Learning Affordances: Understanding Visitors’ Learning in Science Museum Environment

Abstract

AbstractThe major goal of this study is to present, develop, and use the concept of learning affordance, in order to understand visitors’ learning in relation to the possibilities offered by science museum environment. Participants were 7th–11th-grade students (12–16 years old) in Seoul Metropolitan area in Korea. Research site was Gwacheon National Science Museum near Seoul. Research data collected were observing and video recordings of participants while they were visiting the museum in small groups, interviews with participants, and participants’ writings after visiting the museum. The concept of learning affordance was developed as a special kind of affordance defined as the intersection of the affordance of physical environment and visitors’ intention and ability. By analyzing data qualitatively, the dynamic nature of learning affordance was identified. Learning affordance of exhibits depends on the visitors’ ability as well as exhibits’ affordances. The affordances of exhibits could be differentiated into four groups according to usefulness and perceptibility: learning affordance, hidden affordance, false affordance, and correct rejection. Creative zone was also proposed to explain visitors’ interaction with exhibits which have hidden or false affordances. The concept of learning affordance can contribute to the understanding of visitors’ learning in science museum environment.KeywordsLearning AffordancesScience MuseumFalse AffordanceHidden AffordancesZone CreationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.