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Passive visitors or
independent explorers:
Responses of pupils with
severe learning difficulties
at an Interactive Science
Centre
Helen Brooke & Joan Solomon
Published online: 20 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Helen Brooke & Joan Solomon (2001) Passive visitors or
independent explorers: Responses of pupils with severe learning difficulties at
an Interactive Science Centre, International Journal of Science Education, 23:9,
941-953, DOI: 10.1080/09500690010016094
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INT. J. SCI. EDUC.
VOL.
NO
, 2001,
23,
. 9, 941- 953
RESEARCH REPORT
Passive visitors or independent explorers: Responses
of pupils with severe learning difficulties at an
Interactive Science Centre
Helen Brooke and Joan Solomon, Centre for Science Education. The Open
University, UK
In previous work with mainstream students in a small Interactive Science Centre it was shown that
curiosity, followed by identification of cause and effect, were essential for moving on from playing to
intentional investigation and so to learning. Here we report studies of students with severe learning
difficulties and show that they could, under appropriate conditions, display impressive concentration
and curiosity, and often appeared to achieve valuable learning. The paper concludes by describing some
of the dilemmas that may arise in developing these kinds of activities for special education.
Pupils with Special Educational Needs
In 1998 we described how pupils from primary schools reacted at our Interactive
Science Centre (VISTA) and how, through the medium of curiosity, they moved
from unfocused play to an active search for cause and effect which became a
creative investigation (Brooke and Solomon 1998).
Amongst our mainstream visitors had been some pupils who were considered
to have moderate learning difficulties (MLD). We were interested in the reactions
of these young people, wondering whether the deliberate lack of written labels or
work sheets at VISTA would make it easier for them. We soon found that not only
did these pupils join in wholeheartedly, but that it was generally impossible to
distinguish them from the rest of the class, both during a visit and when inter-
viewing them afterwards. We even asked the teachers not to tell us which pupils
were considered to have learning difficulties, and more often than not we were
unable to pick them out. This result is perhaps hardly surprising in the case of
pupils with difficulties specific to reading and writing, but similar results were
seen in a number of cases where pupils were considered to have more general
learning difficulties. The by-passing of the need for literacy skills is likely to be
one explanation for the success of this way of learning for these pupils; a further
motivating factor may have been just the expedition out of school. The playful
nature of the activities appears also to have been important. Bruner (1974)
‘a temporary moratorium on frustration’
described play as
, a situation in which
there is no fear of failure because there is no goal, either internally or externally
imposed. This is likely to be highly significant for children who experience
repeated failure.
International Journal of Science Education ISSN 0950-0693 print/ISSN 1464-5289 online 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd
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DOI: 10.1080/09500690010016094

H. BROOKE AND J. SOLOMON
942
Would pupils with severe learning difficulties (SLD) respond in a similar way
to visits to our Science Centre? We invited groups of children and young people
from local ‘special schools’ for pupils with SLD, or special classes at Colleges
of Further Education (post-16 years). Many had very limited spoken language
although some used a simplified sign language, and some were learning to read
and write. Would these young people show the same curiosity which had moved
our mainstream pupils on from ‘playing about’ to real interest and exploration? We
decided to start with some preliminary studies, taking the form of close observa-
tion supplemented by still photography and video recording to estimate the feasi-
bility of such research. It is that work which we report here.
Changes in Special Education
Pupils with SLD have often been described as passive. A number of authors (e.g.
Byers 1994, Griffiths 1994) have suggested that, if this is the case, the cause may
lie, not so much in the pupils themselves, as in the teaching methods based on
behaviourist psychology that became prevalent in special schools in the 1970s and
have remained influential. In 1994 Richard Byers wrote:
Teachers in schools for pupils with learning difficulties have a characteristic com-
plaint, focused on perceived shortcomings in the pupils themselves which suggests
that in spite of years of careful training, pupils somehow lack the self-confidence to go
out and put their skills into practice in the real world. It is unlikely however that
pupils who have been encouraged throughout their school careers to be the passive
recipients of a system of instruction which seeks to eradicate failure and guarantee
success will suddenly become proactive adults brimming with self-confidence, simply
because they are confronted with the challenges of the real world. (Byers 1994: 88)
A review of some of the changes that have taken place in Special Education will
make this clearer.
The 1944 Education Act in the UK attempted to bring the education of
‘handicapped children’ into the education sector but around 10% of them, includ-
‘ineducable’
ing most of the children with Down’s Syndrome, were considered
and
remained the responsibility of the Local Health Authority, under the general
administration of the National Health Service. Any education that they received
took place in Occupation Centres, later Junior Training Centres, and many of
them lived in residential institutions. Booth (1985) cites supposed ‘experts’ who,
as late as the 1970s, stated that people with Down’s Syndrome can hardly ever
learn to read and write. Their parents did not always agree. Hebden (1985) gives a
‘She’ll
moving account of being told of her daughter with Down’s Syndrome,
never do anything, dear’.
She used the phrase as the title of a book about her
child, which culminated in the child winning a Duke of Edinburgh Award (a
national enterprise award).
‘ineducable’
There were also professionals who did not accept the label
was not until 1970 that the Education (Handicapped Children) Act transferred the
‘severely subnormal’
but it
responsibility for the education of even the
from the Health
Authorities to the Education Authorities. The Junior Training Centres became
Special Schools and educational methods based on behaviourist psychology
became popular at this time.
The Junior Training Centres had offered care, occupation and a training in life skills.
Schools, however, need to offer an education.

PASSIVE VISITORS OR INDEPENDENT EXPLORERS
943
Teachers operating in something of a theoretical vacuum turned to psychologists and
to the theory and practice of behaviourism for guidance and inspiration. . .. Objectives
which could not be verified behaviourally were to be avoided. . . [Teachers] were told
that by shaping the antecedents (getting the conditions right), and controlling the
consequences (rewards and sanctions), they would be able to modify behaviour and
pupils would learn. (Byers 1994: 78-9)
The behaviourist methods were used first to modify difficult behaviour, and then
to teach desired behaviour. Some remarkable results were achieved, at least in the
et al.
teaching of specific skills (see for example Sebba
1993, Collis and Lacey
1996). However, from the early 1980s misgivings were increasingly expressed
about whether these methods could promote real understanding (McConkey
1981) or whether they encouraged passivity and dependence (Byers 1994,
Griffiths 1994). Recent years have seen strong arguments for more interactive
approaches and greater independence. However, the behaviourist model, if rarely
used now in its original form, still remains influential in Special Education.
The Warnock Report (Department of Education and Science, 1978) repre-
sented a shift away from a deficit classification towards the notion of a continuum
of need for all young people. It described a national population of children with the
basic right to an education, some of whom (estimated at 1 in 5) would at some time
during their education have Special Educational Needs to varying degrees.
‘a brave attempt to move away from categorisation
Tilstone (1991: 14) describes it as
and the consequent stigma’
, while noting that the new definitions were criticized by
some as vague and imprecise.
With the introduction of the National Curriculum for England and Wales
(NC) in 1988 some special educators feared that their pupils might once again
be sidelined (see, for example, Tilstone 1991) and have fought for the NC to be
viewed as ‘an entitlement’ for all children. Others (e.g. Locke 1996), while sup-
porting this view, have stressed the need to ensure that sufficient time and atten-
tion is given to the key social, physical, linguistic and cognitive skills that all
children need before they can access the NC. Locke (1996) argued that there is
little point in teaching a child how to fill a jug of water and calling it ‘science’
simply for the sake of ticking off a NC target. On the other hand suitably adapted
science activities might have much to offer children with SLD in terms of increas-
ing their knowledge of the world around them and also their desire to explore it. So
now seemed to be the right time to ask, not whether children with SLD are
entitled to learn science, but what it had to offer them.
