Pub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1404343
Steven R. Guberman
This issue contains four research and evaluation reports, two methodology reviews, and one book review. The articles address ongoing concerns in the visitor studies field and build on prior publications from the journal in three areas: (a) research methodologies, especially issues around efficient and accurate data collection (see, e.g., Moussouri & Roussos, 2013; Rainbolt Nurse, Benfield, & Loomis, 2012; Schautz, van Dijk, & Meisert, 2016) and the impact of our methods on visitors (e.g., Pattison & Shagott, 2015); (b) the use of photography by museum visitors (e.g., Vartiainen & Enkenberg, 2014); and (c) strategies for enhancing the educational value of school field trips to informal educational organizations (e.g., Aerila, Rönkkö, & Gronman, 2016; Pecore, Kirchgessner, Demetrikopoulos, Carruth, & Frantz, 2017). The issue beginswith a research report byTheopisti Stylianou-Lambert inwhich she examines visitors’ attitudes about taking photographs in art museums. She notes that museum professionals disagree about the value of visitor photography—does it enhance or detract from the visitor experience?—and whether museums should prohibit or encourage visitors to use photography. Through in-depth interviews with museum visitors, she uncovered common motivations of visitors who take photos and the reasons other visitors do not. Of special interest are visitors who take photographs but believe that doing so is harmful to themuseum experience. Scott A. Pattison, Scott M. Randol, Marcie Benne, Andee Rubin, Ivel Gontan, Elizabeth Andanen, Crosby Bromley, Smirla Ramos-Montañez, and Lynn D. Dierking describe a design-based research project in which they examined how experienced museum staff members facilitate learning for families. The study uses design-based research techniques comprised of iterative cycles of theorizing, data collection, and reflection. The authors developed amodel composed of three factors for understanding unstructured staff facilitation at exhibits designed to promote algebraic thinking: (a) the desired outcomes for visitors’ interactions with the exhibits (including visitor satisfaction, mathematical reasoning, and intergenerational communication), (b) staff facilitation strategies (such as orienting visitors to an exhibit and providing explanations), and (c) influencing factors (characteristics of staff, visitors, and the environment that influenced how staffmembers interactedwith families, such as the number and ages of members in family groups). Both the design-based research process and the findings about facilitation techniques should be of interest to practitioners in a variety of settings. Nils Petter Hauan and Jennifer DeWitt address an issue of great importance to many educational researchers and museum practitioners: How to improve the learning experience of students on field trips to science museums. In their study, they assigned 11to 13-year-old students to small, self-directed groups as they explored select exhibits in a N
{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Steven R. Guberman","doi":"10.1080/10645578.2017.1404343","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2017.1404343","url":null,"abstract":"This issue contains four research and evaluation reports, two methodology reviews, and one book review. The articles address ongoing concerns in the visitor studies field and build on prior publications from the journal in three areas: (a) research methodologies, especially issues around efficient and accurate data collection (see, e.g., Moussouri & Roussos, 2013; Rainbolt Nurse, Benfield, & Loomis, 2012; Schautz, van Dijk, & Meisert, 2016) and the impact of our methods on visitors (e.g., Pattison & Shagott, 2015); (b) the use of photography by museum visitors (e.g., Vartiainen & Enkenberg, 2014); and (c) strategies for enhancing the educational value of school field trips to informal educational organizations (e.g., Aerila, Rönkkö, & Gronman, 2016; Pecore, Kirchgessner, Demetrikopoulos, Carruth, & Frantz, 2017). The issue beginswith a research report byTheopisti Stylianou-Lambert inwhich she examines visitors’ attitudes about taking photographs in art museums. She notes that museum professionals disagree about the value of visitor photography—does it enhance or detract from the visitor experience?—and whether museums should prohibit or encourage visitors to use photography. Through in-depth interviews with museum visitors, she uncovered common motivations of visitors who take photos and the reasons other visitors do not. Of special interest are visitors who take photographs but believe that doing so is harmful to themuseum experience. Scott A. Pattison, Scott M. Randol, Marcie Benne, Andee Rubin, Ivel Gontan, Elizabeth Andanen, Crosby Bromley, Smirla Ramos-Montañez, and Lynn D. Dierking describe a design-based research project in which they examined how experienced museum staff members facilitate learning for families. The study uses design-based research techniques comprised of iterative cycles of theorizing, data collection, and reflection. The authors developed amodel composed of three factors for understanding unstructured staff facilitation at exhibits designed to promote algebraic thinking: (a) the desired outcomes for visitors’ interactions with the exhibits (including visitor satisfaction, mathematical reasoning, and intergenerational communication), (b) staff facilitation strategies (such as orienting visitors to an exhibit and providing explanations), and (c) influencing factors (characteristics of staff, visitors, and the environment that influenced how staffmembers interactedwith families, such as the number and ages of members in family