Taking photographs to document the experiences of an educational field trip is becoming a common activity for teachers and students alike. Considering the regular creation of photographic artifacts, our goal in this paper is to explore students’ picture taking behavior and their recollections of science content associated with their photographs. In this study, we partnered with a class of fifth-grade students in the United States and provided each student with a digital camera to document their experiences during an environmental science field trip at a national park. We report the frequency of photography behaviors according to which activities were most often documented by the students and specifically that students tended to document more of their experiences when they were in outdoor, natural spaces rather than inside of visitor centers or museums. Also, through an analysis of students’ comments about the science content captured in their photographs we observe that students’ comments about photographs of the outdoors tended to show greater depth and complexity than those that were taken in indoor, museum-like spaces. 1. Introduction Field trips are an important vehicle through which classrooms of students and teachers are able to engage with and learn about the natural world through integrated processes of immersion and direct observation [1, 2]. They are noteworthy for educators because they may lead to improved content understanding of and attitudes relevant to the natural environment [3, 4] and also because they can produce long-term memories of specific learning experiences that have the potential of enduring for several years [5–7]. In the literature related to recall of field experiences, these memories are often identified and treated as strictly mental phenomena. That is, memory is often conceptualized, sometimes tacitly, as a recapitulation of information stored in a mental encoding. However, it is also worth recognizing that memory, as well as many other cognitive processes, can alternately be seen as not only a mental phenomenon but also a material one [8]. Various artifacts or creations from an experience can serve a central role in the act of “remembering,” and it is through these creations that we piece together recollections of lived experiences. In this study, we take the idea of photographs as a form of externalized memory seriously and consider what is captured during an environmental science field trip experience using this medium. The capture of photographic records on field trips has been noted as an activity largely undertaken
References
[1]
P. Bell, B. Lewenstein, A. W. Shouse, and M. A. Feder, Learning Science in Informal Environments: People, Places, and Pursuits, National Academies Press, Washington, DC, USA, 2009.
[2]
S. K. Davidson, C. Passmore, and D. Anderson, “Learning on zoo field trips: the interaction of the agendas and practices of students, teachers, and zoo educators,” Science Education, vol. 94, no. 1, pp. 122–141, 2010.
[3]
J. DeWitt and M. Storksdieck, “A short review of school field trips: key findings from the past and implications for the future,” Visitor Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 181–197, 2008.
[4]
K. Zoldosova and P. Prokop, “Education in the field influences children's ideas and interest toward science,” Journal of Science Education and Technology, vol. 15, no. 3-4, pp. 304–313, 2006.
[5]
J. H. Falk and L. D. Dierking, “School field trips: assessing their long-term impact,” Curator, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 211–218, 1997.
[6]
J. Farmer, D. Knapp, and G. M. Benton, “An elementary school environmental education field trip: long-term effects on ecological and environmental knowledge and attitude development,” Journal of Environmental Education, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 33–42, 2007.
[7]
D. Knapp, “Memorable experiences of a science field trip,” School Science and Mathematics, vol. 100, no. 2, pp. 65–72, 2000.
[8]
E. Hutchins, Cognition in the Wild, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA, 1995.
[9]
J. Kisiel, “An examination of fieldtrip strategies and their implementation within a natural history museum,” Science Education, vol. 90, no. 3, pp. 434–452, 2006.
[10]
F. Kato, D. Okabe, M. Ito, and R. Uemoto, “Uses and possibilities of the Keitai camera,” in Personal, Portable, Pedestrian: Mobile Phones in Japanese Life, M. Ito, D. Okabe, and M. Matsuda, Eds., pp. 300–310, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, USA, 2005.
[11]
J. Piaget, The Child's Conception of the World, Harcourt, Brace & Company, New York, NY, USA, 1929.
[12]
J. Bransford, A. L. Brown, and R. R. Cocking, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, National Academy Press, Washington, DC, USA.
[13]
H. Pfundt and R. Duit, Bibliography: Students' Alternative Frameworks and Science Education, Institute for Science Education, Kiel, Germany, 2009.
[14]
J. Lobato, B. Rhodehamel, and C. Hohensee, “‘Noticing’ as an alternative transfer of learning process,” Journal of the Learning Sciences, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 433–482, 2012.
[15]
M. G. Sherin, V. R. Jacobs, and R. A. Phillipp, Eds., Mathematics Teacher Noticing: Seeing Through Teachers' Eyes, Routledge, New York, NY, USA, 2010.
[16]
E. A. van Es and M. G. Sherin, “Mathematics teachers' “learning to notice” in the context of a video club,” Teaching and Teacher Education, vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 244–276, 2008.
[17]
C. Goodwin, “Professional vision,” The American Anthropologist, vol. 96, no. 3, pp. 606–633, 1994.
[18]
D. Sobel, Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, The Orion Society and The Myrin Institute, Great Barrington, Mass, USA, 1996.