Research at VISTA and other science centres
The short history of the science centre movement from the time when
Exploratorium opened in 1968 to the present day has been packed with variety
and controversy as to purpose (see Rennie and McClafferty 1996, for an excellent
exploring
for which there are written
review). At the heart of the controversy lies the dichotomy between
learning
,
which includes play and curiosity, and factual
instructions and explanations in addition to the prescribed activity. Other features
such as enjoyment, learning to use the equipment and reacting with others, have
also featured in the design of most centres and in the research into student
outcomes. Our purpose in this short review of design and intention is to focus

H. BROOKE AND J. SOLOMON
944
selectively on the continuum from free play to learning tasks, and so to locate our
own activities at VISTA.
Our early papers published about VISTA (Brooke and Solomon 1996, and
Brooke and Solomon 1998) described the ‘four generations’ of exhibits, based on
Richard Gregory’s categories (Gregory 1986), showing a final level of interactivity,
as practised at VISTA, where the visitors are invited to interact with the exhibit, to
design their own explorations, and so to ‘make discoveries’. Like Csikszentmiha´lyi
and Hermanson (1995) we saw curiosity as the most important factor in setting the
pupil off on their own exploration, energizing the ‘flow’ in their terms. This also
matched the ideas of Hodgkin (1985) who wrote of play and exploration as existing
in a ‘potential space’. By this he meant a space in which to be creative in a practical
sense so that actions and experiences can then ‘turn inward’ to become mental
activities as Bruner (1966) and Vygotsky (1978) each described in slightly different
terms.
Researchers interested in what information has been learnt, at the learning end
of the curiosity/learning continuum, have included Griffin and Symington (1997),
et al.
McClafferty (1995), Borun
(1993) and Feher and Meyer (1992). Almost every
one of these studies used a pre- and post-test and showed from the scores, that in
most cases good results depended on previous learning, formal or naive. This
suggests that the learning processes taking place in a Science Centre were not
unlike ones already begun in school, and might be rather remote from the free
investigation, fuelled by curiosity, that we wanted to study. The early visitors to
VISTA were all primary school pupils, and it is also doubtful if they fitted into the
category of those who enter with an agenda of specific things they want to learn, as
Dierking and Falk (1994) describe for adult visitors.
The previous research at VISTA (Brooke and Solomon 1998) had been
designed to find out which features of interaction led to active exploration on
the part of the pupils. We used research findings on the nature of play from
et al.
Piaget (1951), Millar (1968) and Sylva
(1974). From these we learnt to
look for playful, humorous and make-believe behaviour which included a lack of
concern for success or failure. From Hodgkin (1985), Polanyi (1958) and Bruner
(1972) we learnt to watch out for repetitive and combinatorial tool use which could
be a practical learning process. Using no more than an audio tape recorder and a
note book we collected enough data from the groups of primary pupils visiting the
centre to identify these two kinds of activities and the shift from play to investiga-
tion. This began with the stirring of curiosity, which only just preceded the search
for cause-and-effect (see figure 1 below) and was not difficult to identify. Using
discourse analysis we were able to construct and evaluate a model for autonomous
investigation without prior instruction.
This was the model which we proposed to use for our study of pupils with
SLD.
The exhibits at VISTA
Our small interactive centre is no more than one room which is approximately 8 m
by 9 m fully carpeted and painted in bright colours. All the exhibits in the Centre
have been designed to encourage open-ended investigations linked to National
Curriculum themes. In the first year of our study of pupils with SLD the theme

PASSIVE VISITORS OR INDEPENDENT EXPLORERS
945
Figure 1.
Forces.
was
Activities included the following which turned out to be especially
suitable for special needs visitors:
.
.
The design of cars to go down an inclined plane into a wind tunnel.
A powerful solenoid which could be turned off and on.
