Abstract
Science museums are well known as informal science learning institutes. Most science museums employ docents to offer guided tours to school groups; thus, docents play a crucial role in science learning in the science museum context. According to social identity theory, in a specific social situation, people self-categorize (identify their own roles) and then adapt their behavior when interacting with others. In science museums, the identity of a docent includes personal science epistemology, because the docent role is to provide introductory science information to visitors. The docent selects information that he or she thinks is notable in science (a person’s thinking for knowledge) and presents the information in an appropriate manner (a person’s thinking for knowing). The beliefs and theories that people acquire regarding scientific knowledge and knowing constitute personal science epistemology. This study focused on 2 docents who adopted distinct personal science epistemologies for preparing an educational program at a natural history museum in Taiwan to determine how distinct epistemologies affect pedagogical practice. Data were collected multi-recourse during preparation and test teaching. Both docents prepared similar knowledge content and archaeological specimens for use in teaching, but they designed completely distinct learning activities.
This study was granted by National Science Foundation of Taiwan, project number-99-2511-S-178-001, NSC NSC101-2511-S-178-001.
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Yeh, JH. (2017). Museum Science Teaching: Museum Educators’ Personal Epistemologies and Created Learning Experiences. In: Patrick, P. (eds) Preparing Informal Science Educators. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50398-1_6
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