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Enter accomplished University of Arkansas professor Jay Greene, who has done creative, pioneering research on civic values, school choice, high school graduation rates and even the selection of names for schools. Throughout the past decade, though, Greene has been breaking new ground in tackling a scarcely-studied question—the educational value of field trips. I had the opportunity to chat with Greene about his findings, and what he has to share may surprise you.
Students also appear more inclined to return after visiting the theater or a museum on a field trip. As Greene explains, “In the Crystal Bridges experiment, for example, we tracked coded coupons that we gave to all participating students and observed that students who visited the art museum on a field trip were significantly more likely to return with their family over the following half year.
Healthy skepticism is obviously appropriate here, as with any other set of research claims. These findings could be outliers. They don’t tell us much about the impact of field trips on reading and math scores or high school graduation . On the other hand, as Greene puts it, “The most surprising thing to me is that we are finding any effects at all. The truth is that it's remarkably hard for survey questions to capture the types of benefits that these cultural experiences may produce.
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