Energy and Electricity
In the second year the theme was
included:
, with activities which
.
Water-lift with cups on a belt which could raise water to a higher level
reservoir.
.
.
Transistorised lights which could amplify small currents to light a pea bulb.
A model insulated house heated by electric lights, and explored with heat
sensors
.
.
Household ring main and a series circuit, both operating lights and rotors.
A recumbent skeleton with balloon ‘lungs’ and a diaphragm for forced
breathing.
The adult’s role at VISTA had always been kept to a minimum during mainstream
school visits with only a brief reminder at the start of how the exhibits could
‘See how much you can find out about that!’
the visits adult helpers played only a minor ‘scaffolding’ role (see Wood
be used and a challenge to
During
et al.
1976), either by physically adjusting the equipment, or by offering a ‘casual’
suggestion.
The importance of this restrained role was highlighted by the visits from
young people with SLD. We soon learnt just how delicate the balance could be
between support that permits the learner to go a stage beyond what he or she could
achieve alone, and the heavy-handed instruction that smothers individual curios-
‘instructional density’
ity. Boekaerts (1994) called this
and argued that it could both
increase anxiety and reduce motivation. We saw examples of this quite early in our

H. BROOKE AND J. SOLOMON
946
work with students with SLD. The occasional teacher, clearly motivated by a wish
to teach about the exhibits, gave lengthy verbal explanations that resulted in
‘avoidance tactics’ by their pupils. We have already suggested that the playful
nature of the activities at the centre was an important factor in motivating pupils
with MLD, by reducing the fear of failure for those who experienced it all too
frequently.
Hence the first aim of our research became finding out whether visitors with
SLD would display both curiosity and creativity in this setting, as mainstream
pupils had done. On the other hand the question of the extent to which knowledge
could be gained at the Science Centre and then translated into science concepts
‘feel’
seemed much more demanding. Solomon (1980) has pointed out the need to
or sense a scientific concept as well as to articulate it - to place your hand inside a
plastic bag in a bucket of water, for example, in order to feel water pressure.
Bruner (1966) describes a progression from an enactive representation of the
world (through action) to iconic representation, and finally abstract representation
in words and symbols. For mainstream pupils discussion at the end of each visit
to the Science Centre as well as follow-up interviews by the first author (Helen
Brooke) in their school, were designed to promote this last step. However com-
munication difficulties obviously made this more problematic when working with
pupils with SLD, so we decided to take some simplified apparatus to the schools in
order to gauge our students’ recall of their activities at VISTA.
Preliminary observations of pupils with SLD at VISTA
Group 1
There was a wide age range in this group from 8 to 16 years, two 8 year olds having
been substituted for two pupils who were ill. The activities related to Forces (see
above). At this stage in the research still photography was used to reinforce careful
notes taken during the session. The following categories of response were par-
ticularly striking, with teachers remarking on an unusually high incidence of the
last three.
a) Multisensory involvement: Simple enjoyment of sensations produced by
wind from the wind tunnel or feeling the pull of an electromagnet.
b) Concentration: The group was excited and slow to settle at first but most
of the students became very involved in what they were doing. A, a young
man of 16 with Down’s Syndrome, spent at least 20 minutes reshaping
cars with pieces of card and trying them out in the wind tunnel. His lack
of language made it difficult to gauge his understanding of the concepts
involved, but his concentration was abundantly clear.
c) Curiosity: When A moved over to where two young girls were playing
with the solenoid, he bent down to peer into the tube, clearly attempting
to find out what had happened to the iron bar that had been drawn in.
When he stood up again it was with a delighted smile. His curiosity,
interest in cause and effect, and involvement were unmistakable.
d) Collaboration: The two girls spent a long time working at the solenoid,
carefully putting one of the objects provided in at each end and waiting to
see if they would ‘click’ in the middle Their faces showed anticipation of

PASSIVE VISITORS OR INDEPENDENT EXPLORERS
947
this pull. Their teacher remarked that it was very unusual for them to
work together in this way.
