Museum learning

In this paper, we examine the interactional ways that families make meaning from biological exhibits during a visit to an interactive science center. To understand the museum visits from the perspectives of the families, we use ethnographic and discourse analytic methods, including pre-and postvisit interviews, videotaped observations of the museum visits, and coding and analysis of utterances from naturally occurring conversations. We employ an Everyday Expertise framework to understand how families use ideas and materials to make meaning from the scientific content presented in exhibits. We argue that individual and cognitive aspects of learning are fundamentally connected to the social and cultural aspects of learning; therefore, we analyze the intertwining role of individual cognitive resources, situated activities, and cultural toolkit resources that support learning interactions and processes. Findings indicate how families use a variety of knowledge types (epistemic resources) to make sense of exhibit content, how they make sense of biological content by transferring cultural epistemic resources from prior experiences, and how families use two types of scientific epistemic resources-biological facts and perceptual descriptions-as the primary means to make sense of biological exhibits. C 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Sci Ed 94:478 -505, 2010

The museum visit is an important part of elementary school science teaching. However, a divide exists between teachers, who require curricular accountability, and museums, who emphasize free-choice exploration. Can a carefully constructed worksheet bridge this divide by providing free-choice exploration of curricular topics during the museum visit? In the present study, a theoretical framework was constructed to inform the design of worksheets as free-choice learning devices. This framework was used to analyze the design of an existing museum worksheet. Subsequently, curriculum-related conversations among school groups visiting a museum were monitored in groups supplied with the worksheet and in control groups without. Overall, the worksheet complied well with design criteria synthesized from the free-choice learning literature. Furthermore, the use of the worksheet increased the number and diversity of curriculum-related conversations among school groups during the visit. This study documents that the use of carefully designed worksheets may increase students' exposure to curriculum during a museum visit, and thus may help build better bridges between teacher needs and museum free-choice identities.

This study examines the historical conditions that fostered significant reform in science education. To understand these conditions, we employ a framework drawn from the new institutionalism in organization theory to study the founding and early development of the Exploratorium-a prominent science center that greatly impacted the field of science education. We examine how the Exploratorium employed institutional resources that were available in its environment to develop a new type of organization: an interactive science center. Our findings reveal that the Exploratorium was shaped by the state, which includes all levels of government; the mass media; and the professions, including science, education, and museums. In addition, we explore the pivotal role an individual, Frank Oppenheimer, played in leveraging the institutional environment in which an organization was developing. Our findings suggest that (a) reform in science education may be more profoundly advanced by the development of a new type of organization than by "tinkering" with an existing type of organization such as schools, and (b) that interactive science centers should exercise caution in navigating the changing seas of science education by maintaining their core mission and collaborating with new types of organizations that arise in response to the changing environment.

This article presents the outcomes and conclusions of a research work designed to determine and describe good inclusive practices for the development of heritage education in schools through museums in the city of Bologna. To this end, we applied a qualitative methodology through the study of four cases, four museums in the city of Bologna, selected for their good practices in educational programmes for schools. Instruments such as interviews, observation, and documentary analysis were used. The results emphasise a close school-museum relationship, with heritage as an agent that enhances people's identity, a fundamental element in the citizenship development of Bolognese society, and a key aspect for the development of inclusive principles and the care of all people, although improvements in the processes and some limitations in the development of the programmes are perceived. The outcomes highlight the importance of school and museum relations and the development of an inclusive heritage education that advocates a holistic, integrative, and complex approach to heritage, as an essential element in the development of the individual and of society.

There is a dearth of studies on intercultural dynamics in Southwest Asian and North African archaeology, not least since conventional narratives assert that present-day majority Muslim communities in these regions are not interested in the pre-Islamic past. In this paper I argue that, despite seemingly overcoming such positions, collaborative projects may actually exacerbate them through perceiving local communities as deficient, in need of being taught and re-united with “their” heritage. Using data from two current projects in Sudan, I explore actual motivations of local publics to engage with the archaeologically approachable past and the interests they voice vis-à-vis archaeological heritage. I suggest that emphasizing these dimensions effects a shift in how nonarchaeological partners in collaborative projects are conceptualized. This opens new ground for engagement, as changing perceptions impact on interactions and, in consequence, power relations between protagonists.

