The Influence of Prompts on Students’ Thinking Processes in Dinosaur Exhibits

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify the influence of prompts for scientific reasoning on students’ thinking processes in dinosaur exhibits at the Gwacheon National Science Museum in Seoul, Korea. First, students visited the exhibitions without any prompts and were asked to explain what they saw and understood. Then, we provided questions and cues as prompts related to the exhibits and asked the students to revise their explanations. Fourteen third and fourth grade students participated in this study and explored the exhibits either alone or in a group. Dialogues between students and researchers were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed. Without prompts, students were able to describe only the information of exhibits and their prior knowledge, and failed to link the exhibits, labels, and previous knowledge to their explanations. On the other hand, when either questions or cues were provided, they were able to connect the exhibit information to their prior knowledge through inferential thinking.