main topics of the exhibits, except that the London families commented to a significantly greater extent about ‘exhibit access’(p < 0.005) and names (p < 0.005) in their dialogue than the USA groups. Families scarcely comment about conservation and the natural habitat but the occurrence is significant (p < 0.005) and (p < 0.005) respectively.
The two ‘family conversations about conservation were heard from frequent visitors (personal communication from family) that referred to aspects conservation.
The following conversation was in the Texas Animals at Caldwell Zoo between a family who visited once a month on Sunday afternoon:
Boy: What’s up here?
Mum: Look up in the tree
Boy: Oh my God
Mum: It’s called a ring tail cat. Where Dad grew up they were all over the place, now they are
very rare.
Boy: Why?
Mum: They were all over the woods and they got hunted by people and killed off...
Table 2: Main topics of conversation including topics relating to Conservation and Biodiversity: Family Visits in the UK and USA
Zoo / conservationno % / habitat
no % / animal focused
no % / exhibit access
no % / names
no %
Rio Grande n=65 / 0 0 / 4 6 / 63 97 / 34 75 / 47 100
St Louis n=120 / 1 1 / 4 3 / 119 99 / 68 82 / 89 71
Caldwell n=74 / 1 1 / 2 3 / 72 97 / 49 66 / 67 91
Indianapolis n=116 / 0 0 / 0 0 / 116 100 / 79 68 / 83 72
Total USA n=375 / 2 0 / 10 3 / 370 99 / 241 64 / 286 76
London n=143 / 0 0 / 6 9 / 141 99 / 123 86 / 126 88
2 ( totals) / insufficient data to calculate / insuffcient data / 0.003
not significant / 23.44
significant
p < 0.005 / 5.92
significant
p < 0.005
Table 3: Main topics of School conversations in the UK and USA about animal related topic including conservation and natural habitat of animals.
Zoo / conservation no % / habitatno % / animal focused
no % / exhibit access
no % / other aspects
no % / names
no %
London n=459 / 5 1 / 14 3 / 455 98 / 289 63 / 277 60 / 401 87
Whipsnade n=197 / 3 1 / 12 6 / 194 99 / 137 70 / 107 54 / 165 84
Total English Schools (n= 656) / 8 1 / 26 4 / 652 99 / 426 65 / 384 59 / 566 86
Cincinnati n=239 / 14 6 / 13 5 / 235 98 / 144 60 / 97 41 / 209 57
Indianapolis n=62 / 1 2 / 0 0 / 62 100 / 40 65 / 30 32 / 44 71
Total USA schools (n=301) / 15 5 / 13 4 / 297 99 / 184 61 / 127 42 / 253 84
2 ( totals) / sample size insufficient / sample size insufficient / 1.29
not significant / 127.09
significant
p<0.005 / 68.13
significant
p<0.005 / 0.83
not significant
School groups (Table 3) comment in a similar way about the major aspects of exhibits but it is significant (p < 0.005) that the USA children commented less on ‘other aspects of the exhibit’, focusing their comments on the animals. The higher count for conservation topics in the USA is due to the comments made at Cincinnati zoo. Had data about families been collected in this zoo it may have shown that families commented here about conservation to a greater extent than in other zoos. This difference in the number of conservation topics appears to reflects is a local phenomenon and not a national trend. All other topics are talked about in similar proportions. Overall school groups talked about conservation more than did the family groups suggesting that school groups are more alert to this topic.
