Involvement as a Measure of the Educational Potential of Museums

Abstract

Determining learning in the informal educational setting of science centres is difficult, but has been examined in most studies by focussing on results. This study aimed to gain more insight in learning in science museums, by presenting a research method to measure the educational potential of museums, focussing on learning process. Involvement is used as process variable, because it indicates learning. The main research question was how involvement can be used as process variable in order to operationalize measuring the educational potential of museums. The Leuven Involvement Scale (LIS) was used to measure involvement, complemented by tools to measure context factors that might contribute to learning in an informal museum environment. These were object affordances, cognitive affordances and social interaction. Studying three educational programmes, 550 observations were made of 124 primary school students to examine the methodology. The LIS proved to be a valid and reliable instrument to measure involvement as process variable and object affordances and cognitive affordances were found to contribute to the learning process. The educational potential of museums is therefore operationalized in a method that measures involvement with the LIS and examines object affordances and cognitive affordances as well. Because involvement indicates that learning is taking place, science centres can use the presented method to evaluate their educational programmes, in order to optimise them for learning.