Novelty and It's Relation to Field Trips

Abstract

Go my sons [and daughters], Bum your books Buy yourselves stout shoes Get away to mountains, deserts And deepest recesses of earth In this way and no other Will you gain true knowledge of things And their properties! Why there such an emphasis on alternative methods of teaching and learning in 1990's? Is this something new? The above quote from 1500's highlights timeless need for novel and innovative forms of learning, forms that schools consistently fail to utilize and take advantage of. This article explores theory of novelty and how it relates to knowledge acquisition, attitudes and field trips. The first section will consider theoretical perspectives of novelty and how it relates to field trips and other novel sources (planetariums, museums, star labs) which I refer to as novel instructional resources (NIRs) in this article. The second section will look at how facilitator at a novel instructional resource vitally important and, in light of this, third section explores why star labs in particular, and novel resources in general are not as effective as they could be. I. Theoretical Perspectives of Novelty The capacity to identify, adjust, and/or avoid possible dangerous situations in our environment helps assure survival (Tiitinen, May, Reinikainen, Naatanen, 1994). Novel situations provide a particularly unique set of circumstances that must be appraised. To gauge degree of novelty, an individual will compare a situation that is generated from an unusual event against a background of sequential experience. (Comerford & Witryol, 1993, p. 163). This means that individuals respond in various ways to various novelty, depending on repertoire of responses available as determined by past responses in similar situations. For example, one student who attends a natural history museum may react negatively because that where his divorced parent took him on their last outing. Another student, on other hand, may react positively to natural history field trip as she remembers a positive family outing there. With respect to novelty and cognitive development, Alberti and Witryol (1994) hypothesized that there would be a positive correlation between curiosity motivation (novelty) and cognitive functioning. Much of this hypothesis was grounded on earlier research by Berlyne (1960) who claimed that curiosity would strengthen individual's teaming by exposing individuals to a wider variety of experiences in which teaming can take place. In a novel or curious situation, a learner desirous to minimize or reduce amount of uncertainty thereby increasing motivation to learn (see also novelty space - this article, Orion, 1993; Orion & Hofstein, 1991a). As defined by Alberti and Witryol (1994), novelty the presence of new, unfamiliar, or relatively rare stimuli against background of familiar events in child's perceptual history. (p. 129). The person's response to try and make novel familiar forms back ground for cognitive development in an individual. Alberti and Witryol (1994) found that novelty producing motivation to learn independent of cognitive ability, thus having direct ramifications for field trips as a valuable resource for all students. This should be coupled with studies that show that boys and girls both show no significant gender differences in increases of positive attitudes as a result of a field trip (Orion & Hofstein, 1991b). They also found further support of influence of novelty on cognitive growth. Preference for novelty an important aspect of curiosity motivation that brings organism into contact with new information that forms elements of cognitive development, contributing to competence and general adaptiveness. …

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