SOCIOLOGY

of EDUCATION
An A-to-Z Guide
Volume 1

James Ainsworth, editor

Georgia State University
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284 Field Trips
Feminist researchers seek to utilize methodologies
that are participatory in nature, incorporate involve-
ment in research, and can lead to potential action.
Critiques and Implications for Disciplines
Employing feminist research methods is not without
faults. Critics of this methodology believe that the
interpersonal relationships and qualitative analyses
that are the cornerstone of feminist values can lead to
multiple interpretations of data, where not one single
truth can be proven statistically significant. However,
this is not the goal of feminist researchers. Value is
placed on the context in which the data are collected
and how this context affects the experiences of its
participants. Overall, a feminist research methodol-
ogy is defined by its rejection of neutrality in favor of
engaged research that uses a multiplicity of methods
to capture the lived experiences of social groups that
have been omitted from traditional research.
Janelle M. Silva
University of Washington, Bothell
See Also: Ethnography; Feminist Critiques of
Educational Practices; Feminist Critiques of Educational
Research; Qualitative Research on Education.
Further Readings
Harding, Sandra. The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader:
Intellectual and Political Controversies. New York:
Routledge, 2004.
Lather, Patti. Critical Frames in Educational Research:
Feminist and Post-Structural Perspectives. Theory Into
Practice, v.31 (1992).
Naples, Nancy. Feminism and Method: Ethnography,
Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research. New York:
Routledge, 2003.
Worell, Judith. Opening Doors to Feminist Research.
Psychology of Women Quarterly, v.20 (1996).
Field Trips
Field trips are quintessential educational experi-
ences. Though there is no explicit conceptualization
of field trips in the literature, they can be broadly
defined as educational experiences that involve leav-
ing the classroom to engage in activities related to
learning. Also known as instructional trips, field
trips include traditional visits to institutions like
museums or parks away from school grounds, vir-
tual trips that connect students to people and places
through digital media, and nontraditional excur-
sions to noninstitutional sites that may be close to or
part of school grounds. The purposes of field trips
most often include familiarization with and appre-
ciation for students communities, as well as the con-
struction of new knowledge. Activities during these
trips may be structured or unstructured, hands-on
or experience-based. The theoretical foundations of
field trips can be traced back to John Deweys argu-
ment that education is derived from experiences.
Because not all experiences are necessarily educa-
tive, a primary analytic focus of field trip research is
to examine an experience in relation to its cognitive
learning outcomes. The relationship of enjoyment
to field trip learning and the connection to affective
experiences with students memories are also inter-
twined with attempts to articulate the nature of edu-
cative field trip experiences.
Current research also frames field trips as processes
through which to probe constructivist theories of
learning. How activities are understood, resisted, con-
tested, and reconstructed by students in museums,
for example, helps explain the process by which stu-
dents make sense of the surroundings in which they
are immersed. Constructivists have highlighted how
field trips can change students perspectives of top-
ics and challenge previous learning; for example, tour
guides may reveal the relationship of colonial powers
and indigenous nations on a visit to a historic early
American fort. Students also tend to be organized into
small groups while on field trips in ways that highlight
the dynamics of collaborative learning. Researchers
grounding their work in critical theory point to the
ways in which field trips may serve as a mechanism
through which state standards and official knowl-
edge are diffused and/or contested. Particularly in the
United States, there is a strong trend for many tradi-
tional field trip sites to explicitly link their exhibits to
and design activities around standardized curriculum
and testing.
As schools become increasingly anachronistic in
their preparation of students for high-stakes stan-
dardized exams, nonschool institutions like museums
often have wider opportunities to engage students in
hands-on and experiential learning. That the novelty
of these visits is so different from everyday school

life, however, can be both distracting and absorbing.
Improved planning and communication of expecta-
tions between teachers and on-site staff are impera-
tive ways to enhance traditional field trip site visits,
yet is often inconsistent or incomplete. Funding cuts
both to schools and to cultural institutions represent
a significant challenge for educators.
Virtual field trips represent a wide variety of plat-
forms, including video conference calls, online inter-
active learning modules, and live broadcasts from a
site location. Frequently, institutions that offer real
world field trips design and support these services.
Virtual field trip formats can help alleviate financial
concerns, allowing students to visit faraway places
and people. These opportunities, however, depend
on districts with the appropriate technologies and
teachers who know how to use those resources. Some
research finds these visits should not supplant tradi-
tional, real world field trips and work better as supple-
mentary resources for students.
Local neighborhood visits or innovative use of the
schools facilities take little time to reach and little
money to visit. Greater accessibility permits mul-
tiple visits, which can allow students to better know
a place and to mitigate any distractions instigated
by traditional trips novelty. Few prepared curricu-
lum materials and no teacher support staff, how-
ever, may discourage some educators from using
the local community as a field trip site. These types
of trips are often classifiable as place-based educa-
tion, a growing movement that advocates learn-
ing experiences reconnecting students with nature.
Place-based curriculum tends to be designed around
engaging students in solving real world (or local)
problems and utilizes field work to gather informa-
tion in local settings.
While the corpus of empirical research focusing on
the effects of field trips is slim, there are promising
findings that field trip learning yields cognitive and
effective benefits. Investigation of specific conditions
that stimulate situational interest in particular con-
texts is almost absent. Studies investigating the impact
of field trips are also fairly methodologically limited
to pre- and post-assessments, though discourse anal-
yses, participant interviews, and longitudinal studies
are beginning to enrich the literature. There is very
little work investigating the training of educators to
facilitate meaningful field trips. And though these
issues have been noticeably absent from past work,
researchers are beginning to pay attention to the ways
Finland 285
in which culture, social class, race, and ability level
affect students experiences of field trips.
Sarah A. Robert
State University of New York, University at Buffalo
Katy Swalwell
George Mason University
See Also: Constructivism; Curriculum Standardization;
Dewey, John; Informal Fundraising in Schools; Museums;
Resource Allocation in Schools; Sociocultural Approaches
to Learning and Development.
Further Readings
Cassady, J. C., A. Kozlowski, and M. A. Komman.
Electronic Field Trips as Interactive Learning Events:
Promoting Student Learning at a Distance. Journal of
Interactive Learning Research, v.19/3 (2008).
Davidson, S. K., C. Passmore, and D. Anderson. Learning
on Zoo Field Trips: The Interaction of the Agendas and
Practices of Students, Teachers, and Zoo Educators.
Science Education, v.94/1 (2009).
Eschach, H. Bridging In-School and Out-of-School
Learning: Formal, Non-Formal, and Informal
Education. Journal of Science Education and
Technology, v.16/2 (2007).
Munday, Penny. Teacher Perceptions of the Role
and Value of Excursions in Years 710 Geography
Education in Victoria, Australia. International Research
in Geographical and Environmental Education, v.17/2
(2008).
Power, S., C. Taylor, G. Rees, and K. Jones. Out-of-School
Learning: Variations in Provision and Participation
in Secondary Schools. Research Papers in Education,
v.24/4 (2009).
Trofanenko, B. The Educational Promise of Public
History Museum Exhibits. Theory and Research in
Social Education, v.38/2 (Spring 2010).
Finland
The Republic of Finland is a Nordic country in northern
Europe, with an area of 130,596 square miles (338,424
square kilometers), bordering Sweden, Norway, and
Russia. Numbering 5.4 million, Finlands residents live
mostly in the southwest portion of the country, near
the capital city of Helsinki. The national languages of