This report proposes a comprehensive study to answer the question: How does conversation as a socially mediating activity act as both a process and an outcome of museum learning experiences? The study will examine museum learning across six kinds of museums and across different kinds of visiting groups. This proposal describes a model of museum learning that puts conversation among different kinds of coherent conversational groups at the core of museum learning. It focuses on ways that conversations are elaborated, enriched, and extended as a consequence of museum activity. The model recasts
This article describes the front-end evaluation process for the Exploration Zone project at the Field Museum of Natural History. It discusses the value of front-end meta-analysis and who should perform such research.
In this article, John W. Lightner, associate professor at Lansing Community College and doctoral student at Michigan State University, discusses motivation theory. Lightner traces changes in motivation theory from the Behaviorist Era to recent perspectives, from reward and punishment to a view of human learners as self-regulated. Lightner also relates this topic to museum practice.
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John Lightner
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
In this paper, Paulette M. McManus discusses the practice of visitor studies and evaluation, including the tradition of visitor observation, at institutions in the United Kingdom. Specifically, McManus compares evaluation practices at large museums and small- and medium-sized museums, examines the problem of student evaluation and studies as well as the impact of the National Lottery, and finally reports on audience advocacy.
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Paulette M. McManusVisitor Studies Association
In this paper, C. Dufresne-Tasse of the University of Montreal discusses three characteristics of the methods French-Canadians conduct research on museum visitors in Québec. Dufresne-Tasse also offers an example of a study conducted by researchers at two Québec universities, which evaluated the psychological functioning of the adult observing objects in an exhibition room.
In this article, the authors review a collaborative project between two developmental psychologists and the staff of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. Under the broad agenda of studying the development of scientific literacy, they have been exploring the hypothesis that the guidance of parents is an important bridge between the intentions of the exhibit designer and the experience and knowledge of the child. Their research is guided by a framework inspired by a combination of socio-cultural and information-processing theories of how children learn. In the first section of this article
It has been argued that visitors' pre-visit “agendas” directly influence visits. This study attempted to directly test the effects of different museum visit agendas on visitor learning. Two new tools were developed for this purpose: (1) a tool for measuring visitor agendas; and (2) a tool for measuring visitor learning (Personal Meaning Mapping). Visitor agenda was defined as having two dimensions: motivations and strategies. Personal Meaning Mapping is a constructivist approach that measures change in understanding along four semi-independent dimensions: extent, breadth, depth, and mastery
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John H FalkTheano MoussouriDouglas Coulson