Investigation of science teachers's views related to the use of museums in science education

The changes made in the field of education have brought a new dimension to the learning activities, and in-class learning environments have gained a broad framework by developing different techniques in education. In this way, informal education environments have come to the fore and education in all areas has been started to be done in these environments. In museums, which is one of the informal environments, education and learning activities have become widespread and visits to science and technical museums have become quite frequent. The main purpose of this research is to find out how science education should be in museums, which is one of the informal environments, and to reveal the views of science teachers on how they experience the museum visits. The study is a qualitative case study. The criterion sampling method has been used to determine the interviews conducted within the scope of this thesis. The study group of the research consists of 20 science teachers who working in Turgutlu district of Manisa province in the spring semester of 2018-2019 academic year who have visited a museum before and who have participated in the study voluntarily. The main criterion determined in this study is to include not only science teachers but science teachers who have visited museums before. Individual interviews have been conducted with the participants. Research data has been collected using a semi-structured interview form. Descriptive analysis method has been used for the analysis of the research data. The researcher has identified the categories, main themes, themes and codes by repeatedly reading the data set that he has created by transcribing the sound recordings. The analysis has been repeated by another faculty member who is expert in the field, and the categories, main themes, themes and codes obtained have been confirmed by comparison. The findings of the study consist of six topics: "views on visits to museums", "views on planning of visits to museums", "views on problems encountered during museum visits", "environment during the museum visit", "views on problems encountered during museum visits" and" evaluation of museum visits". In line with these findings, it has been concluded that museum visits reinforce students' learning, embody objects, make knowledge permanent and provide good socialization. It has been found that the students enjoyed the learning process, were excited and loved the museum environments In addition, it has been observed that the teachers get exhausted during the pre-visit process, experience difficulties during and before the visit, and not all of them go through this process efficiently. It has been shown that the problems experienced may arise from museums, museum officials, teachers, administration or parents. It has been expressed as a result of the study that; museums should become widespread and the education function of museums should come to the forefront, museum officials should be competent and sufficient number, museum environments should be developed in order to create interactive learning environments, museum visits should be organized within the framework of proper planning, teachers should be supported and museum visits should be included in the curriculum. Keywords: Sciences, museum, education in museum.