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Many museums deal with socio-scientific issues--meaning topics with multiple perspectives and ongoing research, such as climate change, vaccinations, or livestock farming. As important and trusted sources of science education, museums can play a critical role in raising awareness about such issues. They tend to highlight the various perspectives on the topic and thereby are able to provide a balanced and impartial information presentation. Visitors are therefore confronted both with views that correspond to their own beliefs and with views that contradict their beliefs and are supported in developing an informed opinion on the respective topic. In our study, we used an experimental exhibition on the topic "animal husbandry" to investigate the extent to which, first, an exhibition visit in general and, second, how different picture captions affect knowledge acquisition and interest. We chose a between-subjects design with the factor conflict framing through picture captions. Whereas one group visited an exhibition in which the picture captions were formulated neutrally, another group read picture captions that emphasized the existing conflict. A control group, which did not visit the exhibition at all, allowed us to examine the general effect of the exhibition. As dependent variables, we chose interest and knowledge acquisition as common instruments of educational visitor research. However, we went one step further and used an innovative instrument: visitors' argument repertoire. We found that visiting the exhibition led to higher interest, knowledge acquisition, and a more balanced argument repertoire. Varying the captions had no significant effect. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Purpose: To advance the learning of professional practices in teacher education and medical education, this conceptual paper aims to introduce the idea of representational scaffolding for digital simulations in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: This study outlines the ideas of core practices in two important fields of higher education, namely, teacher and medical education. To facilitate future professionals' learning of relevant practices, using digital simulations for the approximation of practice offers multiple options for selecting and adjusting representations of practice situations. Adjusting the demands of the learning task in simulations by selecting and modifying representations of practice to match relevant learner characteristics can be characterized as representational scaffolding. Building on research on problem-solving and scientific reasoning, this article identifies leverage points for employing representational scaffolding. Findings: The four suggested sets of representational scaffolds that target relevant features of practice situations in simulations are: informational complexity, typicality, required agency and situation dynamics. Representational scaffolds might be implemented in a strategy for approximating practice that involves the media design, sequencing and adaptation of representational scaffolding. Originality/value: The outlined conceptualization of representational scaffolding can systematize the design and adaptation of digital simulations in higher education and might contribute to the advancement of future professionals' learning to further engage in professional practices. This conceptual paper offers a necessary foundation and terminology for approaching related future research.

Justifications play a central role in argumentation, which is a core topic in school science education. This paper contributes to this field of research by presenting two studies in which we assess students' justifications for supporting or rejecting hypotheses in the physics lab based on self-collected, anomalous experimental data, which are defined as data that contradict a prior belief, hypothesis, or concept. Study 1 analyzes the spectrum of possible justifications students give in semi-structured interviews and categorizes these into ten types: "appeal to an authority," "data as evidence," "experimental competence (technical/skills)," "experimental competence (self-concept)," "ignorance," "intuition," "measurement uncertainties (explicit)," "measurement uncertainties (implicit)," "suitability of the experimental setup," and "use of theoretical concepts." Study 2 presents a questionnaire suitable for medium- and large-scale assessments that probes students' use of four of these types of justifications: "appeal to an authority," "data as evidence," "intuition," and "measurement uncertainties (explicit)." The questionnaire can be administered in 5-10 minutes and is designed for students in the eighth and ninth grades. We outline the development and quality of the assessment tools of both studies, reporting on the content validity, factorial validity, discriminant validity, convergent validity, and reliability of the questionnaire. The two studies shed light on the various justifications students use when evaluating anomalous data at a fine-grained level.

Previous research from in and outside museums suggests that the haptic exploration of surfaces and objects have various educational benefits and can positively influence the museum visit experience. However, there is still a need for more research on the potential effects of object handling on museum learning, especially in science museums. The present study attempts to fill this research gap by investigating differences in museum visitors' science learning when presenting them with photos of objects, real objects, or objects that can be handled. We used a multi-criteria approach in which we examined both cognitive and motivational-affective aspects. We found that the participants who were allowed to haptically explore the exhibition's objects showed a higher recollection of the objects and accompanying text topics and reported a higher perceived autonomy compared to the participants in the other two experimental conditions. Unexpectedly, for situational interest as well as for positive and negative affect, the participants in the photo-condition reported higher values than the participants in the other two conditions. Implications for instructional uses of tangible objects and further directions for research are discussed.

