THE ROLE OF INFORMAL SCIENCE CENTERS IN SCIENCE EDUCATION: ATTITUDES, SKILLS, AND SELF-EFFICACY

Informal learning relates to actvites that occur outside the school environment. These learning environments, such as visits to science centers provide valuable motvatonal opportunites for students to learn science. The purpose of this study was to investgate the role of the pre-academic center in science educaton and partcularly to explore its efects on 750 middle-school students' attudes toward science, their scientfc thinking skills and self-efcacy. Pre and post-case based questonnaires were designed to assess the students’ higher order thinking skills – inquiry, graphing, and argumentaton. In additon, a fve-point Likert scale questonnaire was used to assess students' attudes and self-efcacy. The research results indicated a positve efect of the pre-academic science center actvites on scientfc thinking skills. A signifcant improvement in the students' inquiry and graphing skills was found, yet non signifcant diferences were found in argumentaton skill. The students signifcantly improved their ability to ask research questons based on reading a scientfc text, and to describe and analyze research results that were presented graphically. While no signifcant diferences were found between girls and boys in the pre-questonnaire, in the post-questonnaire the girls' scores in inquiry skill were signifcantly higher than boys' scores. Increases in students' positve attudes toward science and self-efcacy were found but the results were not statstcally signifcant. However, the program length was found to be an important variable that afects achievement of educatonal goals. A three-dimensionbased framework is suggested to characterize learning environments: organizatonal, psychological, and pedagogical.


INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Students' achievements in the sciences have received ongoing atenton over the past decade as demonstrated by inter natonal large-scale standardized testng eforts (Gonzales, Williams, Jocelyn, Roey, Kastberg, & Brenwald, 2008;OECD, 2014).The decreasing interest in science among youth in both primary and secondary educatonal systems has been widely reported and documented.Many students think science is too hard, uninterestng, and irrelevant (Aschbacher, Ing & Tsai, 2013).As a result the number of young people choosing to study sciences at universites and colleges is dropping.Students' science identtes and goals have been infuenced by their science experiences and expectatons at home and in school (Aschbacher, Li & Roth, 2010).In recent years, eforts have focused on fostering science educaton and many on-going initatves contribute to the renewal of science educaton; nevertheless, they are ofen small-scale (Kearney, 2010).The Michel Rocard Report of 2007 summarizes the obstacles for youth to consider pursuing any career in science: traditonal, deductve educatonal approaches in teaching science are boring and render the scientfc content rather incomprehensible and unatractve.The report concludes that this is even more the case in secondary than in primary educaton, due to pressures of the school curriculum.Since career opportunites are seriously considered in the later stages of secondary school, the current state of afairs is extremely worrisome.One of the main recommendatons of the report is that novel teaching methods and especially inquiry-based educatonal approaches are called for.
Several studies have investgated students' attudes toward science in order to overcome obstructons in learning science and technology.A number of variables have been examined: instructonal design, gender, selfefcacy, interest, and achievements (Abrahams, 2009;Jarvis & Pell, 2005;Raghavan, Sartoris & Glaser, 1998;Selçuk, Şahin & Açıkgöz, 2011;Snir & Smith, 1995;Trumper, 2006).Larson, Stephen, Bonitz and Wu (2014) investgated the role of self-reported efort in predictng science achievements.They argue that students are strongly motvated to work hard, and achievement is atributed more to efort than to ability.Krapp and Prenzel (2011) argued that interest is a parallel concept to attude, rather than a subcategory of it.The strongest predictor of students' science, engineering or mathematcs interests in grades 7 to 9 is the queston of confdence as a science learner (Aschbacher et al., 2010).Powerful opportunites that allow students to see what real scientsts do, try their hand at it, and realize that they can do it, are most important as a means to afect students' attudes or interests.Unfortunately, such opportunites are rare among school students therefore; extracurricular opportunites with authentc science actvites outside of school are needed.
One of the academic science centers in Israel dedicated to this goal is the Sidney Warren Science Educaton Center for Youth at Tel-Hai College.The center, as a pre-academic framework, aims at strengthening the potental of school students in order to encourage them to pursue higher educaton, with an emphasis on science and technology studies.The center provides students with hands-on laboratory experience and computerized learning environments not available in their schools (Sasson & Cohen, 2013).The cooperaton with an academic and research insttute creates an opportunity for meetngs with experts as role models in science.The actvites encourage educatonal contnuity in order to promote excellence in science and technology that will naturally encourage students to contnue their educaton, in general, and to specialize in the sciences, in partcular.
The purpose of this study is to investgate the role of the pre-academic center in science educaton and partcularly, to explore its efects on student attudes toward science, their scientfc thinking skills and selfefcacy.The paper presents a method to measure students' thinking skills by science case-studies.This evaluaton method is usually rare in informal learning environments like science centers.The theoretcal background will frst focus on informal learning environments in general and science centers in partcular in order to characterize the main features of the Sidney Warren Science Educaton Center for Youth.Then, a review of the assessment methods that are usually used in science centers will be presented with emphasis on the special variables that are at the focus of this study.As will be shown in the discussion secton the paper calls for re-examinaton of the relevance of the defnitons of formal and informal learning environments.Usually the focus in science centers is on the psychological aspects of learning like interest, attudes and feelings of confdence in learning science.This paper presents a research that combines psychological and pedagogical evaluatons in order to demonstrate more atenton to pedagogical aspects in science center actvites.