[19]
G. A. Smith, “Place-based education: learning to be where we are,” Phi Delta Kappan, vol. 83, no. 8, pp. 584–594, 2002.
[20]
K. Taylor and R. Hall, “Counter-mapping the neighborhood on bicycles: mobilizing youth to reimagine the city,” Technology, Knowledge and Learning, vol. 18, no. 1-2, pp. 56–93, 2013.
[21]
D. A. Gruenewald, “The best of both worlds: a critical pedagogy of place,” Educational Researcher, vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 3–12, 2003.
[22]
J. Dewey, Experience and Education, Macmillan, New York, NY, USA, 1959.
[23]
N. Orion and A. Hofstein, “Factors that influence leanring during a scientific field trip in a natural environment,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, vol. 31, no. 10, pp. 1097–1119, 1994.
[24]
J. H. Falk, W. W. Martin, and J. D. Balling, “The novel field-trip phenomenon: adjustment to novel settings interferes with task learning,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 127–134, 1978.
[25]
V. R. Lee, “Adaptations and continuities in the use and design of visual representations in US middle school science textbooks,” International Journal of Science Education, vol. 32, no. 8, pp. 1099–1126, 2010.
[26]
R. Lemoni, A. G. Stamou, and G. P. Stamou, “‘Romantic’, “Classic” and “Baroque” views of nature: an analysis of pictures about the environment in Greek primary school textbooks—diachronic considerations,” Research in Science Education, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 811–832, 2011.
[27]
W. M. Roth and L. Pozzer-Ardenghi, “Pictures in biology education,” in Multiple Representations in Biological Education, D. F. Treagust and C. Y. Tsui, Eds., vol. 7, pp. 39–53, Springer, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2013.
[28]
J. Umphress, J. Ma, R. Hall, K. H. Taylor, and M. Luna, “Gearing up: new technologies for participant-collected data,” in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Vancouver, Canada, April 2012.
[29]
M. Clark-Ibá？ez, “Framing the social world with photo-elicitation interviews,” The American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 47, no. 12, pp. 1507–1527, 2004.
[30]
D. Harper, “Talking about pictures: a case for photo elicitation,” Visual Studies, vol. 17, no. 1, pp. 13–26, 2002.
[31]
J. DeWitt and J. Osborne, “Recollections of exhibits: stimulated-recall interviews with primary school children about science centre visits,” International Journal of Science Education, vol. 32, no. 10, pp. 1365–1388, 2010.
[32]
S. Tofield, R. K. Coll, B. Vyle, and R. Bolstad, “Zoos as a source of free choice learning,” Research in Science & Technology Education, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 67–99, 2003.
[33]
S. Reeve and P. Bell, “Children's self-documentation and understanding of the concepts “healthy” and ‘unhealthy’,” International Journal of Science Education, vol. 31, no. 14, pp. 1953–1974, 2009.
[34]
B. K. Smith, “Bodystorming mobile learning experiences,” TechTrends, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 71–76, 2014.
[35]
B. K. Smith, J. Frost, M. Albayrak, and R. Sudhakar, “Facilitating narrative medical discussions of type 1 diabetes with computer visualizations and photography,” Patient Education and Counseling, vol. 64, no. 1–3, pp. 313–321, 2006.
[36]
M. F. Orellana, “Space and place in an urban landscape: learning from children's views of their social worlds,” Visual Studies, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 73–89, 1999.
[37]
C. C. Ching, X. C. Wang, M.-L. Shih, and Y. Kedem, “Digital photography and journals in a kindergarten-first-grade classroom: toward meaningful technology integration in early childhood education,” Early Education and Development, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 347–371, 2006.
[38]
D. Tatar and M. Robinson, “Use of the digital camera to increase student interest and learning in high school biology,” Journal of Science Education and Technology, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 89–95, 2003.
[39]
R. M. Emerson, R. Fretz, and L. L. Shaw, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Ill, USA, 1995.
[40]
L. W. Anderson and D. R. Krathwohl, A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Addison Wesley Longman, New York, NY, USA, 2001.
[41]
S. J. Kuritz, J. R. Landis, and G. G. Koch, “A general overview of Mantel-Haenszel methods: applications and recent developments,” Annual Review of Public Health, vol. 9, pp. 123–160, 1988.
[42]
G. W. Somes, “The generalized Mantel-Haenszel statistic,” The American Statistician, vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 106–108, 1986.
[43]
J. Z. Boxerman, V. R. Lee, and J. Olsen, “As seen through the lens: students’ encounters and engagement with science during outdoor field trips,” in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, Calif, USA, 2013.
[44]
E. F. Smith, B. Gidlow, and G. Steel, “Engaging adolescent participants in academic research: the use of photo-elicitation interviews to evaluate school-based outdoor education programmes,” Qualitative Research, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 367–387, 2012.
