Guided visits to Geodiversity Museum promoting scientific culture and motivating secondary scholl students

Abstract

This work involves the planning, implementation and evaluation of guided visits by the public school students from Rio de Janeiro to the Geodiversity Museum of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), taking into account the specificities of learning in museums under the Contextual Model of Learning. The main objectives of this study are (i) stimulate students interest and curiosity about science in general and, particularly, in chemistry contained in the pieces on display, (ii) supply, at least in part, the needs of schools such as lack of labs and audiovisual resources, admittedly motivators in the teaching-learning process, (iii) enable access to patrimony, culture and education in non formal settings to a portion of the population coming from region lacking in such spaces and (iv) establish the Geodiversity Museum as a setting of non formal education. Questionnaires were applied before, during and after visits and served as an evaluation tool of the procedure adopted. The results showed that the dynamics and the procedure adopted in the visits were able motivate and provide affective and cognitive gains to visitors.

Keywords

• non formal education
• museum education
• chemistry teaching