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A study of children's behaviour in family groups in the Graham Amazon Gallery, Vancouver Public Aquarium

University of British Columbia

Purpose: This study was undertaken in order to document children's behaviour in family groups as they toured different exhibit sections of the Graham Amazon Gallery at the Vancouver Public Aquarium. Methods: This was a naturalistic study, based upon non-intrusive observation of child behaviours in family groups. Two methods of data collection were used. These were: 1) Time interval observations of designated study children as they toured the Gallery with their attending adults; 2) Semantic differential administered to adults to assess the perceived "information load" of different exhibit sections of the Gallery. Findings: 1) That adults perceived that different exhibit sections had different "Information loads." Exhibits that were similar to terria were perceived to be different from exhibits similar to a walk through conservatory. 2) That children showed more behaviours in exhibit sections with low "information loads." 3) That children showed greater variety of behaviours in exhibit sections with low "Information loads." 4) That female children interacted with adults more often than male children in exhibit sections with low "Information load." 5) That male children interacted with adults more often than female children in exhibit sections with high "information load."

Text

2010-07-14

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/26456

Science Education

University of British Columbia

Graduate