Building Bridges Between School and a Science Center Using a Flipped Learning Framework

Many museums attempt to connect museum activities to classroom learning goals by creating “before” and “after” suggestions for the classroom teacher. Therefore, when doing out of school activities it is common to organize and plan such activities from a before, during and after perspective. The present study primarily rests on observations of students from a lower secondary school class interacting with learning material developed to a science center on the basis of a framework inspired by flipped learning. Data were obtained from the students when they were preparing the visit to the science center in class, as well as during and after the visit. The aim was to document how the flipped learning setup mediates interactions with the exhibit and learning material, affect students’ visitor mode and connect school and science center. The results show that overall the formal intention behind the learning material correlates with the students observed practice. The results suggest that learning material inspired by the presented flipped learning framework successfully can link science curriculum at school and science centers visits, but not without some point of attention of which the teacher is the most significant.