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CHILDREN'S LEARNING AT INTERACTIVE CENTRES:

DEVELOPING EDUCATION STAFF AS 'CULTURE BROKERS'

Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the British Educational Research Association, University of Exeter, England, 12-14 September 2002

Dr. Alan Peacock

Reader in Primary Science Education

School of Education and Lifelong Learning

University of Exeter

St. Luke's Campus

Exeter EX1 2LU

Tel: (44) 1392 264983

Fax: (44) 1392 264792

e-mail:

CHILDREN'S LEARNING AT INTERACTIVE CENTRES: DEVELOPING EDUCATION STAFF AS 'CULTURE BROKERS'.

Alan Peacock, Reader in Primary Science Education, University of Exeter.

Abstract

This paper describes some of the concepts related to learning through interaction in 'hands-on' contexts (such as museums, botanical gardens, environmental centres and science parks), and the consequent implications for teaching and learning amongst Initial Teacher Education (ITE) staff and others engaged in developing effective non-formal education in such contexts. International research is drawn on to indicate how culture, strategies and contexts combine to affect environmental learning in different locations. This provides a theoretical basis for defining and analysing interactive learning, the roles of trainers/educators, and the likely outcomes of different educational strategies.

Aikenhead's (1996) concepts of 'cultural border crossings' and the educator as 'culture broker' are developed in the context of Interactive Centres (ICs), in order to propose a model through which learning might be more effectively supported. The model envisages a shift from delivery and dissemination strategies targeted at large whole-class groups, towards teaching approaches which focus more on what learners choose to know about, through dialogue between children and 'known and trusted people'. The IC itself becomes reconceptualised as a meeting place, rather than as theme park or classroom. Implications for the roles of teacher educators, education managers and their staffs are developed from the new model. The paper concludes with a proposal for an evaluation study of this model based in two ICs.

Introduction: Issues related to learning in the environment

For the purposes of this paper, non-school educational environments such as botanical gardens, environmental centres, nature reserves, museums, science centres, exploratoria etc, will be referred to as Interactive Centres (ICs). ICs have been a growth area in recent years, and have been given a high profile in the public consciousness of environment and interactive learning. Yet their effectiveness at communicating their messages to the public at large, and children in particular, has not been extensively studied, with the possible exception of museums. This may be a consequence of the widespread assumption that such lavishly resourced and exciting places are self-evidently good for learning.

Our studies of the Eden Project in Cornwall[1] and other ICs in the UK indicate that typically, children visit such centres either in small groups with parents or in large school groups, which may break down into smaller groups. In school groups, the adult:child ratio is typically between 1:4 and 1:6, though there are usually several non-teachers to every teacher. With parents, the adult:child ratio is more typically 1:2. Time spent in 'hands-on' activity varies, but a school group is likely to spend 1-1.5 hours in structured activity, and a further 1 hour in less structured work. (Peacock and Bowker, 2001). Visiting teachers and other adult helpers perceive their roles in varied and different ways, from management of behaviour to mediation of cognitive messages (Brown et al., 1997). The physical layout of ICs also varies enormously, in terms of size, location of buildings, plants and other artefacts, routes, spaces for children to operate in, and the ambience. Structured trails with pre-determined routes and stations may co-exist with randomly-arranged layouts of plants and other exhibits.

The roles of IC education staff may range from running structured workshops with classes of children to explaining particular sites and installations to visitors, or simply 'meeting and

greeting' groups who carry out teacher-led activities. Such staff may be trained and

experienced teachers; occasionally, they are skilled professionals in other fields who have taken on the roles of explainers or stewards. At present, no training programmes for education staff at non-formal ICs exist: government requirements for initial teacher education programmes make it difficult to provide an emphasis on, or a placement in, a non-formal setting such as an IC. The current paper therefore attempts to set out possible parameters for training programmes, research into training needs, and the implications for higher education-based programmes.

Our own studies of ICs, and the wider research literature, suggest several possible reasons why it may be quite difficult for young people in particular to learn the ideas that ICs hope to communicate. These reasons include:

  • Varying cultural interpretations of, and identification with, ideas such as environment, nature and landscape
  • The tension between conflicting goals of ICs, such as those between education, entertainment and profit-making
  • The complexity of contextual constraints such as the plants and artefacts themselves, their physical arrangement, social groupings, accessibility and distractions
  • Tensions between formal and informal approaches to learning in such contexts.

Each of these will be considered in terms of what research has had to say, to be followed by a proposal for an appropriate role for IC education staff in maximising effective learning.

