Student-curated exhibitions
Exhibitions provide great insights into scientific topics. But doesn’t being involved in the development of an exhibition provide an even deeper understanding of a question? Shouldn’t we make this experience accessible to young people, thus encouraging them to engage with specific topics, ask questions and communicate scientific arguments?
Student Curated Exhibitions (SCEs) are also excellent opportunities for cooperation: ideally, teachers and their students work together with local scientists, museum experts and other partners in the curation process. In addition, this a fertile ground for fostering Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) amongst all participants.
This workshop will start with an introduction to the rationale of SCEs, focusing on motivation, learning benefits and challenges. Participants will then attend three interactive stations showing exemplary approaches to SCEs:
- EXPOneer, a modular, low cost exhibition system using IKEA shelf units
- Student developed interactive exhibits as community actions
- RRI Table Soccer as an example of using existing elements as interactives.
The session will conclude with a group discussion.
Session speakers
Weizmann Institute of Science
Sherman has been involved for close to 20 years in bridging the gap between formal and informal learning, in a variety of R & D settings. One of his areas of expertise is Project-Based Learning (PBL), which allows many of the affordances of informal learning to be incorporated into formal science classrooms. Sherman will present an overview of Student Curated Exhibitions, their rationale, challenges and implementation strategies, as an introduction to the workshop.
After developing exhibitions at the Deutsches Museum for eight years, Lorenz moved on to bringing exhibitions to schools. The goal was not simply to present third-party information, but instead to enable students to create their own, almost professional exhibitions. Based on low-cost IKEA shelf units, he led the development of a modular exhibition system for schools called EXPOneer.
In the workshop, we will collectively build a small exhibition on “Colors of Cooperation” using this system.
Associate Professor at University of Lisbon (Institute of Education)
Institute of Education - University of Lisbon
Pedro is strongly involved in communities of practice aimed at supporting teachers and students in taking informed and negotiated actions to address socio-environmental and socio-scientific issues. The process of exhibits‘ construction and presentation allows students to move beyond analysis and discussion, creating opportunities to participate in (and even instigate) community action. During the workshop some interactive exhibits on RRI developed by Portuguese students will be discussed.
Giulia is a postdoc in Physics Education at the University of Bologna. Amongst other things, she is interested in the educational reconstruction of modern and contemporary physics (thermodynamics, climate change), socio-scientific issues, and analysis of complex learning environments.
For the past 6 years she has run numerous school laboratories and programmes on environmental education. In the session she will present RRI Table Soccer as an example of using existing elements as interactive exhibits, designed and built by a group of secondary school students.
