School visits to science museums and learning sciences: a complex relationship

Visits to science museums can provide a complement to the science learning carried out in schools. However, science museums are informal learning environments where teachers usually have very little control over the ideas being implicated or the experiments that the students carry out. It is necessary to design educational materials for the visit to the museum which integrate learning in schools and in museums, and which stimulate the interest and curiosity of the students by promoting independent learning via working in a group guided by the teacher. This article explains how we have designed these educational materials and their main characteristics.