Museums are complex, dynamic, and empowering learning environments that have great potential for informal and lifelong learning. Museum educators make museums more relevant for visitors. However, the museum’s educational function is a contested arena and the museum educator’s profession is in constant flux. In this article, I review literature spanning 35 years in relation to the contested educational function of museums and argue that as a profession, museum education faces serious practical and theoretical challenges within the organizational structures of museums, leaving museum educators in a precarious position. I ask what conditions and qualities contribute to sustainable and pedagogically successful museum education. I contend that museum education practices need to shift focus and to situate the profession within a broader theoretical context. Discussing the findings through three lenses – looking back, looking at, and looking toward – I propose sustainable museum education practices that require supportive organizational structures and the adoption of museum learning theories, and that encourage empowerment of museum educators as change agents.

In recounting the history of Cherbourg as an Aboriginal settlement, the Ration Shed Museum presents some traumatic narratives. It paints a picture of violent geographic and cultural dislocation, crude living conditions, forced labour and administrative oppression by infusing historical artefacts with the personal recollections of Cherbourg residents. The intent behind the Ration Shed Museum itself, however, is something quite different: its curators want to tell a story that speaks of hope for this community's future, and to work towards some form of reconciliation. They do this by actively engaging with the 'terrible gift' of the past in the present, and by providing spaces for encounters that can lead to open discussions of difficult social issues and celebrations of contemporary Cherbourg life. This article draws on ethnographic interviews and observational data alongside the theoretical work of Roger I. Simon and Andrea Witcomb to describe how the Ration Shed Museum engages its community and visitors in a dual process of both understanding Cherbourg's history and reframing traumatic narratives to enact a pedagogy of hope.

Geometris is a technologically enabled, body-scale, educational game, in which collaborating players recreate target polygons, prompted on a digital screen, by activating a set of sensors-vertices on a large physical mat interface. We report on an evaluation study that draws on theoretical frameworks from ecological dynamics, genetic epistemology, and socio-cultural semiotics. Micro-analysis of three adult-child groups at play implicates two design features supporting mediated development of geometry skills: (1) spatial distribution across two displays-the screen and the mat-poses cross-display figural mapping as a tactical problem whose perceptual solution constitutes the game's learning objective; (2) a multi-sensor input interface-the mat's 'vertices'-enables flexible divisions of group labor for scaffolding solution enactment. We put forth the construct of participatory facilitation-an emergent interaction pattern in groups with inter-personal differences in content-domain knowledge and sensori-motor coordination. We tentatively generalize principles for designing informal educational activity architecture that create opportunities for relative experts to enculturate content learning via participatory facilitation.

Over the last thirty years museums around the world have shown an increased willingness to take on what is often characterized as ‘difficult subject matter.’ Absent in Anglophone museum studies literature, however, is a sustained discussion on what it is about such exhibitions that render them ‘difficult’ and, most important, what can be achieved by making painful histories public. This paper sets out to stimulate such discussion, illustrating the relevance of our concerns within the context of a comparative analysis of two recent Swedish exhibitions: The Museum of World Culture’s No Name Fever: AIDS in the Age of Globalization; and Kulturen’s Surviving: Voices from Ravensbrück. Very divergent in their presentation strategies and in the type of information presented, these exhibitions attempt to position their viewers in relation to violence and suffering of ‘others’ distant in time, place, or experience. We conclude by discussing the ways in which public history might animate a critical historical consciousness, a way of living with and within history as a never-ending question that constantly probes the adequacy of the ethical character and social arrangements of daily life.

In this paper, I apply the discourse of transitional justice to the case
study of survivor docents at the Japanese American National Museum,
a site that has come to represent and serve as a form of reparation
for the traumatic memory of Japanese American internment during
World War II. As a longer term supplement to trials or Truth and
Reconciliation Commissions or an alternative in cases where no such
structures exist, I illustrate how the museum tour becomes an empowering platform for survivors of the American Internment camps to work through and instrumentalize traumatic memories within the dialogic museum sphere, even as this alternative space forms its own new silences. Thus, by applying the very theories and criticisms through
which scholars of memory politics evaluate official platforms of transitional justice, I aim to complicate and evaluate this alternative form of testimony, and in so doing explore areas of growth in the fields of both transitional justice and museum practice. Bridging the gap between testimony, oral history, and museum interpretation, survivor docents represent a sustained dialogic approach to history that perpetuates, preserves, and activates
rather than resolves
discourse around contentious memories.

