Museum Education

Museum education falls within the context of informal learning that is characterized by its position outside the walls of formal learning typical of schools. Originally, the primary role of a museum was to serve as a repository for the display, housing, and preservation of valued objects and artifacts. Since the 1970s, museums have redefined their role to incorporate visitor learning into their mission and support the view that learning is a lifelong process. Among the proliferation of museums are those with a focus on art, historical representations, natural history, science and technology, aeronautics, and botany, and some of these have children as the intended audience. Educational programs led by tour guides and the presence of interactive and interpretive displays have become commonplace. [Page 682]However, rather than having a curriculum with subject mastery as the goal, museums offer opportunities that provide for variability and choices resulting in unique learning experiences for visitors.

A recent innovation is the virtual museum that allows the visitor to access electronic representations of physical museum exhibits. Virtual museums provide opportunities for individuals who may not be able to travel to the site where the physical museum is located. The audience for a virtual museum is geographically dispersed and more diverse than the audience at the typical physical museum. School-based Internet connections allow teachers and students to access virtual museums originating from sites located around the world. Examples of virtual museums include those sponsored by the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, Colonial Williamsburg, the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, and the Lawrence Hall of Science at Berkeley. A virtual exhibit is comprised of a collection of digital images organized by a designer. Considerable variability in content, structure, navigation, design, and complexity is represented, ranging from a simple collection of images to complex interactive multimedia presentations.

Museums are forming partnerships with formal educational institutions in part to broaden their audiences and to compete for funding. These collaborations have resulted in the offering of pedagogical expertise from universities and schools to help develop learning modules, design interactive displays, and conduct research related to learning outcomes. The research on museum education is sparse and only has emerged in recent years. An important consideration for researchers interested in museum education is that each museum represents a unique social culture. Given this precept, naturalistic inquiry approaches are useful in establishing commonalities and variations in the learning experiences that occur among museums.

A framework for guiding research on learning in museums includes three integrating themes: how the design of the learning environment mediates learning, how social interactions are shaped by the exhibits, and how museum experiences may impact the identity of visitors. Research related to the first two themes has provided some insights to learning in museums. Orientation devices that focus visitors' attention using video, oral messages, or signals tend to support learning. Interactive displays that engage the visitor were found to be most effective when designed with structures that support relevant input. The social milieu of the museum, which includes beliefs of the tour guides, conversations that occur, and the nature of the museum space, was found to impact learning as well. Museums offer considerable opportunities for learning, and the partnerships between museums and formal institutions of learning are strengthening the depth of those opportunities.

...