groups). Both the design-based research process and the findings about facilitation techniques should be of interest to practitioners in a variety of settings. Nils Petter Hauan and Jennifer DeWitt address an issue of great importance to many educational researchers and museum practitioners: How to improve the learning experience of students on field trips to science museums. In their study, they assigned 11to 13-year-old students to small, self-directed groups as they explored select exhibits in a N","PeriodicalId":45516,"journal":{"name":"Visitor Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"111 - 113"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2017-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10645578.2017.1404343","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42830820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-07-03DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1404349
Nils Petter Hauan, J. DeWitt
ABSTRACT Science center exhibitions are considered to have the potential to support students' learning. To contribute to the field's knowledge of how to use this potential to the fullest, this study compares four different designs of self-guided resources for use during a science center visit. The first two (open exploration and a traditional worksheet) are similar to many currently in use, and the other two designs (guided exploratory learning, one paper-based and one tablet-based) provided more structure and explicitly aimed to support deeper engagement and exploration. Verbal and nonverbal behaviors of 64 11- to 13-year-old students were recorded by chest-mounted cameras. Video was coded and analyzed quantitatively around instances of behaviors consistent with deep engagement and learning. Findings suggest that different resource designs are associated with different levels of engagement-related behaviors, and designs for guided exploratory learning in particular have the potential to support students' progress towards conceptual understanding.
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Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1297121
K. Booth, J. O’Connor, A. Franklin, N. Papastergiadis
ABSTRACT The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), in Australia's island state of Tasmania, bears all the hallmarks of the new museology and a flagship museum. Located in a largely working class area, there are expectations of visitors from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, particularly local residents. However most visitors are tourists, middle-class, and highly educated. In this article, the authors ask, “What are the issues affecting accessibility to MONA for local residents?” In asking this, they aim to better understand local engagement with MONA and shed light on potential socio-cultural transformation. Using a survey, interviews, and focus groups with local residents, the authors found that accessibility at MONA is defined along familiar socioeconomic lines, though there are indications of change that warrant further investigation. The expense of food and beverage, concern about children's behavior, and the explicit nature of some art all impact on accessibility, particularly for those with less cultural capital.
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Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1297114
Steven R. Guberman
A theme running through several of the articles in this issue is the possibilities and challenges presented by the changing nature ofmuseums, especiallywith respect to promoting accessibility and broadening their audiences. Using a variety of theoretical and analytic approaches, the authors describe successful undertakings, make suggestions for improvements, and provide tools for promoting and assessing change. The issue begins with Matthew Berland’s keynote address from the 2016 Visitor Studies Association conference in Boston, MA. Berland describes an approach to data that he calls constructivist analytics. He provides a variety of examples taken fromhis own and others’ work to illustrate different ways of thinking about and presenting data for a variety of purposes and audiences. In one example he shows how new techniques allow researchers to combine the specificity of small-scale qualitative research, typically focused on individuals, with the power of quantitative analysis of large groups to better understand and improve the museum experience for more people. Berland’s focus is on how people—including visitors, staff, administrators, and policymakers—learn with and from data. Kate Booth, Justin O’Connor, Adrian Franklin, and Nikos Papastergiadis present a case study of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), a new museum located in a workingclass neighborhood in Tasmania, Australia. The authors situate their work in recent claims about the transformative effects of locating museums in unusual locations, such as industrial centers—sometimes referred to as the Bilboa effect, following claims about the positive impact of the Guggenheim Museum on its neighborhood in Bilboa, Spain. Drawing on notions of cultural capital, and combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the authors examine efforts MONA has made to include local residents and how residents with varying levels of cultural capital have responded. They point to successful outreach, factors that keep residents away from the museum, and missed opportunities for greater inclusion. Karen Hughes and Gianna Moscardo note that young adults rarely attend science museums and propose that policies that effectively incorporate digital technology, including the use of cell phones and social media, may increase attendance bymembers of this group. Some museumprofessionals believe that cell phone use in exhibitsmay distract visitors from attending to the collections and ideas presented by themuseum; other professionals argue that allowing, even encouraging, visitors to use their cell phones to document and share their experiences and to access additional information about exhibits may enhance visitors’ attention to the museum’s content and purposes. Using the notion of mindfulness, the authors compared three groups of university students during a visit to a natural history museum: a group that had been instructed to use their phones to take photographs of the exhibition, a group that had been as
