TY - JOUR

T1 - Engaging or Transmitting?

T2 - Health at the Science Centre

AU - Sandholdt, Catharina Thiel

AU - Achiam, Marianne

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Science centres have a strong commitment to education, but the implications of that commitment change over time. The discovery pedagogy of the first science centres is gradually being replaced with a more dialogic approach that acknowledges that science has different meanings for different people. Here, we follow the transition of a Danish science centre towards this new approach; a transition driven by the development of a dialogic exhibition on health. To this end, we study the adaptive transformation of scientific content from its origin in scientific literature to its embodiment in the exhibition, using discourse analysis to track its deconstruction and reconstruction. We observe that although the science centre’s established discovery pedagogy does challenge the implementation of dialogic perspectives on health, the participatory approach taken in the development process successfully overcame these challenges. In conclusion, we offer our perspectives on the implications of our findings for science centres.

AB - Science centres have a strong commitment to education, but the implications of that commitment change over time. The discovery pedagogy of the first science centres is gradually being replaced with a more dialogic approach that acknowledges that science has different meanings for different people. Here, we follow the transition of a Danish science centre towards this new approach; a transition driven by the development of a dialogic exhibition on health. To this end, we study the adaptive transformation of scientific content from its origin in scientific literature to its embodiment in the exhibition, using discourse analysis to track its deconstruction and reconstruction. We observe that although the science centre’s established discovery pedagogy does challenge the implementation of dialogic perspectives on health, the participatory approach taken in the development process successfully overcame these challenges. In conclusion, we offer our perspectives on the implications of our findings for science centres.

KW - Faculty of Science

KW - Science Centre

KW - health promotion

KW - participatory design

KW - exhibition design

M3 - Journal article

VL - 2018

SP - 136

EP - 151

JO - Nordisk Museologi

JF - Nordisk Museologi

SN - 1103-8152

IS - 2-3

ER -