Informal Learning Environments and Science Centers
Distnctons are usually made between formal and informal learning, suggestng that learning that occurs in school is diferent from learning out of school, for example, in a museum (Anderson, Thomas & Ellenbogen, 2003;Hofstein & Rosenfeld, 1996).
Informal learning relates to actvites that occur outside the school environment, which have been developed in response to the needs of the school and the demands of the curriculum.These actvites are characterized by the fact that partcipaton is not mandatory and experiences are not assessed using scores as they are in school.Informal learning experiences can be structured to achieve diferent objectves and can infuence attudes or change behavior (Crane, Nicholson & Chen, 1994;Hofstein & Rosenfeld, 1996).Rodari (2009) published a review based on the work of 14 specialists who analyzed hundreds of documents on pedagogical practces concerning informal scientfc educaton.They concluded that in informal contexts, partcipants: enjoy interestng, involving and stmulatng experiences, and are motvated to acquire new knowledge on the phenomena of the physical and natural world; they are able to produce, understand, recall and use explanatons, arguments, models and facts related to science; manipulate, test, explore, predict, observe and give sense to the physical and natural world; refect on science as a way to learn; on its processes, concepts and insttutons; they refect on their own learning process; partcipate in scientfc and practcal learning actvites along with other people, using scientfc terminology and specifc tools; they think of themselves as people learning science and thus build an identty as persons who know, use and sometmes contribute to the producton of scientfc knowledge.
Informal learning ofen involves feld trips.A feld trip is a tour organized by the school for educatonal purposes during which students experience materials and training methods based on observable and direct investgatons (Hofstein & Rosenfeld, 1996;Krepel & Durall, 1981).Learning in a tour is informal learning in that it is less systematc and structured and more fexible.It depends on learners' self-motvaton and is a hand-on experience in real contexts, involving considerable cooperaton and sharing (Cainey, Bowker, Humphrey & Murray, 2012;Cheng & Ho, 2011).
Science museums are insttutons of knowledge, places of collectng, seeing and knowing evidence of science while science centers are more typically concerned with presentng universal abstract laws, principles, and phenomena (MacDonald, 1998).Koster (1999) suggested seven atributes for science centers of which four refer to the instructonal design of the science actvites: • a mission centering on integrated interpretatons of science-technology-society (STS) issues; • a dedicaton to providing access and outreach to visitors and users of all ages, learning styles, and backgrounds; • a unifying theme that helps to create context and connectons for visitors; 4) adopton of available multmedia to create engaging experiences.
The literature indicates some classifcatons of science centers.Janousek (2000) classifed museums and science centers into two types: • traditonal and object-oriented.Collectons and exhibitons are based on artfacts with no presentaton of a broader context; • focus on elucidatng the natural order of the universe and exhibits are interactve.Wellington (1998) describes two types of exhibits usually found at the science centers: experiental exhibits that allow the visitor to experience and interact with science phenomena; and the pedagogical exhibit that sets out to teach something.Pedret (2002) defnes a third category -critcal exhibitons that focus on the processes of science, the nature of science, and science and technology in its sociocultural context.
The pre-academic science center, the Sidney Warren Science Educaton Center for Youth, creates media for communicatng science to the public with the focus on school groups.The center ofers feld visits in advanced labs, providing special equipment and materials in several science topics: biotechnology, nutriton and food technologies, chemistry, physics, environmental science, mathematcs, and computer science.One of the main goals is creatng a strong foundaton for close collaboratons between academic experts, researchers, and school systems as a means of building a self-image among young students as science learners or as being able to make science.Based on Wellington's (1998) and Pedret's (2002) classifcaton, actvites are focused on pedagogical and critcal aspects.Scientfc programs involve children from kindergarten to 12th grade, and are based on three major educatonal approaches that cut across all the programs: • the constructvist approach which views learning as an actve process that constructs meanings in the learners' minds.Learning environments that are based on this approach have been found partcularly benefcial to students by enhancing their learning processes (Rivet & Krajcik, 2004;Rosenfeld & Rosenfeld, 2006;Dori & Sasson, 2008;Von Glasersfeld, 1991); • the inquiry-based approach which encourages cooperatve learning through which the student gains experience with formulatng questons, constructng a set of experiments, gathering data and drawing conclusions.Research indicates that this method fosters students' ability to think in diverse ways, to develop creatvity and independence in learning, to awaken curiosity and wonder, to develop generally positve attudes towards learning and to improve scholastc achievements (Haury, 1993;Kühne, 1995;Shulman & Tamir, 1973); and • the Enrichment Triad Model (Renzulli, 1979;Renzulli & Reis, 2000) which is based on three stages: exposure, deepening knowledge and skills, and research.