Group 2
This group from an Further Education College, like the others described below,
was recorded on video. This enabled a far closer exploration of the students’
activities. The study focused on a young man, B aged 18 and a young woman C
aged 17.
Student B
1)
: During the initial demonstration, B stood ‘wind-milling’ his
arms, his attention clearly not focused on what was being shown. Eleven
minutes into the session he was encouraged by his teacher to go to the
‘water-lift’. At first his attention was only intermittently engaged and he
reverted frequently to turning the handle with his thumb in his mouth
and no apparent interest. As the session progressed B became increasingly
involved in what was happening. The use of non-verbal scaffolding by a
passing helper, who adjusted the position of the tube to increase the flow
of water onto the water wheel, caught his attention. At first he just imi-
tated the action and then began to experiment, making his own adjust-
ments and showing a real interest in the effect he was producing. He
speeded up the rate of turning of the water wheel, and was able to
point out the entire path of the water and the effects it produced. He
also learnt how to refill the leaky water system when necessary. B spent
most of the hour-long visit at this one piece of equipment.
It is clear from this sequence of actions that a distinction needs to be
made between different types of concentration - focused (or engaged) and
unfocused. B spent a great deal of time at the beginning of the session
carrying out a single activity - turning the handle of the water-lift - with a
concentration that could be described as intense but which seemed wholly
Figure 2. The water lift.

H. BROOKE AND J. SOLOMON
948
unfocused and unproductive in terms of learning. The video of his activ-
ities recorded the length of time he needed to progress from unfocused
repetitive behaviour to focused interest in cause and effect, and from this
to his own investigation.
Student C
2)
: C showed great reluctance to having a particular activity
imposed on her. She ignored, then resisted, and finally submitted to
her teacher’s attempts to take her to ‘the skeleton’ exhibit where she
continually refused to engage with the activity. Evading her teacher, C
moved over to the circuits table. Left to herself she showed good con-
centration and fully engaged attention. Slowly at first, and then more
confidently, she showed that she knew exactly what she wanted to achieve
by watching the light bulb closely as she brought the two disconnected
wires together. She was willing to persevere in connecting the circuit
although she did not find this easy. The contrast between independently
chosen activities and those picked by the teacher and used for verbal
instruction, was very striking.
Group 3
This group came from a special school class which was on a mainstream secondary
school site. The study focused on two girls, D aged 12 and E aged 15 (E’s learning
difficulties were much more severe than D’s, and were combined with motor
problems). This group was videoed at the Science Centre and also during fol-
low-up activities, designed to evaluate recall and transfer, two weeks later in
school.
Student D
: D looked at equipment on the table during the initial demonstra-
tion and, when invited, made a prediction about whether a particular material
would conduct electricity. All activities were her independent choice and, although
she did not stay very long at each, she gave them her full attention when she was
there. She showed that she knew (or recalled from the demonstration) how to make
the bulbs light up in the ring circuits, connecting the circuits with no hesitation,
and then briefly experimented with the series circuit.
At the model house D picked up a heat sensor and placed it in the house while
looking at the computer screen (see figure 3), thus indicating an understanding of
cause and effect where the two are not directly or obviously linked.
She spent a short time at the water-lift at the beginning of the session and
adjusted the tube of her own accord but then moved away without following this
through. She later returned to the water-lift and in a short space of time showed an
awareness of a problem (water not coming through) and attempted to solve it by
turning the handle faster, although she frequently turned in the wrong direction.
She worked in collaboration with a helper to adjust the tube and free the wind-up.
‘Phew!’
When it all began to move again she gestured
to the helper, acknowledging
that a shared problem had been solved. She had shown no frustration when the
equipment did not work as she intended and had accepted non-verbal intervention
by a helper, although she had rejected intervention from a fellow student.
