Jan Sølberg

Nine meta-functions for science museums and science centres

ABSTRACT Science centres and science museums face challenges such as increased accountability, increased demands for accessibility, and growing competition from leisure experiences. On their own, the traditional museum practices of preservation, communication, and research are insufficient to address these challenges. Accordingly, we use the framework of eight museum meta-functions, presented by Dubuc [2011. “Museum and University Mutations: The Relationship Between Museum Practices and Museum Studies in the Era of Interdisciplinarity, Professionalisation, Globalisation and New Technologies.” Museum Management and Curatorship 26 (5): 497–508] and further developed here, to understand how these institutions respond to calls for change. We analyse the presentations of staff members from 21 science centres and science museums, given at the 2013 Ecsite conference, to map out how these institutions address modern-day challenges. This analysis generates a new framework of nine meta-functions for science centres and science museums that can guide and help qualify discussions about their present and future activities. We discuss the new meta-functions as evidence of a turn away from the self-referential museum functions of the past, towards a more complete externalisation of purpose.

Validation of networks derived from snowball sampling of municipal science education actors

ABSTRACT Social network analysis (SNA) has been used in many educational studies in the past decade, but what these studies have in common is that the populations in question in most cases are defined and known to the researchers studying the networks. Snowball sampling is an SNA methodology most often used to study hidden populations, for example, groups of homosexual people, drug users or people with sexually transmitted diseases. By use of a snowball sampling approach, this study mapped municipal social networks of educational actors, who were otherwise hidden to the researchers. Subsequently, the resulting networks were validated through interviews with central respondents and by using prior investigations of the municipalities. Our results confirmed that the majority of the designated respondents recognized the resulting sociograms and their own position in these. It was also found that not all predictions based on existing knowledge of the municipalities aligned with SNA data. However, these discrepancies could be explained by development in the municipalities in the time following previous investigations. This study shows that snowball sampling is an applicable method to use for mapping hidden populations in educational settings, but also that qualitative studies are needed in order to interpret the networks in real-life contexts.

Dragons and dinosaurs: directing inquiry in biology using the notions of ‘milieu’ and ‘validation’

This article describes how inquiry teaching can be directed towards specific content learning goals while allowing for student exploration and validation of hypotheses. Drawing from the Theory of Didactical Situations, the concepts of ‘milieu’ and ‘validation’ are illustrated through two sample biology lessons designed to engage and challenge students in scientific inquiry. The article proposes that these concepts may help teachers design rich learning environments wherein students may pose and test their hypotheses against scientific data. This may in turn help overcome several challenges relating to open-inquiry teaching. Such challenges include divergent student learning outcome or time issues and practical constraints of facilitating inquiry in large classes. The presented approach can help teachers design directed inquiry teaching sequences that can lead to more frequent use of inquiry in teaching thanks to the efficacy of such designs.