ECSITE Directors' Forum

        Μουσείο Γουλανδρή Φυσικής Ιστορίας, Kέντρο ΓΑΙΑ

7- 8 Mαρτίου 2003, Αθήνα

 

Γεφυρώνοντας το χάσμα μεταξύ Τυπικής και Άτυπης Διδασκαλίας των Φυσικών Επιστημών

(Bridging the gap between Formal and Informal Science Teaching)

 

Η ανάγκη στενότερης σύνδεσης της τυπικής και της άτυπης εκπαίδευσης δεν είναι καινούρια, αλλά γίνεται όλο και πιο κρίσιμη στις μέρες μας.

Δεν είναι μόνο οι μαθητές που πρέπει να βελτιώσουν τις γνώσεις τους, αλλά όλο και περισσότεροι πολίτες έχουν μια αυξανόμενη ανάγκη για δια βίου μάθηση. Οι πρόσφατες επιστημονικές και τεχνολογικές εξελίξεις δημιουργούν νέες συζητήσεις μέσα στην κοινωνία για τη σωστή χρήση της καινοτομίας. Οι επιπτώσεις σημαντικών επιστημονικών ανακαλύψεων στην κοινωνία έχουν οδηγήσει τα Κέντρα Εκπαίδευσης στις Φυσικές Επιστήμες και τα Μουσεία Φυσικών Επιστημών να επανεκτιμήσουν την αποστολή τους. Έχουν αναπτυχθεί νέα εργαλεία που δίνουν τη δυνατότητα στους πολίτες να πάρουν ενεργό μέρος στη συζήτηση γι’ αυτά τα θέματα στο μέλλον. Αυτό το γεγονός ρίχνει νέο φως στις σχέσεις μεταξύ άτυπης και τυπικής εκπαίδευσης.

Όσον αφορά το ρόλο των Μουσείων Φυσικών Επιστημών και των Κέντρων Εκπαίδευσης στις Φυσικές Επιστήμες συνεχίζεται ακόμα ο διάλογος ανάμεσα σε δύο αντικρουόμενες θέσεις. Κάποια, κυρίως τα Κέντρα Εκπαίδευσης στις Φυσικές Επιστήμες που υιοθετούν τη πρακτική προσέγγιση πιστεύουν ότι η επίσκεψη σε ένα τέτοιο Κέντρο  είναι πολύ σύντομη για να συμβάλει ουσιαστικά στην τυπική διαδικασία εκμάθησης των φυσικών επιστημών. Άλλοι πιστεύουν ότι η επιδεξιότητα στη μετάδοση των φυσικών επιστημών που αναπτύσσεται στα Κέντρα Εκπαίδευσης στις Φυσικές Επιστήμες θα έπρεπε να αποτελέσει σημαντικό μέρος της μαθησιακής εμπειρίας· ιδίως αφού τα Μέσα Μαζικής Ενημέρωσης και το Διαδίκτυο φαίνεται να παρέχουν πολλές επιπλέον ευκαιρίες για μάθηση έξω από το σχολικό περιβάλλον. Από τη σκοπιά των εκπαιδευτικών, μια επίσκεψη σε ένα Μουσείο Φυσικών Επιστημών ή Κέντρο Εκπαίδευσης στις Φυσικές Επιστήμες ίσως είναι ο μόνος τρόπος να προσφέρουν στους σπουδαστές μια πρακτική προσέγγιση στην επιστήμη. Εν τούτοις, αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι θεωρούν πως συμβάλλει τόσο σημαντικά στη διδακτική διαδικασία.

Το ερώτημα που πρέπει να απαντηθεί είναι το εξής: σε ποιο βαθμό πρέπει αυτή η νέα  μορφή μάθησης να βρει εφαρμογή στα εκπαιδευτικά εργαλεία τα οποία τα Κέντρα Εκπαίδευσης στις Φυσικές Επιστήμες και τα Μουσεία Φυσικών Επιστημών υιοθετούν στα προγράμματά τους για σχολεία; Με άλλα λόγια, πρέπει να προετοιμάσουμε τα παιδιά του σχολείου για να γίνουν περισσότερο υπεύθυνοι πολίτες;

Πρόγραμμα Συνεδρίου στην Αγγλική γλώσσα.