Social support and motivation to transfer are important components in conceptual models on transfer of training. Previous research indicates that both support and motivation influence transfer. To date, however, it is not yet clear if social support influences transfer of training directly, or if this influence is mediated by motivation to transfer. Conceptually, some models assume that motivation to transfer fully mediates the influence of social support on transfer (full mediation models), whereas other models also include direct relationships between social support and transfer of training (partial mediation models). In addition, some models specify finer sub-dimensions of social support, such as supervisor support, peer support, supervisor sanctions and feedback/coaching. What is the relative influence of these dimensions on the transfer of training? To what extent does motivation to transfer mediate the influence of different support dimensions and transfer? Aimed at answering these questions, the present meta-analysis (k = 32 studies, N = 5487 participants) examined the relationships between social support, motivation to transfer and transfer of training. Social support was conceptualized in four dimensions: supervisor support, peer support, supervisor sanctions and feedback/coaching. Meta-analytic structural equation modelling was used to test a partial mediation model and a full mediation model. Full mediation resulted in a better model fit. Peer support was the strongest predictor of motivation to transfer, and feedback/coaching was the strongest predictor of transfer of training. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for developing conceptual models, measurement instruments and training interventions are discussed.

Visitors to modern science museums are likely to encounter exhibitions presenting conflicting information, such as risks and benefits of new scientific developments. Such exhibitions encourage visitors to reflect upon different sides of a story and to form or adjust their attitudes toward the topic on display. However, there is very little evidence of museum visits influencing visitors' attitudes. Using a risk-benefit museum text, we set out to explore this blind spot of attitude change in a science museum, with visual and auditory text as information conditions. Our results show a small average change in visitors' attitude toward the text topic after information (N = 225). No significant differences were found between participants' attitude change in the two information conditions. We also explored whether participants' attitude change can be predicted based on presentation modality and four dimensions of attitude strength (prior knowledge, attitudinal certainty, attitudinal importance, and attitudinal ambivalence) that are known to play a role in attitude change. Results indicate that this model explained a small part of the variance, but only ambivalence added statistically significantly to the prediction. Overall, our findings suggest that risk-benefit information can on average change visitors' attitudes and that prior attitudinal ambivalence can influence that change.

There is a long tradition of museum research assessing visitors' personal background. In this article, we suggest an insightful way to enhance and intensify visitor analyses and adopt a more integrative approach. To this end, we draw attention to Latent Class Analysis (LCA), a classification method that allows us to investigate visitor profiles rather than isolated characteristics while using a mixture of socio-demographic variables and other personal characteristics. We illustrate our suggestion with two examples drawn from a study we conducted at two science museums and two museums of cultural history. The first example shows the use of LCA on variables that are easily assessed and that many museums already have access to through their visitor surveys. The second LCA involves more specific cognitive and motivational visitor variables that are of general importance for learning and that are assumed to be especially important when dealing with conflicting information. Both examples illustrate the additional value of investigating visitor profiles for researchers as well as museum practitioners.

Until recently, museums mainly communicated well-established knowledge. Current science, however, is characterized by a rapid knowledge increase, so that we often have to deal with fragile and inconsistent knowledge. In order to develop exhibitions that encourage visitors to process information in a differentiated way, museums need to know how visitors deal with conflicting information. Furthermore, museum professionals need information on personal and situational factors that may promote the processing of such information. We tested whether conflict processing is influenced by personal characteristics such as situational interest, epistemological beliefs, tolerance of ambiguity, and self-efficacy on the one hand and by situational conditions such as the spatial arrangement of information on the other hand. In two science museums and one museum of cultural history, text pairs were displayed that described a topic from conflicting perspectives. The spatial distance between the two texts was manipulated. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires captured the personal characteristics of 323 visitors and the way they dealt with conflicting information. The results showed that a majority of the visitors perceived a conflict, and a large proportion was willing to process the information at a deeper level. Sophisticated epistemological beliefs, a high tolerance of ambiguity, and high self-efficacy were found to promote situational interest in conflicting information. High situational interest, in turn, promoted a tendency to process deeply. Placing text pairs in close proximity had a positive effect on the processing depth in science museums but not in the museum of cultural history. A possible explanation lies in the higher density of additional and potentially interfering information in the science museums compared to the museum of cultural history.

Science museums, science centers, zoos, and aquariums (MCZAs) constitute major settings of science learning with unique characteristics of informal science education. Emphasis will be given to the analysis of four specific characteristics of MCZAs that seem relevant for educational research and practice, namely, conditions of mixed motives and goals, staged popular science, and impact of physical layout, as well as the role of social exchange and participation. By doing so, we focus on the consequences of these characteristics for the learning processes and outcomes of visits of MCZAs. We show that outcomes encompass not only knowledge acquisition in a narrower sense but also changes in interest and beliefs.

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