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The UK National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth has the usual large display tanks of animals but also has an education programme that explores the local and tropical marine environment and conservation issues through creative art and drawing. The National Marine Aquarium also offers a Conservation through Tourism Award. Assessing the learning that has occurred in an informal science environment, such as an aquarium or a hotel, can be difficult without resorting to complex and intrusive questioning.

Research on teacher identity development in science education has concentrated on the identity development of classroom teachers (e.g., Avraamidou, 2014; Beijaard, McKinnon, & Lamberts, 2014; Flores & Day, 2006; Luehmann, 2007; Meijer & Verloop, 2004; Volkmann & Anderson, 1998; Watson, 2009). Among these authors are researchers who have reported on how informal science education venues have assisted in classroom teacher identity development (Avraamidou, 2014; Luehmann, 2007; McKinnon & Lamberts, 2014).

Over the past several years, we have struggled to find strategies that examine young children’s understanding of science experiences in informal settings, such as our most recent involvement in a summer science camp. Our own teaching and research experiences in classrooms meant we had a collection of strategies we used with children.

Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) launched its CRYSTAL program in 2004 in an effort to promote research into science and math teaching at the K12 level. Educators were invited to form regional collaborations, often with practicing scientists, in order to compete for five funding streams ($200,000 yearly for five years).

In this chapter we document and advocate for the use of cogenerative dialogues as both a methodology and method to be employed for the purposes of improving teaching and learning in settings such as informal science institutions. We describe why such dialogues are useful tools, and why they are critical in revealing key ideas that are particular to informal science institutions.

Informal science institutions such as museums, zoos and botanical gardens are well known as providing educational experiences and entertainment for individuals, families and organized school groups. In the last decade, much research was carried out in museums, aiming to understand the characteristics of the visit, its motives and impact in terms of learning content, practicing reasoning and developing dialogues among individuals in family groups (Bell, Lewenstein, Shouse, & Feder, 2009). Despite some similar motives for family and school visits to museums, such as having an educative experience and learning new things about science and nature, clear differences were found as well.

The purpose of this study is to promote students’ science learning and understanding on biodiversity by integrating zoo resources and biodiversity issues into learning activities. A total of 439 elementary 1st graders participated in this study. Teaching activities include classroom discussions on the topics, animals and biodiversity issues, and a one-day field trip to the Taipei Zoo, Taiwan to enable students to gain experiential insights on biodiversity.

Understanding how people learn science demands consideration of a variety of factors such as interests, opportunities, and interactions that potentially influence learning across the lifespan and throughout multiple contexts (see also Anderson chapter 2). Facilitating such a process, through different settings and different situations, is not really the sole responsibility of an individual or single organization; rather, it likely involves a conglomeration of entities affording connections across and between ideas and interests, past and present (see also Rahm, chapter 7). In some cases, collaborations span several organizations that explicitly support such learning activities across different environments (see Ash & Lombana, chapter 3), including both formal and informal learning environments. In these cases, it becomes critical to understand how (and even whether) different institutions can actually work together to achieve a shared goal of science teaching and learning.

Animal touch experiences, where visitors get to touch, pet or feed live animals, are a common feature of public, informal science venues like aquariums, zoos, science centers and similar institutions. Public aquariums of almost every size employ touch tanks as part of their educational efforts and spend significant amounts of financial and person-hour effort to maintain and staff these extremely popular exhibits and program elements. This investment appears to be motivated by a general belief that the unique experience of touching or interacting with an animal will help create conservation awareness by facilitating caring about animals and their habitats.