How to visit a Museum?

Abstract

Visiting a museum with primary school students can be a strong learning experience for them. This study presents a model of how a visit to a museum must be organised. Focussing on embedding the visit in the curriculum and stimulating student to be inquisitive. Furthermore it investigates the declarative knowledge attained by a visit to the science museum Boerhaave in Leiden, The Netherlands. Comparing the effect of a history lesson in school to that of visiting the museum showed that the later has a stronger effect on the declarative knowledge. Although the sample sizes are small the effect is significant. The results are discussed in relation to the function and the use of museum visits during the primary school period.

Keywords

• museum
• visit
• science