Browsing by Author "Olin, Milla"

Learning in school can be described with the term formal education meaning it is planned in advance and one of its primary goals is to increase conceptual knowledge. Informal learning instead refers to activities outside the formal education and it emphasises change in attitudes and the aspiration of interest towards the topics to-be-learned. The aim of this research is to describe informal learning, learning environments in general and especially science centres as out-of-school learning environments. In addition the purpose of this study is to find out whether there is any difference in how 6th graders view the studying of space related topics in two different learning environments: school and the science centre. The data used in this study was collected during a bigger research project in which 144 pupils from five different schools from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area visited a space travel themed exhibition Destination Mars and a planetarium show Journey to the Stars by the Heureka Science Centre. Several pre-tests were carried out prior to the visit and after several post-tests, but only one, a word-pair test was selected for this study. The test was constructed using the idea of semantical difference with opposite meaning words from which the pupils were asked to select which one better describes their idea of studying space related topics in school and in science centres. Four dimensions were constructed on the basis of the verbal expressions which together formed the view: clarity, importance, pleasantness and interactiviness. Background information was collected from the pupils’ 2013 mid-term grades in Finnish, mathematics, physics & chemistry and biology & geography. The data was analyzed with quantitative research methods. The data in this study showed no statistically meaningful differences in the pupils’ views regarding the studying of space related topics in school or in science centres. Gender nor school grades had no statistically meaningful connection to the views either.