Promoting scientific knowledge is an essential social task in order to solve current and future problems in the natural sciences and engineering. Outreach initiatives like out-of-school laboratories or science centers may play an important role in fulfilling this task as they aim at fostering students’ interest in STEM fields. These innovative settings offer opportunities to discover scientific and technical fields of activities and professions (Gumaelius et al., 2016; Jeffers, Safferman, & Safferman, 2004). From a compilation of various nations around the world (Freeman, Marginson & Tytler, 2015), it becomes clear that worldwide the attitudes and the interest of students are considered important factors regarding STEM education. Studies by Ryan, Connell, and Plant (1990) suggest a positive relationship between interest in a learning subject and success in nondirected learning. Fulmer and Frijters (2012) confirmed that higher topic interest can buffer some of the hindering influences of learning and can lead to more persistence in working on tasks. Consequently, interest can be considered a critical factor in evaluating such learning opportunities and the achieved educational success.

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the current state of research on the effectiveness of these extracurricular places of learning with regard to the promotion of student interest. This study includes various out-of-school learning environments with an inquiry component that are suitable for visitation by school students. These environments include, for example, science labs and science centers, museums, zoos, but also mobile exhibitions. For the definition of interest, Hidi and Renninger's Four-Phase Model of interest development (Hidi & Renninger, 2006) as well as the self-determination theory of Deci and Ryan (1985) are incorporated.

To date, there is no uniform research about the association between out-of-school learning environments with an inquiry component and student interest. Several years ago, Guderian and Priemer (2008) published a review on research conducted in Germany at that time and recently Rehfeldt et al. (2020) published a review on out-of-school laboratories and their effects in teacher education, yet there is no review that summarizes international research on extracurricular inquiry-based learning environments and their impact on student interest. Therefore, the aim of this systematic review is to present an overview of the current state of research on the effects of such learning environment on student interest. In addition, we determine essential criteria that providers of such educational settings can use to promote the various forms of interest and thus increase the quality of their educational environments.

This systematic review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff, & Altman, 2009). Literature was searched using the entire publication period of the databases ERIC, Scopus, Web of Science, EBSCOhost and Google Scholar. The search equation was a combination of different expressions for “out-of-school laboratory”, different phrases for the learning context and keywords for interest. After elimination of duplicates, two rounds of eligibility screening were performed using the titles and abstracts of more than 1200 identified articles. To guarantee the independence of the literature review, the articles found were independently reviewed and evaluated twice. If an analysis of the title and abstract did not allow a clear assignment and in cases where the two reviewers did not agree, the entire document was read. As the inter-rater reliability was over 98%, it can be assumed that the results are independent of the two reviewers. Following this, the remaining 68 contributions were read in full and checked for their suitability in terms of content. The essential characteristics of the remaining documents were recorded in a database, which enabled further analysis and categorization to systematically present the state of research.

Based on a comprehensive, systematic international literature research, general statements on situational and individual interest promotion as well as a variety of supporting and hindering influencing factors are highlighted. The influencing factors refer on the one hand to student-specific characteristics such as gender, age or previous experience and on the other hand to the variables of the learning environment such as the forms of instruction. As there seems to be a growing number of such learning environments it is important to analyze their effects. The results indicate, that there are some useful criteria, that informal learning environments could apply to promote the various forms of interest and thus improve educational programs.

–Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior. New York: Plenum Press. –Freeman, B., Marginson, S., & Tytler, R. (2015). The Age of STEM. Educational policy and practice across the world in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. New York: Routledge. –Fulmer, S., & Frijters, J. (2011). Motivation During an Excessively Challenging Reading Task: The Buffering Role of Relative Topic Interest. The Journal of Experimental Education, 79(2), 185-208. –Guderian, P., & Priemer, B. (2008). Interessenförderung durch Schülerlaborbesuche - eine Zusammenfassung der Forschung in Deutschland [Promoting interest through school laboratory visits - a summary of research in Germany]. Physik Und Didaktik in Schule Und Hochschule [Physics And Didactics In School And University]. (2 (7)), 27–36. –Gumaelius, L., Almqvist, M., Árnadóttir, A., Axelsson, A., Conejero, J. A., García-Sabater, J. P., . . . Voss, M. (2016). Outreach initiatives operated by universities for increasing interest in science and technology. European Journal of Engineering Education, 41(6), 589–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2015.1121468 –Hidi, S. & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational psychologist, 41(2), 111-127. –Jeffers, A. T., Safferman, A. G., & Safferman, S. I. (2004). Understanding K–12 engineering outreach programs. Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice, 130(2), 95–108. –Moher, D., Liberati, A., Tetzlaff, J., & Altman, D. G. (2009). Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. Annals of internal medicine. Annals of Internal Medicine, 151(4), 264–269. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000097.g001 –Rehfeldt, D., Klempin, C., Brämer, M., Seibert, D., Rogge, I., Lücke, M., . . . Köster, H. (2020). Empirische Forschung in Lehr- Lern-Labor-Seminaren – Ein Systematic Review zu Wirkungen des Lehrformats [Empirical research in teaching-learning-laboratory seminars – A systematic review on the effects of the teaching format]. Zeitschrift Für Pädagogische Psychologie [Journal For Educational Psychology], 14, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1024/1010-0652/a000270 –Ryan, R. M., Connell, J. P., & Plant, R. W. (1990). Emotions in nondirected text learning. Learning and Individual Differences, 2(1), 1–17.