Two weeks later, when visited by the first author in her school, D demon-
strated by mime a clear recall of an activity in which the pupil holds a wire and
stands bare footed on a foil-covered plate to complete the circuit. Answering a
verbal question as to why she thought this exhibit worked, she could only reply,

PASSIVE VISITORS OR INDEPENDENT EXPLORERS
949
Figure 3. The house and heat sensors.
‘through stuff.’
Other follow-up activities gave a much clearer indication of her
understanding. These consisted of the wind-up water-wheel from the water-lift,
the ‘transistorised light box’ and equipment to make a basic circuit. D was able to
make the water wheel and both circuits work without hesitation. When the alu-
minium foil used with the ‘transistorised light box’ failed to light the lamp she
clearly thought that something might be wrong and asked another pupil to swap
boxes. She was less keen to make a simple circuit at the helper’s request but when
asked again showed that she could do this easily. She had encountered electricity
earlier, and showed that she not only remembered and understood the concept of a
complete circuit, but also of a metal conductor! Her attention was engaged
throughout this 15 minute follow-up session to the extent that she was reluctant
to stop at the end of it.
Student E
: E’s attention did not at first appear to be focused on the activities.
She only became more involved after 12 minutes when she was taken to the circuits
table and the movement of the spinner was demonstrated. With this encourage-
ment E was able to make the spinner turn for herself. At first she jumped whenever
she succeeded in plugging it in as if she had not expected this effect. Shortly
afterwards it became clear what result she expected from the satisfaction and
pleasure she expressed. At first the effect was only intermittent as she was unable
to get the second plug to stay in the socket, but she persisted even though this
was made difficult by the continual tremor of her hands. Her response when
she did manage to keep the spinner moving made it clear that this had indeed
been her goal.
Altogether during the visit E spent at least 15 minutes at the circuits table
with her attention actively engaged throughout, except when another pupil inter-
vened. Although she too made the spinner turn, E exhibited none of the interest
she had shown when achieving the same effect herself. Being in control seemed to
be strongly motivating, and possibly something she was not often able to experi-
ence. Two weeks later in the follow-up session at school, E was presented with the

H. BROOKE AND J. SOLOMON
950
‘transistorised light box’. She had more or less ignored this during the visit and
now immediately took one of the wires and tried to plug it into a hole in the box.
Despite demonstrations that the two wires needed to be held in contact to make the
light come on and attempts to do this with her, she persisted through most of the
session in trying to plug the wire into a socket as she had done with the circuit at
the Science Centre. Only at the end of the session did she show a willingness to
collaborate with the helper in holding the two wires together, and showed her
pleasure at the result. E remembered the actions she had carried out at VISTA
but had immense difficulty in adapting this experience to a new situation.
The teachers’ reactions
The second aim of this research was to find out whether the very different learning
environment of the Science Centre could offer as useful a complement to school
learning for students with SLD as it had for mainstream pupils. Some of the
teachers from the special schools who watched these activities commented spon-
taneously that they were witnessing unusually high levels of motivation and
engagement. The fact that they found some of the students’ responses surprising
implied that these were less frequent in school. For the next stage, we had planned
to hold interviews with the teachers from the special schools, in which video
excerpts of the students in the study, both at school and at VISTA would be
used for stimulated recall. This is a method quite widely used in teacher education
(e.g. Calderhead 1981) for discussing a particular incident in the classroom. Its use
was pioneered in the science museum context by Stevenson and Bryden (1991) in
order to trigger the memory of episode in visitors who had last seen the exhibits
some six months previously. In our case the time interval was also long, but our
chief reason for using this methodology was to present the teachers with a visual
comparison between their students’ behaviour in the two circumstances. So per-
mission was sought - and was generously granted - to film a number of sessions in
the students’ schools or colleges, as well as in VISTA.
