The Opinions of Primary School Teachers Regarding to the Use of Museums in Science Courses

Abstract

Museums provide the opportunity to handle real objects, solve problems, and interact with others. And also they are perfect places to ask our own questions, and try to discover the answer. So in many courses, teachers use museums as a learning environment for teaching the subject matter. The purpose of this research is to determine the opinions of primary school teachers about using museums in science courses. In the current research, the qualitative research method and semi-structured interview technique was used. Participants of the study were identified through intense case sampling. The participants of this research were primary school teachers who enrolled in the master program of The Graduate School of Afyon Kocatepe University. The data were collected through audio-taped semi-structured interviews. A semi-structured interview schedule was developed by the researcher. The credibility of this study was enhanced by expert review. The semi-structured interview schedule was sent to experts for review. The trustworthiness of this study was established by the formula proposed by Miles and Huberman. The data of this research are analyzing through content analysis technique. Findings were supported with direct quotes of participants’ opinions.