Assessment of the Learning Processes in the Science Centers
Informal learning environments, such as visits to science centers provide valuable motvatonal opportunites for students to learn science.These environments can have an impact on learning while addressing aspects of science educaton that might be missing in more formal, class-based science learning environments.Enrichment actvites in science centers are perceived as an opportunity to increase students' interest in learning but the queston of cognitve value is unclear.Studies have reported a range of gains in cognitve learning and positve science-related attudes as outcomes of visits to science centers, but the fndings for cognitve and afectve changes are not always consistent Jarvis and Pell (2002) asserted that "it might be questoned whether such short experiences have value".They found that "only relatvely few children develop a greater enthusiasm for science and for being scientsts" (p.981).Bozdoğan and Yalçın (2009), on the other hand, reported an increase in interest in science and an improvement in academic achievement afer a visit to a science exhibiton center in Turkey.According to Anderson, Lucas, Ginns and Dierking (2000) and Jarvis and Pell (2005), meaningful learning processes during out-of-school experiences are infuenced by pre-visit, in-visit, and post-visit actvites.Falk and Dierking (1992) suggested that the visit experience depends on interacton among three contexts: • the visitors' own personal backgrounds of knowledge, experiences, skills, motvatons, and desires, • the social interactons during the visit, and • the physical environment created by the center surroundings.
Price and Hein (1991) defned educatonally efectve programs as those "in which products are not emphasized, inquiry is sparked, open-ended questons are generated, and students actvely partcipate and appear involved" (p.510).
Falk, Scot, Dierking, Rennie and Cohen ( 2004) call for studies that examine learning as shifs in attudes, values, beliefs, understandings and skills.As such, the purpose of this study is to investgate the efect of the pre-academic science center on students' attudes toward science, their scientfc thinking skills and selfefcacy.

RESEARCH SETTINGS
Attudes toward science, self-efcacy, and scientfc thinking skills were assessed among 750 middle-school students who partcipated in the science center actvites during 2012-2013.Two main programs were selected for this investgaton in which science inquiry was emphasized in the instructonal design.About 600 students partcipated in the "Science Research Program" that focuses on developing science thinking skills by research experience.The students gain experience in scientfc research and prepare a science poster as a fnal learning product.The program follows the research process; beginning with exposure to a science phenomenon, formulaton of questons, experiment planning, data collecton, presentaton of results and drawing of conclusions.Students work in small groups during the research process.Each group receives about 50 academic hours per year.All science topics are new for the students but stll related to the school science curriculum.The students' science teachers from their schools also partcipate in the actvites at the college in order to generate the appropriate connectons to the school curriculum.
About 150 students partcipated in the "Preparaton for Academia Program" which includes an inital introductory period in mathematcs and science and then the partcipants are encouraged to take part in regular college classes and gain academic credits or to conduct a high-level science project as part of their school matriculaton exams (based on Ministry of Educaton approval).Each group receives about 120 academic hours per year.Most of the students in both of the programs are talented students who learn special science classes in their schools in.