Advocates of object-based learning (OBL) in museums point to its benefits in motivating student inquiry and developing transferable skills. As a mode of experiential learning, however, such practices may be seen as empowering students to speak for other people’s cultures, posing a conflict for anthropology museums actively seeking to disrupt such relationships of authority. Asking what object-based learning does in the anthropology museum, this paper suggests a distinction between OBL as a means of supporting traditional university curricula, and OBL as a means of learning from objects, attending to the perspectives of creator communities in the construction of knowledge.

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology with the potential to transform learning. By digitally adding or removing information from the physical world, AR creates a sense that real and virtual objects coexist, and can enhance people's interactions both with each other and with objects in the world. Most museum implementations of AR have been in the realms of art and history. Using examples from across formal and informal settings, this article illustrates the learning affordances of AR for museums that aim to communicate concepts related to human health. These topics often present spatiotemporal challenges for learning, but can be made more accessible to learners when contextualized within personally, socially, and culturally relevant contexts. After briefly reviewing research on learning with AR, the article examines how museum designers might leverage AR's capacity for spatial and temporal representation, narrative and interactivity, real-time personalized scaffolds, and collaboration, to create meaningful learning experiences on medicine and human biology. The article ends with a discussion of issues related to the use of AR in museums, and thoughts on future research.

This paper examines the impact of an augmented reality (AR) tour guide on users' art engagement. In a between-subjects experiment in an art museum, users' art engagement with a novel video see-through augmented reality guide was examined against user behavior with a book guide. The AR users' liking of art increased more than the book users', whereas the book users learned more. The AR users enjoyed using the application, and it helped them engage with art; however, they felt physical fatigue from holding the tablet and preferred interacting with a still image over the live augmentations. The users were concerned about the screen time the AR guide required; it distracted them from looking at the art with the naked eye, creating more of an impression of learning rather than actual learning. The findings call for more impactful AR applications with art as the focal point.

The aim of this paper is to automatically identify a Roman Imperial denarius from a single query photograph of its obverse and reverse. Such functionality has the potential to contribute greatly to various national schemes which encourage laymen to report their finds to local museums. Our work introduces a series of novelties: (i) this is the first paper which describes a method for extracting the legend of an ancient coin from a photograph; (ii) we are also the first to suggest the idea and propose a method for identifying a coin using a series of carefully engineered retrievals, each harnessed for further information using visual or meta-data processing; (iii) we show how in addition to a unique standard reference number for a query coin, the proposed system can be used to extract salient coin information (issuing authority, obverse and reverse descriptions, mint date) and retrieve images of other coins of the same type.

Research pertaining to science museum exhibit design tends to be articulated at a level of generality that makes it difficult to apply in practice. To address this issue, the present study used a design-based research approach to understand the educational potential of a biology exhibit. The exhibit was considered an educational environment which embodied a certain body of biological knowledge (Biological Organisation) in a certain exhibit type (Museographic Organisation) with the intention of creating certain learning outcomes among visitors. The notion of praxeology was used to model intended and observed visitor outcomes, and the pattern of relationship between the two praxeologies was examined to pinpoint where and how divergences emerged. The implications of these divergences are discussed at the three levels of exhibit enactment, design, and conjecture, and theoretically based suggestions for a design iteration are given. The potential of the design based research approach for educational exhibit design is argued.

Over the past few years, some museums have launched multimedia projects (on PDAs, kiosks, and Web sites) that allow visitors to bookmark information of interest for later use at home or in the classroom, in at attempt to prolong the museum experience, build a stronger relationship with the visitor, and facilitate the learning process. Despite its great potential, however, there is still very little evidence that bookmarking actually works in the terms envisaged by its promoters. To consider this question, we will analyze examples of different on-line and on-site applications, accompanied by a detailed investigation of usage statistics and evaluation results carried out in part by the authors and in part by museums. We will consider case studies from Tate Modern, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Museum of Science in Boston, and The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, among others.

