TY - JOUR
T1 - Changing Museum Visitors' Conceptions of Evolution
AU - Spiegel, Amy N.
AU - Evans, E. Margaret
AU - Frazier, Brandy
AU - Hazel, Ashley
AU - Tare, Medha
AU - Gram, Wendy
AU - Diamond, Judy
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments We gratefully acknowledge data collection by Karen Johnson, Sarah Thompson, and Hilary Kindschuh. We would also like to thank museum directors and their staff, Ellen Censky from the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Priscilla Grew from the University of Nebraska State Museum, Amy Harris from the University of Michigan Exhibit Museum of Natural History, Edward Theriot from the Texas Natural Science center, and Leonard Krishtalka from the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Center. Special thanks go to Katrina Hase, Rob Sharot, and Paul Martin from the Science Museum of Minnesota for guiding the creation of the “Explore Evolution” exhibit. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of John Klausmeyer from the Exhibits Museum of Natural History, and Angie Fox from the University of Nebraska State Museum. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants no. 0229294 (Diamond) and no. 0411406 (Evans).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
PY - 2012/4/13
Y1 - 2012/4/13
N2 - We examined whether a single visit to an evolution exhibition contributed to conceptual change in adult (n = 30), youth, and child (n = 34) museum visitors' reasoning about evolution. The exhibition included seven current research projects in evolutionary science, each focused on a different organism. To frame this study, we integrated a developmental model of visitors' understanding of evolution, which incorporates visitors' intuitive beliefs, with a model of free-choice learning that includes personal, sociocultural, and contextual variables. Using pre- and post-measures, we assessed how visitors' causal explanations about biological change, drawn from three reasoning patterns (evolutionary, intuitive, and creationist), were modified as a result of visiting the exhibition. Whatever their age, background beliefs, or prior intuitive reasoning patterns, visitors significantly increased their use of explanations from the evolutionary reasoning pattern across all measures and extended this reasoning across diverse organisms. Visitors also increased their use of one intuitive reasoning pattern, need-based (goal-directed) explanations, which, we argue, may be a step toward evolutionary reasoning. Nonetheless, visitors continued to use mixed reasoning (endorsing all three reasoning patterns) in explaining biological change. The personal, socio-cultural, and contextual variables were found to be related to these reasoning patterns in predictable ways. These findings are used to examine the structure of visitors' reasoning patterns and those aspects of the exhibition that may have contributed to the gains in museum visitors' understanding of evolution.
AB - We examined whether a single visit to an evolution exhibition contributed to conceptual change in adult (n = 30), youth, and child (n = 34) museum visitors' reasoning about evolution. The exhibition included seven current research projects in evolutionary science, each focused on a different organism. To frame this study, we integrated a developmental model of visitors' understanding of evolution, which incorporates visitors' intuitive beliefs, with a model of free-choice learning that includes personal, sociocultural, and contextual variables. Using pre- and post-measures, we assessed how visitors' causal explanations about biological change, drawn from three reasoning patterns (evolutionary, intuitive, and creationist), were modified as a result of visiting the exhibition. Whatever their age, background beliefs, or prior intuitive reasoning patterns, visitors significantly increased their use of explanations from the evolutionary reasoning pattern across all measures and extended this reasoning across diverse organisms. Visitors also increased their use of one intuitive reasoning pattern, need-based (goal-directed) explanations, which, we argue, may be a step toward evolutionary reasoning. Nonetheless, visitors continued to use mixed reasoning (endorsing all three reasoning patterns) in explaining biological change. The personal, socio-cultural, and contextual variables were found to be related to these reasoning patterns in predictable ways. These findings are used to examine the structure of visitors' reasoning patterns and those aspects of the exhibition that may have contributed to the gains in museum visitors' understanding of evolution.
KW - Developmental model
KW - Evolutionary reasoning
KW - Exhibition
KW - Free-choice learning
KW - Museum visitors
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U2 - 10.1007/s12052-012-0399-9
DO - 10.1007/s12052-012-0399-9
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84874035283
SN - 1936-6426
VL - 5
SP - 43
EP - 61
JO - Evolution: Education and Outreach
JF - Evolution: Education and Outreach
IS - 1
ER -