 

                                                

  www.eu2003.gr               ΥΠΟΥΡΓΕΙΟ ΕΘΝΙΚΗΣ ΠΑΙΔΕΙΑΣ      ΚΕΝΤΡΟ ΕΚΠΑΙΔΕΥΤΙΚΗΣ                                                   www.ecsite.net          

                                                     & ΘΡΗΣΚΕΥΜΑΤΩΝ                                       ΕΡΕΥΝΑΣ

 

 

 

ECSITE Directors' Forum

Goulandris Natural History Museum, Athens

7- 8 March 2003

Bridging the gap between

Formal and Informal Science Teaching

 

 

FINAL PROGRAMME

 

 

The necessity of increasing the links between informal and formal learning is not new, but becomes more and more crucial every day.

 

From the science centres and museums perspective, the debate is still ongoing between two opposite views. Some, mostly hands-on science centres, think that a visit to a science centre is too short to provide any content able to contribute to formal science learning. Others believe that the expertise in science communication developed in science centres and museums should become an important part of the learning experience. Especially since it appears that multimedia and the Internet provides lots of additional opportunities for learning outside the schools. From the teacher’s perspective, a visit to a science centre or museum might be the only way to offer students a practical approach to science. However it doesn’t mean they consider this as a valuable contribution to their own task of teaching.

 

And these days, not only school children have to enhance their learning, more and more citizens have a growing need for lifelong learning. The recent scientific and technological developments create new debates inside society on the good use of innovation. The effect on society of major scientific discoveries has stimulated science centres and museums to re-evaluate their missions. New tools are created to enable citizens to become active players in the future discussion on these matters. This enlightens the relations between informal and formal learning in a new way. One question that should be answered is : how far should this new role be implemented in the educational tools science centres and museums establish in their programmes for schools? In other words do we have to prepare school children to become more responsible citizens?

 

 

 

                                                      

             www.eu2003.gr                          Ministry of Education                              Education                                                                                  www.ecsite.net         

                                                                   & Religious Affairs                           Research Centre

 

 


Friday 7 March 2003

 

 

9:00 – 9:30                            Opening of the Conference

 

Welcome by Petros Efthimiou , Minister of Education and Religious Affairs

 

And by Jean-François Hébert, ECSITE President, and President of La Cité des Sciences & de l’Industrie, Paris - France

 

9:30 – 12:30                          ECSITE Board Meeting - On Invitation Only

9:30 –  10:45                         Informal Learning Panorama (Part I)

Speakers from Science Centres/Museums

 

                        Vassilios Laopodis (GSRT, Athens – Greece)

Informal Learning on Science and Technology - Initiatives of the Hellenic General Secretariat for Research and Technology (GSRT)

 

                        Erik Jacquemyn (Technopolis, Mechelen – Belgium)

the great sEXPERIMENT', studying female and male behaviour in an interactive exhibition

 

                        Jörg Naumann (Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, Dresden – Germany)

                        Learning Opportunities at the Deutsches Hygiene-Museum

 

                        Hannu Salmi (Heureka, Vantaa – Finland)

Science Centres as learning laboratories: experiences of Heureka, the Finnish Science Centre

 

                        Diana Issidorides (Nemo, Amsterdam – The Netherlands)

                        NEMO and informal science: learning with one’s hands, head and heart

 

                        Bronwyn Bevan (Exploratorium, San Francisco – USA)

                        Professional Communities for Science Teachers

 

 

10:45 – 11:15                        Coffee Break

 

 

11:15 - 12:30                         Informal Learning Panorama (Part II)

Speakers from Science Centres/Museums

 

                        Harry White (Techniquest, Cardiff - UK)

Extending Hands-on

 

                        Roy Hawkey (The Natural History Museum, London - UK)

Investigate - ideas and evidence

 

 

 

                        Luigi Amodio (Città della Scienza, Naples - Italy)

Influences of Science Centres Practices on Formal Teaching : Cases from Città della Scienza

 

                        Anna Nilsson-Ehle (Universeum, Göteborg - Sweden)

Teenagers engagement in learning projects

 

                        Marta Del Olmo (Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe, Valencia – Spain)

                        "Science on Stage": learning with fun

 

 

 

12:30 – 14:00                        Lunch

 

 

 

14:00 – 14:30                        Subject introduction : Key Notes

 

                        Introduction :

Prof. Vassilis Koulaidis (Greece)

Professor and Director of Education Laboratory, University of Patras

 

Dr. Ion Siotis (Greece)

Chairman of National Hellenic Research Foundation

The "Open Science" project experience

 

 

 

14:30 – 15:45                        Museums/ Sciences Centres theoreticians

Representatives from our fields, who have a general opinion about the experience with cooperation with schools, general theories. Explanations of conclusions that have been drawn for research.

