Leveraging educational pathway to bridge in-school and out-of-school science learning: A comparison of different instructional designs

Abstract

A short look on any science center or science museum website reveals that significant amounts of online educational resources have been developed in recent years. However, how can the non-formal online learning resources of science centers/museums support learning activities inside schools? This study leverages the educational pathway of energy resources, designed by the European Open Science Resources project and the Deutsches Museum, to develop in-school learning activities. This research explores the impact of different instructional approaches incorporating the educational pathway, including the Self-Guided Educational Pathway (SGEP) and Teacher-Guided Educational Pathway (TGEP), on Taiwanese high-school students’ science learning outcomes. The results indicate that the TGEP approach provides students significantly higher knowledge gains than the SGEP approach. Moreover, the TGEP approach significantly maintained students’ positive attitudes toward science learning, museum learning, and online museum learning than did the SGEP approach. The results are discussed in terms of both pedagogical designs and the social culture of Eastern Asia.