Abstract
Chapter 5 is an introduction to the visitors’ knowledge of animals. Because adults and children come to the zoo with ideas, information, and images of animals, zoos need to be aware of this knowledge. Zoos should enhance learning in a way that addresses visitors’ misconceptions about animals by identifying the misconceptions and challenging the perceptions that are not in accordance with science. This is a difficult process if the zoo is not aware of the visitors’ prior knowledge, especially the visitors’ knowledge of animals. Visitors’ prior knowledge may be identified within six topics: (1) understanding of the term animal, (2) comprehension of layman’s taxonomy, (3) perceptions of animal behavior and anatomy, (4) curiosity about individual animals, (5) emotional connection to animals, and (6) cultural understandings of animals. An essential part of exposing visitors’ prior knowledge is clarifying the connections between the visitors’ knowledge and their unprompted comments. Listening to visitors’ conversations during the zoo visit and identifying the detail of the conversational topics will provide zoo educators and educational researchers with insight into the prior knowledge of zoo visitors.
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Patrick, P.G., Tunnicliffe, S.D. (2013). Talking About Animals. In: Zoo Talk. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4863-7_6
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