Museums, schools and teachers: a relationship to be reviewed

Abstract

The importance given to the pursuit of a scientific culture for the formation of informed citizens, has transcended the formal school and has spread to institutions of informal education, among which are science museums. These spaces display objects, but mainly, interactive equipment that permit visitors to live ideas, phenomena and scientific processes. Science museums also develop thematic exhibitions that nowadays tend to adopt a critical position. All these characteristics have pretended to consider science museums as places to support or supplement the formal teaching of science. But reality indicates that when schools visit the museum, the learning that occurs there is of affective (motivational) rather than cognitive nature; and that the complicated logistics and organization of the visits, plus the lack of knowledge by teachers of the informal educational environment and the extracurricular events (out of school) features, seems to indicate that the results of this educational option, do not produce the kind of learning expected by formal schooling. So, except for schools that lack resources for the study of science, the common idea that science museums are the ideal tools for learning formally this subject, has been questioned, until the difficulties discussed in this paper are not succeeded. What it was seen as a successful option in the relationship between schools and museums, is to use those spaces for the training of preservice teachers.