Schemata-Constructivist View of What Students Learn About Human Evolution From a Museum Exhibit

The purpose of this research study was to investigate: students' schema structure for human evolution; their idiosyncratic conceptual change after visiting a museum exhibition; the role of alternative frameworks during learning; and the function of affect in learning. Thirty eleventh and twelfth grade high school students, eleven males and nineteen females, visited an exhibition on human evolution and participated in an opened-ended pre and post interview and Likert-type questionnaire. The interviews were transcribed, segmented by using shifts in natural language, and pre and post schema templates developed for each respondent using as background Rumelhart's and Ortony's active structural schema network diagrammatic representation. Analysis of the schema templates indicated that respondents possess varying idiosyncratic schema structures that are brought to bear on the construction of new information during learning. Thirty seven percent of the respondents exhibited a hierarchically organized schema, whereas sixty three percent of the respondents demonstrated a non-hierarchical schema structure. Hierarchically organized ideation allowed for greater elaboration of concepts after viewing the exhibit. The data revealed both a top-down and bottom-up type of information processing. Ninety three percent of the respondents exhibited nonscientific, alternative frameworks during the pre-interview and eighty percent displayed alternative frameworks in the post-interview. Forty seven percent of the respondents were able to modify alternative frameworks to be more scientifically consistent. The data indicated that hierarchically organized schema respondents were able to make more corrections to alternative frameworks. Sixty three percent of the time alternative frameworks were influencing the exhibition's interpretation. Fifty three percent of the respondents demonstrated an observationally-based interpretation of the exhibit, whereas forty seven percent exhibited a theory-based schema. Throughout the data analysis there was evidence for idiosyncratic schema construction. The pre and post Likert-scale questionnaire suggested that the visit to the museum exhibition had an overall positive affect gain. The research findings provided evidence for museum exhibition developers to embrace a schema-constructivist theory of knowledge and learning in the creation of exhibitions which actively engage the learner in conceptual change.