1)Cultural interpretations of ideas associated with environment, nature and landscape

I have discussed these at length in a recent article (Peacock 2000). In outline, it is possible to distinguish different ways in which people conceive ideas like 'nature' as either an external objective reality or as an internal psychological, even philosophical entity (Kawasaki 1990; Lynch 1996). Environmental knowledge can be seen either as objective facts or as a process of subjective coming-to-knowing (Cobern and Loving 1998; Kawagley et. al 1998; Peat 1994). Young people may respond to their environment in very different ways, ranging from identity through ambivalence to rejection (Titman 1994). Even ideas about what is living and what is not differ from culture to culture (Clarfield 1987), yet it is also possible and not exceptional for conflicting explanations of phenomena to co-exist and be used as appropriate by individuals (Jegede 1995). Thus managed environments which aim to communicate about plants, landscape, conservation or sustainability, for example, must have a clear idea about their 'message' and the potential for differing interpretations amongst visitors from a range of cultural backgrounds. IC staff may be highly knowledgeable about their 'message' but lacking in skills for communicating these ideas effectively, to young people in particular.

2)The tension between conflicting goals

Most ICs are expensive to create, sustain and market to the public. In many countries there is an expectation that such facilities as museums, nature reserves and botanical gardens, often publicly-funded, should be open to the general public at no cost. Yet many newly-created ICs are privately funded and need to generate income to be sustainable. This in turn means maximising visitor numbers (particularly school groups) and developing strategies for merchandising, which are often at odds with educational goals. Research represents this as a conflict between education and entertainment (Rennie and McClafferty 1996; Lucas 1991; Stevenson 1991; Wellington 1989), or between affective and cognitive goals. Marketing the commercial aspects to visitors often curtails the time and attention available for interacting and learning (Peacock and Bowker 2001) by providing powerful distractions in the form of shops, restaurants and other novel yet non-educational experiences. Typically, ICs employ relatively small numbers of education staff to deal with school groups, in comparison with numbers employed in other roles. The educational experience provided by ICs can thus become transformed into a 'day out' in the minds of visiting groups, over which education staffs exert minimum control.

3) The impact of contextual factors

The way visitors interact at an IC can be influenced by contextual factors such as the physical arrangement of structures, plants, pathways and artefacts; the nature of the focal objects and artefacts themselves; the social configurations of groups visiting; the actual and potential discourse practices; and any task structures offered (Roth 1996, Roth et al., 1999). Studies indicate that social configurations (such as group size, composition and location) are strongly influenced by the layout and nature of the objects of interest (plants, ponds, man-made features, installations etc). In turn, social configurations influence the nature of discourse, the roles individuals play and the extent to which individuals contribute (Roth 1999; Marton 1993). The presence or absence of teachers or experts in a group may strongly influence the nature of children's dialogue (Maybin 1993): whilst social speech in the IC context is likely also to include signs, gestures and visual representations related to what is being observed (Goodwin 1986). IC staffs need to be aware of these issues when planning workshops, developing materials and interacting with visitors.

The physical resources themselves provide 'bridges' for communication (Button 1993; Goodwin 1986), yet they may differ in the way they provide opportunities for interaction; for example, the extent to which plants can be touched and manipulated may be very different from the way machines and other technological installations are used. Resources may thus be seen in terms of their use as mediational tools and the extent to which they facilitate and support learning conversations (Lemke 1998). At an IC, in small widely-dispersed groups, interaction can often be dependent on 'reading' some form of instruction in verbal, visual or symbolic form: and in the absence of an educator as part of the focal area, our observations in a number of contexts indicate that pupils rarely read the relevant information, or that they often do not understand or follow textual or symbolic instructions when they do (Peacock and Gates, 2000). IC staff need to be able to prepare visitors to take cognisance of this in pre-visit preparation and in the way they mediate experiences in a context of perceptual overload for visitors.

Task structures depend on many of the above factors, and on the time available. They may also be tightly- or loosely-structured, depending on the needs and preferences of visiting groups; in turn, an imposed task structure determines the social configurations and physical locations utilised. In practice, task structures are often modified and re-interpreted in situ by adults and children alike (Peacock and Bowker 2001). Children visiting with parents, however, typically do not follow structured learning pathways, but tend to respond to children's interests and explore serendipitously. IC staff can benefit from observing and understanding the nature of this kind of family-group interaction, and how it differs from interaction within organised school groups.

4)Tensions between formal and informal approaches to learning in such contexts

Studies in various cultures have examined environmental learning strategies utilised by indigenous peoples (Ezeife, 2001; Lynch 1996; Cobern 1993; Ogawa 1995; Vare 1998; Snively and Corsiglia 1998; Githinji 1992; Rennie and McClafferty 1996). These studies indicate that there are concerns about the use of formal teaching strategies and a lack of curriculum integration, concerns which are mirrored by our observations of visiting school groups at ICs. Mismatch of expectations often determines or distorts learning strategies in practice (Falk and Dierking 1992, Gardner 1993), whilst it is common for the 'hands-on' element of such a day out to become a goal in itself, rather than a means to effective learning (Duensing 1993). It is easy for visitors to lose sight of the 'big ideas' underlying an IC's raison d'être.