Semi-structured interviews were held with each of the teachers of the pupils in
the study, audio-recorded and transcribed. The video recordings of their students
working at school were the first to be discussed. The teachers watched the video
recording, which lasted for about 15 minutes, and then answered questions as to a)
how typical the teaching methods and learning behaviour were, and b) about their
objectives for the students. Answers to the first question reassured us as to the
validity of our material. In answer to the second range of questions, the teachers all
began by speaking about the objectives of National Curriculum, but then went on
to consider their more behavioural objectives, speaking of the need for their pupils
to learn to sit quietly in class, to move calmly around the mainstream school to
which they were attached, or to wait patiently in a queue. Most of those inter-
viewed saw directive teaching methods as the best way of meeting these objectives.
Nevertheless, a number of teachers expressed concern that their students, par-
ticularly the older ones, do not do more at school on their own initiative without
being told.
Then the teachers were shown about 15 minutes of video recording taken
when the same student was at VISTA, and were asked to comment on it. All
the teachers expressed their pleasure at seeing their pupils take the initiative and
carry out investigations at VISTA of their own accord. They freely attributed this

PASSIVE VISITORS OR INDEPENDENT EXPLORERS
951
to the fact that the pupils were given more freedom to explore at VISTA, were not
‘took a back
being told what to do, or not to do, and indeed to the fact that the staff
seat’ ‘We see them in a completely different light at VISTA.’
. One teacher remarked
The teachers also commented on the extent to which their students were willing to
persevere with challenges that they had set themselves, even when these proved
difficult. One teacher watching a video sequence of a pupil working at the wind
tunnel exclaimed,
That’s brilliant, isn’t it? She’s accepted that something doesn’t work and is not
prepared to walk away.
Conclusions and Implications for further research
The two aims of this preliminary study, presented in the text, were to find out
a) whether young people with SLD would display curiosity and creativity in
a discovery setting, and
b) if the very different learning environment of the Science Centre could
usefully complement their school learning.
Findings from this phase of our research have gone a long way towards confirming
both of these broad aims. The learning environment of VISTA had encouraged a
high level of motivation and engagement, and interviews with their teachers, in
addition to our own observations, suggested that this occurred to an unusual
degree. It was certainly a far cry from the passivity described by Byers (1994),
Griffiths (1994) and others. Using our previous model for moving from play to
investigation (see figure 1) we could interpret our observations of the students’
‘Investigation to own agenda’
actions at VISTA in terms of progress towards
. For
many of the students, given sufficient time, the movement from unfocused play
and practice to curiosity and then to the understanding of cause and effect was
unmistakable. Some students, such as D, also showed that they could use what
they remembered in a slightly different context suggesting a measure of real con-
ceptual learning, which an education in science always demands.
As to the second aim, we did find sound evidence that learning at VISTA
successfully complemented normal school learning of students with SLD.
However, we believe that it is too early a stage to make any firm recommendations.
It could be said that a trip out of school is always motivating for students and
should be recommended on that score alone. However the pilot studies certainly
suggest that the other conditions we provided, such as freedom of choice, reduced
verbal instruction, and staff ‘taking a back seat’, were at least equally important.
This is another place where evidence from our detailed sequential analysis of the
videos should prove invaluable. Other factors that helped the students seemed to
be the use of sensitive non-verbal scaffolding, and the absence of time limitations.
In the normal settings of science centres all this might well require special provi-
sion such as a separate room and specially trained helpers, which are daunting
requirements in the present educational climate.
We remain convinced that the stimulation of curiosity and self motivated
investigation can make a valuable contribution to education for life, whether for
mainstream students or those with SLD. It may even be of greater importance for
the latter group in view of the other behaviour-related objectives which seemed, at

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952
some points, to conflict with these. Nevertheless the time requirements and the
choice of exhibits may be very different for the two groups.
Acknowledgement
We are happy to acknowledge the support given by the Wellcome Trust for this
research, which is still in progress.
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