Science Thinking Skills Assessment
Based on Dori and Sasson (2008) and Sasson andDori (2006, 2011), pre-and post case-based questonnaires were designed to assess the students' higher order-thinking skills.
A case study is a learning tool presented in a narratve way that deals with real situatons.The use of case studies features several themes: cases as a tool for professional preparaton and development, cases for facilitatng critcal thinking and exploring dilemmas, and cases as an assessment tool (Dori, 2003;Dori & Herscovitz, 1999, 2005;Dori & Sasson, 2008;Sasson & Dori, 2011;Tal & Hochberg, 2003;Tobin, Kahle, & Fraser, 1990).Pre and post case-based questonnaires were designed to assess three thinking skills: inquiry, graphing, and argumentaton.The questonnaires included a variety of assignments for assessing these thinking skills.
In the inquiry assignment, students were asked to formulate a research queston, based on the scientfc text they received, and to defne its variables (dependent and independent).In the graphic assignment they were asked to describe the graphs and to analyze data and reach logical conclusions.The argumentaton assignment tested students' ability to present a scientfc claim based on relevant explanatons and examples.
For each assignment, an assessment rubric was conducted and validated by fve experts in science educaton achieving 90% inter-rater reliability.
Table 1 presents an example of one of the rubrics that was used to assess students' ability to formulate a research queston, based on the scientfc text, and to defne its variables.

Score Criteria 0
No answer, inquiry queston is not relevant or not presentng the right structureefect of variable A on B 1 The inquiry queston is relevant to the scientfc text and presents the right structureefect of variable A on B or the queston presents an innovatve aspect that wasn't presented directly by the scientfc text 2 The inquiry queston is relevant to the scientfc text and presents the right structureefect of variable A on B and the queston presents an innovatve aspect that wasn't presented directly by the scientfc text Table 1.Rubric for assessing students' inquiry skill Students were asked to fll out the case-based questonnaire twice, at the beginning of the program and at the end.Table 2
Students were asked to fll out the questonnaire twice, at the beginning of the program and at the end.

FINDINGS
Based on the rubrics that were developed students' responses to the pre-and post case-based questonnaires were assessed and the scores were calculated for each thinking skill.The results indicate a signifcant improvement in the students' inquiry and graphing skills.The students signifcantly improved their ability to ask research questons based on reading a scientfc text, and to describe and analyze research results that are presented graphically.Non-signifcant diferences were found in argumentaton skill.The next step in analyzing the results examined whether there are diferences between sub-groups in the research populaton in each thinking skill.No signifcant diferences were found between girls and boys in the pre-questonnaire while in the post-questonnaire, the girls' scores in inquiry skill were signifcantly higher than the boys' scores (mean1=1.01,S.D1=0.72,mean2=0.85,S.D2=0.69,t=-2.59,p<0.01).Religious students' scores on the inquiry skill were signifcantly higher than secular students' scores in the pre-questonnaire (mean1=0.85, S.D1=0.78, mean2=0.62, S.D2=0.68, t=-2.42, p<0.001).However, in the post-questonnaire, nonsignifcant diferences were found in this thinking skill, but an advantage in the graphing skill was found in favor of the secular student ' scores (mean1=1.22, S.D1=0.65, mean2=0.90, S.D2=0.45, t=5.83, p=0.000).The next examinaton focused on a comparison between the pre-questonnaire scores of the 7th grade students who partcipated in the science center programs for the frst tme and the 8th and 9th grade students who had partcipated in the programs during the previous academic year as well.Results are presented in Table 5 Students' attudes toward science and self-efcacy were investgated for both students in the "Science Research Program" and the "Preparaton for Academia Program".An increase in students' mean scores was found but the results were not statstcally signifcant as presented in Table 6 The next step in analyzing the results examined whether there are diferences between sub-groups in the research populaton in respect to attudes toward science and self-efcacy.Non-signifcant diferences were found between boys and girls, secular and religious students and senior-experianced and new students in the pre-and the post-questonnaires.A comparison was made between the two programs.The results are presented in Table 7 The results indicate a signifcant advantage in attudes and self-efcacy scores in favor of the students who partcipated in the "Preparaton for Academia Program" in contrast to students who partcipated in the "Science Research Program".