 

Alan J. Friedman (USA)

Director of The New York Hall Science

 

* For over fifty years in the United States, science centres have worked to support formal education from kindergarten through 12th grade.  This support has taken the forms of 1) yearly visits to the centres by hundreds of thousands of school classes, 2) courses for teachers upgrading their skills and content knowledge, and 3) enrichment activities for students such as workshops and  after-school classes.  There is widespread approval of the programs for teachers and the enrichment activities for students.  But the yearly school visits, which reach the largest number of people by far, are increasing a source of concern.  School visits are rambunctious, loud, and apparently chaotic.  There is also widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of education in most US public schools.  As a result, there are increasing demands that science centre school visits provide experiences more directly related to the school curriculum, that science centres assess learning in a manner compatible with standardized tests, and that the centres control students' behaviour to generate more order and quiet. 

 

I wonder, however, if this isn't moving in the wrong direction.  What is valuable about informal, free-choice learning, may often be precisely in its contrasts with formal education and the orderly classroom.  For those who believe that laughter and learning are not incompatible, the suggestion that science centres become more like schools misses many of the core values of science centres.

 


Niki Goulandris (Greece)

Chairman of the Goulandris Natural History Museum, Athens-Kifissia

 

* The talk will present a report of 36 years’ personal experience on the activities of the Goulandris Natural History Museum and its evolution into a new concept: the GAIA Centre for Environmental Research and Education. The GAIA Centre, inaugurated in June 2001,was to support the proposals of international organizations, to implement Agenda 21 and the European policy on the environment by means of new, advanced scientific and educational work. The Gaia Centre has had to follow an innovative and bold course making it a means of combining Nature with Culture, as a position and attitude of responsibility towards life, the management of the natural resources which nurture it, and the moral values it assumes. In the Centre's exhibitions halls the questions present everywhere are: How are we to build a new society? How are we to revise our way of life? These are answered by specific and attainable scientific solutions to problems such as energy, transportation, natural resources, water, soil etc. At the same time, they awaken moral responsibility and arouse the awareness of visitors. The educational programmes of the Centre are addressed mainly to school classes, in relation to their respective curriculums, to teachers, parents and the public. Applying the latest methods of museology and up to date technology, the GAIA Centre is a unique pioneering centre for knowledge, entertainment and inspiration. This is a privilege that only informal education can provide. Environmental education is the foundation of any complete, enduring programme to change the collective will and motivate people to assume their responsibilities..

Furthermore, the GAIA Centre provides a forum in which scientists, thinkers and scholars can debate critical issues.   A series of conferences, seminars and workshops have already been held with international participation.  It is the Gaia Centre’s intent to transcend the barriers between science, philosophy, art and tradition and thus reflect the totality of human culture.  

 

Dionysios P. Simopoulos (Greece)

Director of the Eugenides Planetarium, Athens

The educational vision of the new Eugenides Foundation

 

* On the eve of its 50th anniversary the new Eugenides Foundation will reopen in the Fall of 2003. Our €30 million expansion and renovation will feature state of the art facilities and presentational equipment including five areas of interactive exhibits, 950 m2 dome digital-video, large format 15/70 films, laser projections, etc. Along with our new facilities we have renewed the way we will communicate with our visitors leading to a more stimulating, challenging, and up to date experience for all of them. The new Foundation will be structured both physically and philosophically in a way that will make it become an interdisciplinary, multi-media center that is not passive and static but which, involves, challenges and entertains, allowing its visitors to become participants. In addition the New Eugenides Foundation will not be restricted to a physical building, but will also create out-reach programs that will utilize the talents of both its human and hardware resources, by way of TV and DVD Science productions, special visual and textual data banks, in-service seminars for teachers, while satellite broadcasting and artificial intelligence are also areas to investigate for future expansion, in order to communicate with people at their own level and where they live.