Keywords: bookmarking, personalization, evaluation, pre- and post-visit experience, handheld devices, kiosks

Worldwide mega-events have a significant political purpose, demon- strating various commitments to topics, such as energy conservation and gender equality. Gendered imagery at these major events can provide insight into an organizational or country perspective. The portrayal of people in imagery reinforces ideas and teaches audien- ces who are allowed to take-on various roles (e.g., doctors, teachers, or scientists). In other words, gender-balanced or -biased imagery could then either raise awareness to reduce a gender gap or reinforce gendered stereotypes. As such, this article examines gen- dered imagery at a mega event with a scientific-focus. The visual analysis uncovered the extent to which images of scientists shown across 10 European Union member-state country-pavilions at the Astana Expo (Kazakhstan) presented science as gender-balanced. Results demonstrated gendered depictions of science across the European states with varying levels of bias towards men, with no country-pavilion having a gender-equal presentation. Findings suggest the need to raise awareness about gender equality, including for science diplomacy.

This paper explores how four design principles (curiosity, challenge, narratives and participation) facilitate reflection and discussion among young visitors in the issues-based exhibition Dear, Difficult Body. The investigation is based on a mixed-method approach combining questionnaire and interview data. The implementation of design principles resulted in a variety of exhibits which variously prompted reflection and discussion on the part of visitors. Exhibits with narratives, for example, here defined as both personal and expert narratives, were found to be effective in facilitating personal reflection but also prompted discussion. Participation, defined as including both physical interaction with exhibits, and dialogic interaction between visitors, facilitated the sharing of ideas and feelings between visitors. Exhibits with elements of curiosity and challenge were found to attract pupils' attention but also worked well with other design principles to engage the pupils in sustained reflection and discussion. While other contextual factors remain significant in determining visitor responses, this paper argues that the use of design principles can help create visitor experiences that correspond to exhibition aims.

The paper intends to make a conceptual revision of the work produced by the Czech museologist Zbyněk Zbyslav Stránský (1926–2016), referring to the period between 1965 to 1995, when he was responsible for the attempt to conceive a theory for museology. With his metatheory, this thinker aimed to defend and sustain this discipline’s scientific status. In his works, by refuting the museum as the study subject for this supposed “science”, Stránský would discuss which should be its fundamental subjects of interest in its place, creating specific concepts for museology. With the terms musealia, museality and musealization he shifts the discipline’s focus from the museum, as an instrument for a certain end, to the processes of attributing value to things. His theory generates, thus, the necessary foundation for the museological field,
integrating theory and practice, and initiating a social and scientific
reflection for museology. Therefore, the paper historicizes the process
of configuration of disciplinary museology in Eastern Europe in order
to understand what was in the base of the geminal thinking structuring
this branch of knowledge and, at the same time, appointing new pathways for its future.

2007 marked the bicentenary of Britain’s abolition of its slave trade. This paper outlines the findings of interviews undertaken with 1498 visitors to eight museum exhibitions marking the bicentenary. One of the major findings of the research was the degree to which visitors from different self-identified ethnic groups responded to the both the exhibitions and the bicentenary itself. This paper focuses on the white British response, a response dominated by emotional avoidance and disengagement with exhibition content. The role of the authorised heritage discourse (AHD) in this response is discussed, and a number of self-sufficient arguments utilised in emotionally insulating visitors from exhibition content are identified.

What is a museum? Though seemingly obvious, the answer to this question has eluded the international museum sector since a controversial redraft of the official definition, put forward by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in 2019, was dramatically rejected by its own member- ship. As deliberations about what constitutes a museum continue ahead of ICOM’s next General Conference in 2022, this article provides a quantitative content analysis of 269 definition proposals submitted by ICOM’s international membership during the 2019 consultation phase, in order to evaluate how closely the wording of the eventual proposed definition mirrored the priorities of ICOM’s stakeholder base. The research finds that contributors favoured the content of the standing ICOM definition over terms and concepts that characterised the proposed revision. In the light of these findings, the article proposes ways in which ICOM can improve its consultation processes in order to more faithfully gauge the perspectives of its constituents ahead of the 2022 conference.