DISCUSSION
The purpose of this paper was to investgate the learning process of the Sidney Warren Science Educaton Center for Youth as a pre-academic science center.The specifc goals were to examine efects on students' attudes toward science, their scientfc thinking skills and self-efcacy.To reach these goals, pre-and post-casebased questonnaires and pre-and post-attudes and self-efcacy questonnaires were used among 750 middleschool students.
The students' scores in all thinking skills were relatvely low in the pre-questonnaire and were average in the post-questonnaire.The research results indicated a positve efect of the academic science center actvites on scientfc thinking skills.A signifcant improvement in the students' inquiry and graphing skills was found.The students signifcantly improved their ability to ask research questons based on reading scientfc texts, and to describe and analyze research results that were presented graphically.Actvity design in the Sidney Warren Science Educaton Center for Youth is based on the inquiry-based approach; therefore, this explicit instructon method encourages cooperatve learning through which the student gains experience in formulatng questons, constructng a set of experiments, gathering data and drawing conclusions.Yet, non-signifcant diferences were found in argumentaton skill.Explicit instructon for developing argumentaton skill has not been used although students were asked to design a science poster as a fnal product of the learning process.We can assume that special interventon was needed in order to develop this skill as presented in earlier studies (Simon, Johnson, Cavellt & Parsons, 2011;Schworm & Renkl, 2007;Yoon, Elinich, Wang, Steinmeier & Van Schooneveld, 2012;Zohar & Nemet, 2002).When students are assisted in becoming aware of their own learning processes (metacogniton), they gain much richer understandings of the content of their learning (Thomas & McRobbie, 2001).Instructonal design that is focused on providing awareness of science learning processes will help students to develop richer cognitve understandings of the science topics that are presented in science centers and help them in becoming more empowered life long learners.
The Natonal Science Educaton Standards describes inquiry as a "set of interrelated processes by which scientsts and students pose questons about the natural world and investgate phenomena; in doing so, students acquire knowledge and develop a rich understanding of concepts, principles, models, and theories" (Natonal Research Council, 1996, 214).Educatonal eforts intended to enhance science educaton and engaging students in scientfc inquiries at all grade levels is a critcal component of supportng their understanding of the practces and nature of science (Duschl, Schweingruber & Shouse, 2007).Nevertheless, classroom inquiry remains a rare event (Abrams, Southerland & Evans, 2008).Research results strengthen early fndings that informal learning environments can play a signifcant role in promotng science educaton and partcularly in the implementaton of inquiry-based methods (Marty et al., 2013;Yoon et al., 2012).
While no signifcant diferences were found between girls and boys in the pre-questonnaire, in the postquestonnaire the girls' scores in inquiry skill were signifcantly higher than boys' scores.Science skills and factors relatng to learning experiences have been associated with gender diferences (Linn & Pulos, 1983).Girls' experiences in science and math difer from those of boys, causing a low level of confdence among girls (Linn, 1980a(Linn, , 1980b)).Curriculum and teaching methods afect girls' interest in science (Häussler & Hofmann, 2002;Jones & Young, 1995;Jarvis & Pell, 2005;Kelly, 1987).Positve attudes afect achievement in science, especially for girls (Häussler & Hofmann, 2002;Osborne, Simon & Collins, 2003).Lorenzo, Crouch and Mazur (2006) suggested eight strategies to narrow the gender gap in class.These strategies include: • creatng an interactve environment that enhances cooperaton among the students; • alternatng between group discussion and structured teaching-females perform beter when they are able to artculate their thoughts verbally, and males perform beter when their learning experience is structured; and • engaging in actvites that decrease compettveness.
Based on the results of this research, we can assume that the inquiry-based method might narrow the gaps between boys and girls and even enable an advantage for girls.This assumpton is in line with Hofmann (2002) who found that girls are more interested in natural phenomena and practcal applicatons of theoretcal concepts.
Hands-on science centers ofer an opportunity to develop students' attudes to science, stmulatng curiosity, inventveness, and respect for evidence (Braund, 2004).In this research, students' attudes toward science and self-efcacy were investgated for both students in the "Science Research Program" and the "Preparaton for Academia Program".The students' results were relatvely positve both in the pre-and the post-questonnaires.An increase in students' mean scores was found but the results were not statstcally signifcant.However, the results indicate a signifcant advantage in attudes and self-efcacy scores in favor of the students who partcipated in the "Preparaton for Academia Program" versus students who partcipated in the "Science Research Program".The two programs are based on the same pedagogical principles but the main diference is in their lengths.The program "Preparaton for Academia Program" is longer (120 academic hours instead of 50).We can assume that the program length is an important variable that efects achievement of educatonal goals.
