Elizabeth Wood

Integrating Scaffolding Experiences for the Youngest Visitors in Museums

Abstract Research demonstrates that children have vast potential to expand their knowledge base with simple supports from adults and older children. Childrens museums have a heightened awareness of the value in and the need to reach out to support adults accompanying children, thus bringing about an emphasis on family learning. Iterative exhibition studies conducted at The Childrens Museum of Indianapolis illustrate the impact of planning for family learning. But for any museum, intentionally applying the strategy of scaffolding by building on simple concepts and working toward mastery of ideas, can inform adults and simultaneously help children stretch to new levels of understanding and achievement. This strategy requires curators, educators and exhibit developers to work collaboratively to determine various levels of accessibility of content and activity moving from entry level ideas through more complex and abstract ones for older children and adults. Children visiting museums of all types is certainly nothing new, but their experience in those spaces has changed over time. From the earliest iterations of childrens museums, to contemporary practices in museums of all types, the attention museum professionals place on the needs of this special audience is changing. The idea of hands-on learning, facilitated and mediated learning experiences, and scaled-down environments have become more prominent (and often expected) in museum settings where young children visit with their families. The increased visitation of family groups, especially those with young children, requires greater attention by museum educators, exhibition developers, and designers to support the learning needs of this audience. Most childrens museums place special emphasis on designing environments that support learning for very young children. Lessons learned from the work done in childrens museums can provide models for those in other museum settings to meet the needs of early learners.

The Objects of Experience: Transforming Visitor-Object Encounters in Museums

What if museums could harness the emotional and intellectual connections people have to personal and everyday objects to create richer visitor experiences? In this book, Elizabeth Wood and Kiersten Latham present the Object Knowledge Framework, a tool for using objects to connect museum visitors to themselves, to others, and to their world. They discuss the key concepts underpinning our lived experience of objects and how museums can learn from them. Then they walk readers through concrete methods for transforming visitor-object experiences, including exercises and strategies for teams developing exhibit themes, messages, and content, and participatory experiences.

Between the Lines of Engagement in Museums

Abstract The concept of engagement across the Learning Sciences and in museums draws from research on visitor interests, motivations, and behaviors. Such involvement by museum visitors reveals institutional and field expectations about museum efficacy and demonstrated impact. However, engagement is a concept with different uses and interpretations across institutions and fields. If we are going to talk about visitor engagement in museums specifically, it is incumbent on museum educators to understand and address the values that are associated with this idea. What does engagement look like and sound like in a museums exhibitions, programs, and visitor studies? In this paper we present critical questions to frame a discussion on the assumptions, values and cautions that come with the concept of engagement in a museum setting. We present practical examples from research in a childrens museum and discuss the implications of using engagement concepts in museum work. We argue that the ways in which museum staff observe and measure visitor behaviors are guided by assumptions and values, institutional goals and values, and the visitors assumptions and values. Understanding Learning Sciences research can aid in the articulation of what visitor engagement looks like for an institution.

When Parents Stand Back Is Family Learning Still Possible

Abstract The family learning initiative at The Childrens Museum of Indianapolis emphasizes adult-child interaction in exhibitions and programs. Across four years of exhibition evaluation, data reveal an observable pattern of adults standing back, apparently not interacting with their children. However, further examinations of the data reveal that some, not all, parents are closely watching their children and making choices about how they interact. Even though a childrens museum is family oriented, parents and children operate in many different ways, and so too should staff expectations of their behavior differ. In this article the authors present a meta-interpretation of family engagement in a childrens museum that reviews on-going preferences for parent-child involvement and expectations for related behaviors and exhibition goals. The authors explore intentional design efforts that foster family engagement and discuss the reasons that families may choose not to continually and directly engage with each other while in the museum.

“‘I just don’t ever use that word’: investigating stakeholders’ understanding of heritage”

Abstract Understanding the value of heritage sites for diverse stakeholders requires both paying attention to the fields of power in which the sites operate and applying methodologies that are open to user-defined paradigms of value. In the U.S., official discourse often frames the value of heritage sites associated the deep Native American past as archaeological sites, an interpretation that is consistent with settler colonial ideologies. This narrative generally obfuscates connections between the heritage of the sites and contemporary peoples, and it effaces the history of colonialism and dispossession. A study of stakeholder-defined heritage at two contested sites in the central Midwest revealed both congruencies and conflicts among diverse constituencies’ articulations of the sites’ value. At Mounds State Park a proposed dam and reservoir ‘Mounds Lake’ project would inundate a large portion of the site. At Strawtown Koteewi, Native American tribes have made repatriation claims under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA).The study also problematised the term ‘cultural heritage’ as it is understood and used by the different constituencies, particularly for culturally and historically affiliated Native Americans. It also highlighted the positions of the constituencies within the broader fields of power implicated in these contested sites.

Defining the Chaperone’s Role as Escort, Educator or Parent

ABSTRACT The concept of family learning in museums emphasizes the interaction between related adults and children through the process of free-choice learning. The complexity of family learning in the context of school visits presents new questions for museum staff on the role of chaperones and the extent to which chaperone-led groups might function as family units. Do chaperones operate as escorts, educators, or parents on a museum field trip? This article provides a brief overview of existing field trip and chaperone research findings, raises some critical questions on the role of parents as chaperones, and describes the results from a study on chaperone behavior in the museum. Results from observations of 289 chaperones in a childrens museum setting suggest that chaperone behavior is not necessarily influenced by exhibition context, but parents and chaperones do differ in preferred family learning interactions with children in museum exhibitions.

Defining the Scope of Your Evaluation

Abstract One challenge of conducting evaluations is finding the right questions to guide the work. A clear purpose for a study gives the evaluator a good sense of what information can answer the questions, and helps frame the scope of the project as a whole. Knowing the scope of the evaluation project provides a sense of the resources needed. A common pitfall for those getting started with evaluation is trying to carry out a project before thinking about the overall purpose of the evaluation. This article provides a brief overview of defining clear and concise evaluation questions and thinking about the overall scope of an evaluation project. Examples include questions and strategies used in small, medium, and large-scale studies.