Opportunities and challenges while conducting field trips to the museum: a narrative review

International Journal of Evaluation and Research in Education (IJERE) Vol. 14, No. 2, April 2025, pp. 871~878 ISSN: 2252-8822, DOI: 10.11591/ijere.v14i2.29297  871 Opportunities and challenges while conducting field trips to the museum: a narrative review Chatterjee Sahani, G. S. Prakasha School of Education, Christ University, Bangalore, India Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: The museum visit field trip engages and motivates the children in various activities. Field trips to the museum provide the students with a constructivist and experiential learning environment as they construct knowledge through observing the artifacts. The present study describes the possible opportunities and challenges for school children while conducting field trips to the museum. The study employed a narrative review technique to address the research question raised. The study selected the literature reviews from 2012-2023, including studies on field trips to the museum for the academic engagement of school children. The data includes 50 peerreviewed journal articles categorized into five categories: students’ overall development, experiential learning opportunities, the museum as a resource, the role of teachers, the school, and museum authority. Results revealed that the museum is a resource for learning and is perfect for improving students’ cognitive and affective development towards the various school subjects and helping them enhance their participatory learning opportunities. However, teachers’ knowledge, infrastructure, parental consent, and legitimization with the school authority are some challenges in conducting museum visit field trips. Future research may focus on conducting empirical studies, which include school-museum collaboration, to enhance the horizon of school and community knowledge. Received Nov 13, 2023 Revised Aug 29, 2024 Accepted Sep 6, 2024 Keywords: Challenges Experiential learning Field trip Museum visit Narrative review Opportunities This is an open access article under the CC BY-SA license. Corresponding Author: Chatterjee Sahani School of Education, Christ University Bangalore 560029, Karnataka, India Email: 1. INTRODUCTION The museum serves as a venue for experiential learning [1]. Exhibits in museum galleries allow children to learn subject content meaningfully through observation [2]. Studies have shown that students become more enthusiastic about learning history after visiting museums [3]. Field trips to museums help students understand geography [4]. Visits to the museum have significantly increased students’ motivation in science subjects [5]. The museum visit creates an experiential learning environment [6]. Additionally, observation of the artifacts displayed in the museum facilitates inquiry-based learning [7]. However, it is crucial to mention that visitors are more attracted if the museum objects are displayed excitingly [8]. Therefore, descriptive labeling of museum objects significantly impacts visitors’ cognitive and emotional experiences [9]. Integrating technology with the museum setting helps to make museum visit experiences more engaging and interactive [10]. Integrating virtual museums into classrooms could facilitate teaching and learning [11]. The study shows that museum visits are also helpful in improving the well-being of people with dementia [12]. A museum is a social venue, so inclusivity in museum settings is essential [13]. Therefore, to make the museum visit inclusive and comfortable for children with disability, museum management needs proper training [14]. Journal homepage: http://ijere.iaescore.com 872  ISSN: 2252-8822 Previous research has described various scopes of museum visits. Despite the vast scope and immense educational importance of the museum visit, an adequate number of studies are needed in India. It has also been found that teachers face many challenges when organizing museum visits for students [15]. Effective collaboration between schools and museums can help teachers overcome these challenges [16]. Therefore, based on the earlier studies, the study aims to identify and describe the possible opportunities and challenges of conducting field trips to museums worldwide. The study addresses the following research question: what are the possible opportunities and challenges in implementing a worldwide field trip to museums for school children? The findings discuss museum visits as a global pedagogical practice in school education. 2. METHOD The study followed a narrative literature review approach [17], [18], synthesizing 50 peer-reviewed journal articles from ProQuest (N=25), Core (N=15), Science.gov (N=8), and Semantic Scholar (N=2). The articles were selected based on the keywords “museum visit” OR “field trip” AND “teachers’ perception,” which were limited to the English language and published between 2012-2023. Only articles with full text availability were chosen. The research question helped the sorting process for identifying the most relevant sources for this study. Most selected articles (N=15) articles describe the role of the teachers in museum visits (7, 9, 11, 15, 20, 22, 26, 30, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45, 49, 50). The other (N=13) studied museum as a resource (1, 2, 6, 10, 14, 16, 17, 23, 28, 31, 32, 44, 46). The overall development of the students was studied in (N=9) articles (5, 12, 21, 24, 27, 33, 36, 43, 47). The category of experiential learning (N=7) was also studied (3, 10, 13, 19, 24, 25, 37) and some articles (N=6) describing the role of school and museum authority (4, 8, 18, 29, 35, 39). Table 1 contains the articles selected for narrative review [19]–[68]. The selected articles as shown in Table 1 were reviewed and monitored thoroughly according to the research question framed. The selected article presents the opportunities and challenges to conduct field trips to museums. Each article was identified, and qualitative data-based content analysis was applied to themed the article into a table [69] as a detailed document analysis was conducted [70]. Through inductive categorization, the opportunities and challenges of museum visits were divided into subcategories, which were named separately [71]. Finally, five categories were framed, and those subcategories were incorporated to give a detailed description of the opportunities and challenges of the field trip to the museum. Table 1. Selected articles for narrative review SN Study 1 [19] 2 [20] 3 [21] 4 [22] 5 [23] 6 [24] 7 [25] 8 [26] 9 [27] 10 [28] SN=serial number SN 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Study [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] SN 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Study [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] SN 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Study [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] SN 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 Study [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] [65] [66] [67] [68] 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The opportunities and challenges of implementing field trips to the m (...truncated)