Supporting Student Learning: A Comparison of Student Discussion in Museums and Classrooms

Research indicates that school trips to informal science institutions can result in cognitive and affective gains; however, less is known about the mechanisms by which such learning may occur. This article takes a sociocultural perspective that discourse is one of the main modes of learning, and thus examines the talk that occurs among students both during a visit and during follow-up lessons in the classroom. Transcripts from students in 4 primary school classes and 1 secondary school class provide evidence that most of the talk among students in both settings was consistent with cooperative interactions. In addition, talk reflecting cognitive and affective engagement seems to have appeared more frequently during the visit than back in the classroom.