Discussion
The results provide an account of what interests zoo visitors, gauged through a count of the topics of their spontaneous conversations when looking at animal exhibits. Both school and family groups notice the attributes and use names. They do not talk about conservation issues to any great extent. The few instances in family conversations were from families that were repeat visitors and it is interesting that more school groups did mention conservation in some zoos. However, the proportion of ‘school’ conversations mentioning either conservation (endangered animals and extinction), or natural habitats was low, despite a significant number of teachers having indicated in another survey (Tunnicliffe 1994) that learning about conservation was one of the reasons for taking their pupils to the zoo. The rate of mention of conservation amongst the school visitors suggests that either the teachers had heightened the awareness of the children to this topic or that the zoos involved had presented the conservation message more successfully for school groups than for families. The familiarity of visitors with the setting is another factor in the effectiveness of the visit from the aspect of learning about the topic chosen by the teacher. A novel setting distracts the children from learning whilst they explore the new environment. Falk, Martin and Balling(1978) suggest that showing slides or videos, looking at maps and discussing the timetable beforehand, lessens the novel field trip impact and renders the day more profitable in terms of cognitive learning. It could be that the same effect operates on families, with the repeat visitors, now familiar with the locations and the exhibits, able to orientate themselves and focus on other aspects of the animals than finding them in the exhibits and categorising them.
The zoos have a mission about conservation but if they are to reach the visitor with meaningful information about preserving habitats and animal species an awareness of the content of the conversations of their visitors could be beneficial to management. Furthermore, an appreciation of the level of scientific understanding which zoo visitors possess, which appears to be both of a perceptual observational level and of an everyday and ‘pre-science’ nature, could assist the zoo management in designing the type and format of information that is presented to the public. If the interests of leisure visitors, who arrive at a zoo with both knowledge and attitudes about animals and associated issues, is known from an analysis of the conversations of visitors, the zoos could use this information to establish an appropriate starting point for developing awareness about conservation amongst the general visitors.
Zoos need to build on the spontaneous observations of the public and lead them, by way of their first hand observations of attributes, into the fundamental concepts of the science behind biodiversity. The key concepts of the two aspects of conservation, conserving the animals in their natural habitats and the developments of conservation biology techniques, should be introduced to the visitor. Furthermore, immediate advance organisers need to be provided between the entrance of the zoo and the animals with the conservation message so that visitors can ‘organise’ their minds so that they have mental capacity for receiving the fresh messages. The conservation messages provided by zoos are often purveyed through detailed labels written in a didactic manner and which do not attract the attention of the general visitor. However, a few zoos, such as Cincinnati, use a readily recognisable symbol to indicate that an animal is endangered.
Visitors focus spontaneously on conservation issues that are within their own experience and are pertinent to them, as in the case of the ‘Caldwell ring tailed cat’. They notice simple symbols and children in particular will seek for them but visitors tend not to read the labels but look at the animals (Serrell 1988). The ‘talk’ from the zoo is not listened to by the visitors.
Exhibits should be simple, for research has shown that complex multi-species exhibits do not enhance learning (Peart 1984), but pertinent to the animals which the visitor has seen. If the science is unrelated to the immediate vicinity, visitors are rarely interested (Friedman 1993 personal communication). Furthermore, both groups in this study included children of primary school age whose knowledge of animals and their needs is at an elementary level. The lack of knowledge may preclude children from taking an interest in the conservation message unless it is presented in an active participatory manner (Jackson-Gould 1993).
Alternatively, as the majority of the visitors come to the zoo to look at the animals and categorise them and not to focus on conservation, the animals that form the collection that the public view could be selected to provide the best exemplars of the main categories of animals. The species should be identified by simple invitational labelling of a fundamental nature. The conservation work could occur ‘behind the scenes’, and be available for the initiated visitors who do have a genuine interest in the work. However, such tactics could render zoos vulnerable to those factions in society that are against the exhibiting of animals but do support the breeding in captivity of endangered species.
The World Zoo Conservation Strategy (IUDZG and IUCN/SSC 1993 ) notes that zoos reach hundreds of millions of people all over the world. The great majority of these people live in urban areas and have little contact with nature but they come to the zoo because, in one way or another, they have an interest in nature. The document (IUDZG and IUCN/SSC 1993:5) also suggest that zoos are evolving to serve as conservation centres in multiple ways. However, it appears visitors are not yet ready for such centres. Visitors are still treating zoos as the zoological park or ‘living museum’ (IUDZG and IUCN/SSC 1993:5).