The students who partcipated in these programs were talented and study in special science classes in their schools.This might have contributed to their relatvely positve inital attudes toward science and self-efcacy and thus their relatve improvement in these variables was low.
The concepts of formal and informal learning have been dealt with extensively in the l iterature (Anderson et al., 2003;Crane et al., 1994;Hofstein & Rosenfeld, 1996;Jarvis, 2004;La Belle;1982;Rennie & Mclaferty, 1995;Rodari, 2009).Falk (2001) introduced the framework of free choice learning to replace the concepts informal and non-formal learning.The idea of free choice emphasizes the unique nature of out-of-school environments that allow the learner to identfy several learning optons.Mocker and Spear (1982) claimed that the degree of formality is the extent to which a learner has control over both the objectves and the means of learning.According to their model, in formal learning, insttutons have control over both objectves and means.In nonformal learning, the learner controls the objectves, but the insttuton controls the means.In informal learning, the insttuton controls the objectves, but the learner controls the means; while in self-directed learning, the learner controls both objectves and means.
Re-examinaton of the relevance of the defnitons of formal and informal learning environments is required.Free-choice learning may occur in all educatonal modes; the formal, and the informal.Dohn (201 0) distnguishes between the psychological level and the organizatonal level of formality and claims that there are signifcant elements of formal learning in informal situatons and elements of informality in formal situatons.
Another category is required forming a three-dimension-based framework to characterize learning environments: organizatonal, psychological, and pedagogical.Informal learning environments are characterized by independence of the educatonal system; therefore they usually have diferent organizatonal modes.With reference to the organizatonal mode of educaton science centers and museums may be described as informal learning environments providing learning actvites outside the school.Reference to the psychological and pedagogical aspects in the informal learning environment may be similar to those in the formal environment.
Each learning environment should be characterized by the main atributes based on these three dimensions.This theoretcal framework will contribute to natural relatons between learning situatons.Experiences in informal setngs, like museums and science centers, have the potental to produce knowledge and understanding if visitors are able to draw connectons with their own prior knowledge and are able to see connectons with life experiences, in the classroom or in any other experiental aspect of life.This is in line with Hofstein and Rosenfeld (1996) who have importantly recommended that "future research in science educaton should focus on how to efectvely blend informal and formal learning experiences in order to signifcantly enhance the learning of science" (p.107).
More atenton to pedagogical aspects in science center actvites is needed.Usually the focus is on the psychological aspects like interest, attudes and feelings of confdence in learning science.Bradburne (1998) critques that science centers which focus their actvites on displays about science and scientfc principles, manifest three major weaknesses: • they misrepresent the nature of scientfc research; • they focus on principles and phenomena rather than processes; and • they show science out of context rather than as experienced by visitors.
Science center must move from a focus on artfacts to an emphasis on educaton, from didactcs to empowering the implementaton of pedagogical principles.
This paper has presented an investgaton of two dimensions-the psychological and the pedagogical facets of the Sidney Warren Science Educaton Center for Youth at Tel-Hai College.The research sufers from some limitatons.Only quanttatve research tools were used.It is important to combine qualitatve tools like interviews to get a beter understanding of students' perceptons about learning processes.In additon, it would be interestng to compare students' perceptons of science learning in school to learning in the science center.Despite its limitatons, this research has made several contributons.The research contributes to both the theoretcal and the practcal facets of the educatonal system.The study is likely to provide deeper understanding of the nature of student achievements in the feld of science.In educatonal theory, a contributon is expected to the general body of knowledge dealing with evaluaton in educaton and, more specifcally, in researching the relatonship between opportunites for learning and results.The artcle emphasizes by an example of a deep investgaton the importance of understanding diferent design features in the learning environments that afect pedagogical and psychological aspects of learning.With regard to practce, it provides a broad understanding of supplemental science programs and their contributon toward advancing the science achievements of students.In additon, analysis of successful cases enables deeper understanding of the important characteristcs for efcient implementaton of pedagogical resources necessary to bring about the desired results in learning.These characteristcs will become the basis for formulatng a model to guide the successful operaton of science programs for efectve cooperaton between formal and informal learning environments based on shared educatonal goals.

th grade 8 th grade 9 th grade Secular Religious Pre
presents students details.

Table 2 .
Students' details-Science thinking skills

Table 4 .
Table 4 represents students' scores in the thinking skills that were assessed.Students' thinking skills results -pre vs. post