This paper reflects on and discusses the didactical intentions and implications of an extensive project in science and technology education, which has been going on between the years 1980 – 2007, mainly as a joint venture between Deutsches Museum in Munich and the University of Göteborg. The actors in this paper are of two kinds: first, the introducers and inventors of new aspects of science and technology, the scientists and technically minded people, and secondly the intermediaries, for example teachers, who act as communicators of science and technology. Learning is, in this paper, tentatively regarded as an interaction between cognitive neural networks, in the minds of those persons who participated in the seminars, and distributed cognition in artifacts in science and technology museums.
The aim is to try to enhance learning and retention processes by taking into account changes in synaptic connections within the brain which leads to neural plasticity. This project has involved student training and in-service teacher training and has included weeklong seminars in science and technology museums in different countries. The results of this project unambiguously underscore, as found by evaluations and papers produced by the participants, the importance of having qualified guidance in museums in order to create a fruitful interaction in these four main dimensions:
1. Inventions and inventors:
This part of the project studies emergent "quantum jumps" of science and technology in space and time.
2. The Mind:
The Mind as it is affected by changes in cognitive neural networks of participants in the seminars.
3. Museums:
The distributed cognition in the artifacts, which are exposed.
4. The Curriculum:
The national curricula in technology, which guides the selection of topics. The visits to authentic environments also enhanced the retainment of the content which was taught, as facts were placed into historical and developmental contexts focusing on genesis and evolution of science and technology. The results also pointed to fruitful possibilities to operationalize the concept "Pedagogical Content Knowledge" (PCK), in order to make a transfer from Technological Content Knowledge to Pedagogical Content Knowledge in science and technology education, and in learning processes, utilizing museum contexts. In this paper, the evolution of technology was thus regarded as dependent on time, space and mind in interaction with society. The aspects of technology transfer and diffusion were regarded from a point of view of creation of artifacts and learning by the participants.
Strömstad: Strömstad Akademi , 2012. p. 81-92