The educational concept of a science museum: case study

Abstract

The reflections Science museums provide on the educational models of their programs and actions, used consciously or not, have driven research on scientific education. Along this line of investigation, the objective of this study was to characterize the educational concept behind a small museum in a city in the interior of the State of Paraná- BR, by analyzing their planned means of communication between visitors and interaction objects and visitors and monitors.   Taking into account the variety of possible learning models in the literature, with distinct epistemological inspirations, we have elaborated a theoretical referential that covers restricted epistemological-pedagogical contexts to establish this reading of museum activities developed in the sector, which is expected to serve as an analytical orientation to similar non-formal education institutions that identify themselves as such. As for the results, two museum interactive environments were analyzed separately. In one of them, there was the predominance of a socio-cultural approach with the possibility of implicit lessons with some post-positivist epistemological views. In the other environment, in addition to this previous reading, which was also allowed to take place in the situations of interaction between monitor-visitor(s), there was a Contextual Learning Model reading of interactive activities between visitor(s)-object(s) of interaction, which remained subtended to influence positivist views.