Science in Informal Environments

This paper summarizes research that with Latino communities’ that helps us understand issues of access to and participation in informal science learning activities. It also discusses ways research of this type can inform museum offerings and practices. Among the areas addressed are Latino communities’ leisure values, perceptions of science, conceptions of museums (including science centers and zoos), and barriers to visitation and engagement. Among the major findings discussed are identified differences and similarities between first and
second-generation Latinos, the role of cultural relevance and identity-building in respondents’ sense of feeling welcome and represented in museums/science centers, responses to bilingual interpretation, and values identified that significantly influence leisure decisions. Emergent
research on Latino perceptions of science is also discussed.

Recently, science museums have begun to review their educational purposes and redesign their pedagogies. At the most basic level, this entails accounting for the performance of individual exhibits, and indeed, in some cases, research indicates shortcomings in exhibit design: While often successful in prompting visitors to carry out intended actions, exhibits do not necessarily promote the intended interpretations of these actions among visitors. Here, the notion of praxeology from didactics research is suggested as a model to remedy this shortcoming. The suggested role of praxeology is twofold: as a means to operationalize the link between exhibit features and visitor activities; and as a template to transform scientists’ practices in the research context into visitors’ activities in the exhibit context. The resulting model of science exhibit engineering is presented and exemplified, and its implications for science exhibit design are discussed at three levels: the design product, the design process, and the design methodology.