This article reviews recent research about museum fatigue, and discusses its causes. Visitor attributes, the museum setting, and interaction between them, seem to underpin fatigue, and their relative importance differs according to behavioral changes under investigation. An updated definition of museum fatigue is provided, along with suggestions for museum professionals to investigate fatigue within their museums.
This research study involves collaboration between researchers at the University of Maryland, College Park and Bowie State University, an HBCU, to examine a multi-component pre-service model for preparing minority students to teach upper elementary and middle level science. The treatment consists of (1) focused recruitment efforts by the collaborating universities; (2) a pre-service science content course emphasizing inquiry and the mathematics of data management; (3) an internship in an after school program serving minority students; (4) field placements in Prince Georges County minority-serving professional development schools; and (5) mentoring support during the induction year. The research agenda will examine each aspect of the intervention using quantitative and qualitative methods and a small number of case studies.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
James McginnisSpencer BensonScott Dantley
This monograph has been created by the TEAMS (Traveling Exhibits At Museums of Science) Collaborative, a group of seven small U.S. science centers, to share experiences, observations, and lessons learned with the broader science museum field. Our intention is to help others who might be interested in forming a collaborative to work though some key issues, most of which have to do with the relationships between collaborative members, rather than more technical matters. We hope that this will provide a vision for others as to how collaboration among science centers can work. The monograph looks
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Charles TrautmannMark St. JohnDavid Goudy
This summative evaluation of the exhibition Robots & Us was designed to investigate how visitor audiences used and experienced this exhibition in relation to the project’s objectives and challenges. Visitors’ expectations and perceptions in relation to the project’s content goals prompted the summative evaluation to focus on specific challenges including: attitudes and perceptions about technology, connections between robots and people, appeal to a broad audience, and reactions to specific exhibits.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Jeff HaywardJolene HartScience Museum of Minnesota
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
This model science teacher retention and mentoring project will involve more than 300 elementary teachers in "Lesson Study" of inquiry science around school gardens. Drawing on the rich resources of the University of California Botanical Garden and the science educators at the Lawrence Hall of Science this project will develop Teacher Leaders and provide science content professional development to colleagues in four urban school districts. Using the rich and authentic contexts of gardens to engage students and teachers in scientific inquiry opens the opportunity to invite parents to become actively involved with their children in the learning process. As teachers improve their classroom practices of teaching science through inquiry with the help of school-based mentoring they are able to connect the teaching of science to mathematics and literacy and will be able to apply the lesson study approach in their teaching of other innovative projects. Teacher leaders and mentors will have on-going learning opportunities as well as engage participating teachers in lesson study and reflection aimed toward improving science content understanding and the quality of science learning in summer garden learning experiences and having context rich science inquiry experiences throughout the school year.
Children’s worlds are increasingly populated by intelligent technologies. This has raised a number of questions about the ways in which technology can change children’s ideas about important concepts, like what it means to be alive or smart. In this study, we examined the impact of experience with intelligent technologies on children’s ideas about robot intelligence. A total of 60 children aged 4 through 7 were asked to identify the intellectual, psychological, and biological characteristics of 8 entities that differed in terms of their life status and intellectual capabilities. Results
Falk and Dierking’s Contextual Model of Learning was used as a theoretical construct for investigating learning within a free-choice setting. A review of previous research identified key variables fundamental to free-choice science learning. The study sought to answer two questions: (1) How do specific independent variables individually contribute to learning outcomes when not studied in isolation? and (2) Does the Contextual Model of Learning provide a useful framework for understanding learning from museums? A repeated measure design including interviews and observational and behavioral
Interactive museum exhibits have increasingly placed replicated and virtual objects alongside exhibited authentic objects. Yet little is known about how these three categories of objects impact learning. This study of family learning in a botanical garden specifically focuses on how 12 parent-child family units used explanations as they engaged with three plant types: living, model, and virtual. Family conversations were videotaped, transcribed, and coded. Findings suggested that: 1) explanations of biological processes were more frequent than other types; 2) model and virtual plants supported
This article provides an overview of current understandings of the science learning that occurs as a consequence of visiting a free-choice learning setting like a science museum. The best available evidence indicates that if you want to understand learning at the level of individuals within the real world, learning does functionally differ depending upon the conditions, i.e., the context, under which it occurs. Hence, learning in museums is different than learning in any other setting. The contextual model of learning provides a way to organize the myriad specifics and details that give
Education is a lifelong endeavor; the public learns in many places and contexts, for a diversity of reasons, throughout their lives. During the past couple of decades, there has been a growing awareness that free‐choice learning experiences – learning experiences where the learner exercises a large degree of choice and control over the what, when and why of learning – play a major role in lifelong learning. Worldwide, most environmental learning is not acquired in school, but outside of school through free‐choice learning experiences. Included in this article are brief overviews of
This article is a response to Harris Shettel's commentary which appeared in Curator (48/2, April 2005) on two of four articles which appeared in Curator (47/2), the subject of which was interactives in museums.
The science museum field has made tremendous advances in understanding museum learning, but little has been done to consolidate and synthesize these findings to encourage widespread improvements in practice. By clearly presenting the most current knowledge of museum learning, In Principle, In Practice aims to promote effective programs and exhibitions, identify promising approaches for future research, and develop strategies for implementing and sustaining connections between research and practice in the museum community.