Excursions

Abstract

While excursions can take many forms and extend over a range of time periods, here excursions are defined as one-off school visits, generally lasting a single day or shorter, to informal science settings, particularly locations such as museums, nature and science centers, zoos, aquaria and botanic gardens, local and state parks, planetaria, or science fairs and festivals. The traditional excursions, or field trips, need to be distinguished from other forms of out-of-school learning, such as service learning, citizen science, and ongoing experiences like science clubs or tending a school garden that provide sustained and repeated opportunities for engagement and learning. However, many of the points made below about learning outcomes, factors impacting learning from field trip experiences and the ways in which informal science education experiences during organized excursions can support learning, are applicable to a wider range of settings and types of experiences