Many ICs however have already evolved a variety of ways of being used by school groups. Most have produced materials, tasks, trails, workshops, websites and worksheets in one form or another, to be directed either by their own education staff, by teachers, by parents or by children themselves. Materials may be accessible through the web in advance of visits. Such task structures will have implications for artefacts to be used and may have significant impact on the nature of the discourse that ensues.

This tension has been summarised by Griffin and Symington (1997) as one between task-oriented and learning-oriented strategies. They show that teacher-led groups often adopt classroom-style, task-oriented approaches which do not lead to effective learning. Their research advocates a framework for learning-oriented strategies based on natural learning behaviours, which they identify as being typically exhibited by family groups during visits to the same venues. Specifically, they argue for integration of visits with curriculum work in school; learner-initiated questioning and enquiry; informal structures; holistic rather than detailed foci; adaptability; and the importance of social interaction. The value of undifferentiated, structured worksheets, which tend to dominate teacher-led strategies, is seriously questioned. IC staff therefore need to be aware of these tensions in developing the approaches they encourage.

Other studies (e.g. Dierking and Falk 1994) reinforce the effectiveness of family group behaviour in such settings as museums, and the value of pre-visit preparation (Gennaro 1981, Symington et al., 1986). Vare (1998) has noted that school groups tend to focus on strategies which rely heavily on delivery and dissemination of predetermined ideas, but that such approaches make children feel dis-empowered. His research indicates that, in environmental settings, most children perceive themselves to learn best through their own observations or through 1:1 learning. He therefore argues that effective environmental learning happens when a child is enabled to identify things that are both do-able and worth doing, which can lead to positive action; in which a child has an element of control through 'filtering' perceptions of what is appropriate, and through making use of known and trusted people who have expertise. IC staffs are not teachers; they fulfil a different role, status and authority vis-à-vis school groups, for instance, and this needs to be taken account of during training programmes.

Our own interviews with children after their visits to ICs indicate that an important determinant of what they learn during engagement with artefacts is the knowledge and attitudes they bring with them, often from their home environment rather than from what they have previously studied at school (Peacock and Bowker 2001). For example, children who were familiar with and had used maps with parents were able to orientate themselves to the different climatic zones in the biomes. Many pupils however had clearly no previous experience of using maps to find where countries were located, which worked against their learning, even when engaged in conversation. Many of these children did not even notice maps, despite their large size and prominent location.

Implications of research findings

ICs and their use by children can vary in many ways. It can therefore be hypothesised that some configurations are more likely to lead to effective learning than others and that these configurations may well be context-dependent. The above review indicates that there are many potential influences on learning at ICs, some of which are not apparent in classroom-based learning. For example, the size, content and layout of ICs allow kinds of interaction (between teacher-child-object) to take place that the physical constraints of a classroom and its resources do not allow. ICs also allow children potentially to interact with a wider range of adults. There are important implications, too, for IC staffs, as indicated above. Teaching and learning approaches which are borrowed directly from other contexts may often be inappropriate; new forms of interaction, mediation and support must be developed specifically with the IC context in mind.

For example, teachers and children are accustomed to working in classrooms: at an IC however, the interactional space may be far larger, even though children may be constrained into spaces similar to classrooms for part of the time. Opportunity for movement can affect social configurations and access not only to physical resources but also to teachers, experts, other adults and other children. A small space may constrain movement, whilst a very large space may prevent children from finding other people and plants they want to engage with. Predetermined routes through an IC may affect children's ability to remain at or return to a specific location. All these contextual differences have implications for the organisation of effective learning.

Despite these differences between classroom and environmental contexts, however, teachers often attempt to impose classroom-based learning strategies on environmental settings; and there may be cogent reasons for this, to do with pupil and parent expectations, notions of what constitutes school-work, National Curriculum pressures and concerns about effective management and control of children's time and behaviour. IC education staff are often very aware of these pressures and constraints. At the same time, they are aware that the objectives of their IC are quite different, and that they are empowered to work in ways that teachers cannot. Parents are not constrained at all by schools' or ICs' curricular constraints: they may use their day in any way they or their children think fit, focusing broadly or narrowly, choosing what they wish to emphasise or enjoy. There is thus potentially a wide range of ways in which children's learning at an IC may be 'taught' and managed by IC staff.