ABSTRACT
I first began to direct my attention to collaborative science dialogue in nonschool settings on a visit to the San Diego Zoo some years ago. As I recall, I sat at the hippopotamus exhibit for quite some time. The exhibit contained several very large tanks, which held a family of hippos; their activity was visible both above and below water. Human families stayed there for a very long time, clearly entranced by being able to watch the animals’ behaviors so clearly. They speculated on which hippo was the mother and which the father; they asked each other what hippos eat, how many babies they have, and how much they weigh. I longed for a video recorder in my hand; after all, most of the families had one. I had, of course, noticed similar questioning about animal behavior in classrooms (Ash, 1995; Brown, et al., 1993), but generally those questions were stimulated by secondary sources, such as video, text, pictures, or experts. My current research has grown out of my desire to accurately represent and analyze the actions and meaning-making dialogues created by social groups, such as families, during their visits to informal science learning settings.
