Funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Access from the Ground Up project at the Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo (JMZ) seeks to better serve children with disabilities through a combination of partnerships with community, staff professional development and training, and the development of accessible STEM-focused exhibits and resources at the new JMZ facility, which opened in November 2021. This summative evaluation report seeks to answer the following evaluation questions:
To what extent does the Access from the Ground Up project build or strengthen relationships with
The Springfield Science Museum will increase participation in informal science learning by making its educational programs and learning spaces more accessible and inclusive. Museum staff will undergo Disability Inclusion and Universal Design training to redesign and enhance a core multi-use learning space and principle STEM program that can remove physical, cognitive, and social barriers to learning. External evaluators will measure access needs and learning outcomes before and after project upgrades in order to track progress and develop a scalable model of inclusive practice for all the museum’s science programming. The result will be an improved educational experience for visitors of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds.
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis will redesign its popular Dinosphere exhibition to explore and test accessibility to ensure the discoveries from its “Jurassic Mile” dig site are accessible to all visitors. This will result in updated exhibition elements that promote accessible lifelong learning experiences for children and families of all abilities, as well as spark interest in STEM through hands-on engagement. Findings from the accessibility assessment also will inform development of industry standard guidelines for future exhibitions. The museum will disseminate the findings to arts, science, and cultural institutions.
EcoExploratorio: Museo de Ciencias de Puerto Rico’s In-STEM: An Inclusive STEM Museum Exhibition project will provide STEM educational material specifically for audiences with visual and hearing disabilities. In addition to an inclusive summer Moon to Mars exhibit, the museum will offer tours with American Sign Languages (ASL) interpreters and adaptations for the visually impaired. Accessible online, the museum will produce ten STEM activity videos. By being inclusive of people with disabilities, specifically focusing on people that are deaf or hard of hearing and blind or visually impaired, the museum seeks to promote lifelong access to STEM education.
The Palo Alto Junior Museum & Zoo will create the California Dinosaur Garden exhibition, an inclusive environment for children ages 3 to 11 that promotes science learning. The museum will employ sensory-rich storytelling and interactive experiences to engage children and their caregivers. Project activities will include the completion of initial concept designs and evaluation to inform exhibit development; design development, prototyping, and formative evaluation; and engaging external contractors to fabricate and install the exhibit. The exhibition will include prehistoric plants within a seasonal marsh landscape, interactive interpretive exhibits, a fossil dig, and life-size dinosaur sculptures. The project will also address the need for science learning experiences for children with disabilities by applying universal design principals such as wheelchair access to the garden experience, braille labels, and tactile, sensory-rich elements.
Zoo New England will bring a turtle conservation education program into 14 fifth grade classrooms in the Boston public schools and the Perkins School for the Blind. The Hatchling and Turtle Conservation Headstarting Program is designed to expose students from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds to the importance of wildlife in their community, giving them an opportunity to participate in a hands-on conservation project. Each classroom will receive three indoor sessions and one field trip at the end of the year, as well as two turtle hatchlings to raise in the classroom. Teachers will be trained to raise and care for the turtles. Presentations will be tailored to the age group of the students and will include opportunities for hands-on STEM-inquiry-based learning in alignment with the Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Frameworks. Pre and post classroom and field trip evaluation will be conducted to assess the cognitive and attitudinal changes among participating students and teachers.
As it embarks on opening a new facility, the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo will launch the "Access From the Ground Up" project to make the new facility and exhibitions accessible to everyone, and provide science learning opportunities to children with physical and developmental disabilities. The museum and zoo will build relationships with the Inclusion Collaborative of the Santa Clara County Office of Education and other partner organizations that serve visitors with disabilities; provide seven intensive training and professional development opportunities for staff members and volunteers to heighten their knowledge about contemporary access issues; and prototype, test, build, and remediate 27 new permanent exhibitions. The project will address the lack of quality STEM experiences for the growing number of children with a variety of disabilities, and is intended to serve as a national model for inclusion for museums and zoos of all types and sizes.
The Habitot Children's Museum will renovate its Rocketship and Mission Control exhibition to increase functionality, making it more accessible and interactive for parents, caregivers, and children. With input from the community and a professional advisory group of museum professionals, early learning specialists, space scientists and parents, the museum will refurbish, update, and improve exhibition access for children with special needs by completing previously identified universal design requirements; adding interactive components that support young children's need for open-ended, play-based experiences to build strong STEM learning foundations; and addressing adult visitors' needs to have defined roles in exhibition spaces to better engage with their children. A customized, observation-based evaluation tool will be used to measure the identified project outcomes.
The Museum of Science, Boston will prototype several exhibit elements to be included in the Charles River Gallery, a new 3,000-square-foot exhibition gallery atop the Charles River Dam that explores the connection between the science of the natural world and that of the engineered world. The exhibits will be fabricated using the concepts of universal design in an ongoing effort to make the museum's offerings available to the greatest number of people, regardless of age, background, and ability. Through a combination of surveys and observational studies, museum staff will evaluate the effectiveness of proposed gallery components and use the results to improve visitor experience and comprehension of the new exhibit themes. The prototyping activities will also allow the museum to investigate how cross-disciplinary studies enable better understanding of human interaction in complex environments.
This study examined organizational change in science museums toward practices that are inclusive of people with disabilities. Guided by two overarching frameworks, organizational learning and the social model of disability, this study sought to answer the following: What are the contexts and processes that facilitate, sustain, or impede a science museum’s change toward practices that are inclusive of people with disabilities? The research orientation was a qualitative, multiple case study. The cases featured three science museums that varied in size and location, but shared a documented