 

Paul Caro (France)

Honorary Research Director – CNRS, France

Member of the Scientific Committee of Ciencia Viva, Portugal

Science Museums between science, education, and the media

 

* A Science Museum may combine several characters : urban landmark, reference collections for scientists, demonstrations of basic experiments in different scientific fields, temporary exhibits, involvement in hands-on pedagogy, and the will to be a forum and a resource centre for debates with Citizens on scientific and technical issues. Science Museums are both a support for formal learning and places where informal education experiments can be attempted especially to arouse the interest and curiosity of youngsters. In large establishments, the equilibrium between the two trends is a difficult, and costly, management policy. However the Museum is a media by itself and should consider the competition from other media : TV, newspapers, comics, advertisement … which shape the view of the public (including children) on scientific issues. Some strategies are offered to bring more originality in Museums for a more efficient formal and informal learning.

 

 

15:45 – 16:15                        Coffee Break

 

16:15 – 17:30                       Researchers : Informal learning in the Museums/Science Centres

Comparison of different pedagogical views existing in the field who have evaluated both the formal school education system and the museums and science centres education system.

 

John H. Falk (USA)

Director of Institute for Learning Innovation

 

* The talk will provide a brief overview of what is presently known about the nature of learning in science centres and museums.  Findings will be framed within the context of current understandings of learning in general and free-choice learning in particular.  The Contextual Model of Learning will be used as an organizing framework.  The presentation will focus on the casual visitor with evidence presented that describes the range and extent of science learning that occurs as a consequence of a typical, couple hour visit to a science centre or museum.  Findings from the longitudinal research investigation at the California Science Centre (Los Angeles Science Education Research project) will be used as a way to concretely illustrate the points made.

 

 

Prof. Vassilis Koulaidis (Greece)

Professor and Director of Education Laboratory, University of Patras

Formal and Informal Science Education: A case for complementary action

 

* The talk will put forward a case for the need of complementary action in the areas of Formal and Informal Science Education. Schools alone, nowadays, are not able to cope with the task of introducing students’ population to scientific thinking. This is due to both the explosive rate of development of scientific knowledge and the change of the prevailing modes of communication in society. Agents of Informal Education especially Science Museums and Science Centers appear ideal in absorbing and make effective use of new knowledge and alternative means of communicating it to the general public. However, schools are still the primary environment for achieving scientific socialization of the youngsters.

 

 

Yvon Fortin (Quèbec, Canada)

The school and the museum, two important actors in the formation of the responsible citizen.

 

* From a teacher’s point of view, informal learning comes along with informal teaching. From that perspective, every one  who plays a role in designing, building or presenting a science activity to any public, be it, students or museum visitors should be able to clearly express the means and the reach of his action. Should we really ask if we have to prepare school children to become responsible citizens or what should that responsible citizen be prepared with and to what? That requires from every one of us to better understand the means and aims of what each other is doing and what we can do to improve the situation.

 

 

 

20:30                                      Directors’ Forum Dinner

                                                at the Pentelikon Hotel – Restaurant “Belle Epoque”

 

 

 


 

Saturday 8 March 2003

 

 

10:00 – 11:15                        Education Science System

Representatives who have had positive experience with museums and science centres and who can bring about evidence of their succeeding cooperation.

 

Jose Mariano Gago (Portugal)

 

Dr. Alessandro Musumeci (Italy)

General Director of Technologic Innovation (Italian Education Ministry)

 

                        Moshe Rishpon (Israël)

                        Director of the Clore Garden of Science, Weizmann Institute of Science

 

11:15 – 11:45                        Coffee break

 

 

11:45 –13:00                         Debate

Some speakers for both fields (formal and informal) with founded evidence to provide a contradictory debate.

 

Prof. Vassilis Koulaidis(Greece)

Professor and Director of Education Laboratory, University of Patras

 

Paulette McManus (UK)

Senior Lecturer in Museum & Heritage Studies - Institute of Archaeology

University College London

 

Bronwyn Bevan (USA)

Director CILS of Exploratorium of San Fransisco

 

Dr. James M. Bradburne (UK)

Director of the Next Generation Foundation

 

 

13:00 – 14:30                        Lunch

 

 

14:30 – 16:00                        Summary/Questions/answers

 

Jose Mariano Gago (Portugal)

 

 

16:00 – 17.30                        Visit of the Goulandris Natural History Museum