Exhibit Designs for Girls’ Engagement (EDGE)

This paper describes an NSF-funded study which explored the relationship between female-responsive exhibit designs and girls’ engagement. Across three participating science centers, 906 museum visitors ages 8 to 13 were observed at 334 interactive physics, math, engineering, and perception exhibits. We measured girls’ engagement based on whether they chose to use or return to the exhibits, opted to spend more time at them, or demonstrated deeper engagement behavior. Findings suggest that the design strategies identified in our previously developed Female-Responsive Design Framework can inform exhibit designs that better engage girls. However, the specific design attributes that address the broader strategies are not all equal: we identified a subset of nine exhibit design attributes that were consistently strongly related to girls’ engagement. Further, none of those nine design attributes were harmful to boys’ engagement. In practice, we hope educators will help address gender disparities in museums by considering female-responsive design when creating STEM exhibits: broadening their design approaches and choosing among the nine EDGE Design Attributes based on their appropriateness for a particular exhibit experience or set of exhibits.

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