Home >
The Value of Field Trips
Field trips are a key component of school instruction. They are not an add-on, not something that can be eliminated or reduced without serious consequences for student academic achievement.
The value of field trips includes:
- museums, zoos, aquaria, science centers, and natural areas offer resources that are simply not available in the classroom, including hands-on experiences, real artifacts, original sources, and more up-to-date information than textbooks
- well-designed field trips result in higher student academic performance in all subject areas
- students are motivated for classroom learning by real world application of what they are learning
- low-income and English language learner students make connections between community resources and opportunities, and their family and culture, leading to higher involvement in the classroom
- the civic engagement mission of schools is met when students use their learning to benefit their community through service learning projects, and to practice the skills of citizenship
- experiences match the variety of learning styles and intelligences, allowing all students to succeed
The professional staff at many field trip destinations have a level of training equal to classroom teachers, but specialize in creating highly effective informal learning experiences. State and national professional organizations and conferences work to enhance nonformal programs to more effectively meet school objectives.
Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning (EIC) research documents enhanced academic performance, and improved discipline, attendance, thinking skills, and interpersonal abilities resulting from use of the community and natural environment as a focus for learning in all subject areas.
Research on the benefits of field trips to informal learning environments such as museums and science centers demonstrates a positive effect on student’s scientific thinking abilities, documented in Gerber, 2001, and many others.
[The above information in a pdf document.]
Research
CCSD Attitudes, Perceptions, Barriers and Desires for Field Trip Experiences, 2006
Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for learning (EIC), State Education and Environment Roundtable (SEER), summary
Relationships among informal learning environments,
teaching procedures and scientific reasoning ability, Gerber, Brian L.; Cavallo, Anne M. L.; Marek, Edmund A. [this is an ERIC reference; the article from the International Journal of Science Education is available for purchase online but not for free]
School Trips as Learning Experience, Jennifer DeWitt
The Value of Field Trips to Washoe CSD Schools
Place Based Education: Connecting Classrooms & Communities, David Sobel
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv