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Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1297116
M. Berland
ABSTRACT This article defines and outlines constructivist analytics, a framework for understanding how, where, and when the narratives we construct with advanced data analysis can affect positive social change in informal learning environments (such as museums). I ask three core questions based on this framework: How can researchers use analytics to understand what different visitors find valuable? How can we use analytics to help more visitors find value and to improve visitors' experiences when they find value? How can we present and structure analytics in ways that many different stakeholders find valuable? I then suggest possible avenues for both expanding current work in constructivist analytics and developing new angles on positive, effective, and data-rich narratives.
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Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1297132
Joshua P. Gutwill, Toni Dancstep (née Dancu)
ABSTRACT Science museums can be excellent learning environments for engaging citizens in the complex societal issues of our time—such as climate change, fishery collapse, social prejudice, and wealth inequities—by fostering experimentation and metacognition about visitors' own social behaviors. The authors studied a low-cost metacognitive tool—Question Asking—in exhibit labels through a within-subjects, quasi-experimental research design with 59 randomly selected adult and teen dyads. Results indicated that the inclusion of an exhibit-specific question increased the proportion of time visitors spent in metacognitive conversations by at least a factor of three. Following that specific question with a more generally applicable real-world question maintained the already elevated proportion of time spent in metacognitive talk but did not boost that proportion further. The authors recommend including an exhibit-specific question at social science exhibits (and potentially adding another, broader real-world question as well) to prompt or enhance users' metacognitive responses to exhibit content.
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Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1297135
Heather King
It’s taken me some time to finally sit down and write this review. The reason being: I am in two minds about this publication. On the one hand, I value its intent and commend the contributing authors for their insightful analyses. On the other hand, I feel somewhat let down and disappointed that the book does not deliver all that it promises. The editors note that the book focuses on “informing, broadening and enhancing the pedagogy ofmuseum education and the practice ofmuseum educators.” The 14 chapters are organized into three sections. The first section is entitled, “MuseumEducators SupportingDiverse Audiences.” Rather surprisingly, the notion of diverse did not refer to ethnic or cultural diversity. Rather, the term is used to refer to “under-researched” audiences. Thus, authors Chong, Wong, Hall, and Mehai discuss issues pertinent to home educators and teenagers, but also family groups. The second section, “MuseumEducators’ Practice,” is concerned with the ways in which museum educators contend with challenging topics within their practice. Calvert discusses considerations of death, Zhang explores reactions to natural history specimens, and Gibbons examines treatment of First Nation communities. Hu’s study, meanwhile, explores the skills needed by practitioners to communicate controversial topics in science, whilst Masterton considers the skills required when working with children with cognitive disabilities. The final section, “Museum Educators’ Praxis,” comprises a series of accounts documenting educators’ reflexive analyses of their practice. The chapters by Fehr, Smedley, Petrusa, Fuchs, and Sienkiewicz comprise a broad discussion of approaches employing ethnographicmethodology to examine the ways in which practitioners interpret and make sense of their efforts in programming and exhibition design. The quality of writing and themethodological rigor within each chapter are excellent. Each author displays an impressive ability to introduce the issues, to synthesize the relevant literature, and to outline the findings of their particular study in a clear and highly readable manner. But herein lies the rub and the basis of my dilemma. The 14 chapters each represent research conducted by a masters-level student for her dissertation at the University of British Columbia. Thus, each chapter is a discrete analysis and whilst together may address a range of concerns facing the field of museum education, each individual study focuses on one particular, often highly localized, issue. No attempt is made to draw together the various findings and identify broader themes emerging for the field. And, perhaps most worryingly given the academic provenance of this book, no attempt is made by the authors or the editors to identify and highlight new theoretical contributions pertaining to museum pedagogy.
{"title":"Anderson, D., de Cosson, A., & McIntosh, L. (Eds.). (2015).","authors":"Heather King","doi":"10.1080/10645578.2017.1297135","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2017.1297135","url":null,"abstract":"It’s taken me some time to finally sit down and write this review. The reason being: I am in two minds about this publication. On the one hand, I value its intent and commend the contributing authors for their insightful analyses. On the other hand, I feel somewhat let down and disappointed that the book does not deliver all that it promises. The editors note that the book focuses on “informing, broadening and enhancing the pedagogy ofmuseum education and the practice ofmuseum educators.” The 14 chapters are organized into three sections. The first section is entitled, “MuseumEducators SupportingDiverse Audiences.” Rather surprisingly, the notion of diverse did not refer to ethnic or cultural diversity. Rather, the term is used to refer to “under-researched” audiences. Thus, authors Chong, Wong, Hall, and Mehai discuss issues pertinent to home educators and teenagers, but also family groups. The second section, “MuseumEducators’ Practice,” is concerned with the ways in which museum educators contend with challenging topics within their practice. Calvert discusses considerations of death, Zhang explores reactions to natural history specimens, and Gibbons examines treatment of First Nation communities. Hu’s study, meanwhile, explores the skills needed by practitioners to communicate controversial topics in science, whilst Masterton considers the skills required when working with children with cognitive disabilities. The final section, “Museum Educators’ Praxis,” comprises a series of accounts documenting educators’ reflexive analyses of their practice. The chapters by Fehr, Smedley, Petrusa, Fuchs, and Sienkiewicz comprise a broad discussion of approaches employing ethnographicmethodology to examine the ways in which practitioners interpret and make sense of their efforts in programming and exhibition design. The quality of writing and themethodological rigor within each chapter are excellent. Each author displays an impressive ability to introduce the issues, to synthesize the relevant literature, and to outline the findings of their particular study in a clear and highly readable manner. But herein lies the rub and the basis of my dilemma. The 14 chapters each represent research conducted by a masters-level student for her dissertation at the University of British Columbia. Thus, each chapter is a discrete analysis and whilst together may address a range of concerns facing the field of museum education, each individual study focuses on one particular, often highly localized, issue. No attempt is made to draw together the various findings and identify broader themes emerging for the field. And, perhaps most worryingly given the academic provenance of this book, no attempt is made by the authors or the editors to identify and highlight new theoretical contributions pertaining to museum pedagogy.","PeriodicalId":45516,"journal":{"name":"Visitor Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"105 - 106"},"PeriodicalIF":1.5,"publicationDate":"2017-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/10645578.2017.1297135","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49084466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2017-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10645578.2017.1297134
J. Pecore, Mandy L. Kirchgessner, M. Demetrikopoulos, L. Carruth, K. Frantz
ABSTRACT Educational experiences can be influenced by novel experiences, yet educators often overlook the influence novelty exerts on students. This quasi-experimental study manipulated prior knowledge before a zoo field trip for 210 urban 7th-grade students from 2 schools, 1 comprised mostly of low-socioeconomic status (SES) families and 1 comprised mostly of middle-SES families. Students participated in 1 of 2 preparatory lessons, only 1 of which previewed field trip-related content, thereby increasing prior knowledge for half the students from each school. Prior knowledge significantly increased learner engagement, measured through attentiveness, from both schools, but in different types of behaviors. Students from the low-SES school demonstrated more attentiveness if their preparatory lesson previewed field trip material than if it was unrelated to the field trip. Students from the middle SES school displayed the same level of attentiveness in both conditions (and overall higher than the low-SES students). This study highlights complexities associated with prior knowledge and reveals strategies to help improve engagement levels for students visiting informal learning environments.
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