Part 2 - Association of Children`s Museums

ASSOCIATION OF CHILDREN’S MUSEUMS
&
Overview
s discussed in the winter issue of Hand to Hand,
research in the informal (free-choice) learning field
is growing. A decade ago, we often had to draw
upon learning research expertise from outside the
community. There is now an established community
of researchers; an increasing number are museum staff
members. This is reflected in peer-reviewed journals,
conference presentations and many funding initiatives.
This community of learning researchers has identified
important issues related to learning in and from museums,
established a theoretical foundation for such learning and
begun to build a body of knowledge about its nature. As
the Hand to Hand research double issue attests, children’s
museums are some of the leaders in this arena.
There are still many challenges. The museum field as a
whole and the children’s museum community particularly,
still struggle to meaningfully document the impact of the
museum experience upon those who visit. In terms of
research in children’s museums, time, resources and capacity are tremendous obstacles to meaningfully integrating
research into day-to-day practice. In addition, there is
still a divide between research findings and applications
to practice. Research terminology can be confusing and
unclear, findings often contradict or are overturned in
subsequent studies and findings are sometimes oversimplified and misinterpreted when complex data is synthesized
and communicated. This results in difficulty translating
research findings into concrete practice.
There is another less frequently discussed issue. It is
traditional in educational research to develop a body of
work that explores nuances of very specific research questions that, though connected, spring from questions often
generated independent of practitioners. This approach can
result in each new investigation being functionally and
conceptually separate from the research that preceded it
with little application to practice. A more practice-based
approach would design studies collaboratively that complement, overlap and equally ground theories of social science
with the needs of practitioners. It is insufficient to have a
wealth of research findings about how visitors learn in and
from museums if these findings do not bear any relationship to practice nor are designed to influence it.
The Family Learning Initiative
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis (TCM),
founded in 1925, is the largest children’s museum in the
world. With 433,000 square feet, its eleven major galleries
explore the physical and natural sciences, history, foreign
cultures and the arts, and programs for youth and families,
TCM strives to create extraordinary learning experiences
that have the power to transform the lives of children and
families.
As in many children’s museums where children and
their families have been at the core of their missions, TCM
experiences were historically designed from a child-centered perspective. The role of the family was acknowledged,
Volume 19 Number 1
Research
A. Overstreet/The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
A
Children’s
Museums
The Family Learning Initiative
at The Children’s Museum
of Indianapolis:
Integrating Research,
Practice & Assessment
Lynn D. Dierking, Kirsten Ellenbogen,
Jessica Luke, Institute for Learning
Innovation; Nikki Andersen,
Cathy Donnelly, Kay Cunningham,
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
but primarily in service to the child’s learning. In a timely
and innovative move in 2000, spearheaded by Dr. Jeffrey
H. Patchen, president and CEO of TCM, the institution
drafted a five-year strategic plan designed to shift its mission from being child-centered to family-centered and to
focus on the “creation of extraordinary family learning
experiences.”
Nikki Andersen, director of research and evaluation
at TCM, contacted John H. Falk, president of the Institute for Learning Innovation, and in 2001 TCM and the
institute launched the Family
Learning Initiative, a multi-year
Part Two of a
systemic research, evaluation and
Two-Part Issue
professional development effort
designed to investigate family learning at TCM and the
role that the museum plays in facilitating that learning.
In addition, a fundamental decision was made by the
museum and the institute that an important outcome of
the collaboration would be its influence on practice. By
assessing and identifying strategies for effectively enriching
family learning, TCM staff hoped to gain concrete suggestions for how to enhance their efforts. In addition to Falk,
Institute for Learning Innovation researchers Jessica Luke
and Lynn Dierking and TCM staff established a series of
five long-term goals for the initiative:
• Determine the baseline perceived learning
needs and expectations of visiting families;
• Assess the current impact of TCM’s experiences
on family learning;
• Build internal capacity within staff to facilitate
family learning and conduct meaningful shortand long-term assessments of the influence of
TCM experiences on this learning;
• Create a structure for systematically assessing
long-term impact of all future TCM experiences
on family learning;
• Reinforce and enhance TCM’s role as a leader,
locally and nationally, in free-choice learning in
general and family learning in particular.
These goals would be accomplished through a series
of basic research studies designed to understand family
learning at TCM, evaluation studies to determine the
degree to which family learning was being facilitated there
and professional development activities to support staff in
their efforts to support family learning.
Research Activities
Over the four years of the initiative a series of research
studies included:
1) a baseline investigation of families’ motivations
and expectations for learning at TCM and whether these
motivations and expectations were satisfied (Luke, Dierking & Falk 2001);
2) a focused investigation of families’ experiences in
the Welcome Center, the museum’s orientation area, and
in Carousel, Wishes & Dreams, a permanent exhibition
(Luke, Dierking & Falk 2001); and,
3) a retrospective examination of the impact of two
programs on adolescents’ development and learning over
time (Luke, Dierking, Cohen Jones, Adams & Falk 2002).
The findings as well as the experience of conducting
these studies were invaluable, provided a baseline data set
and a shared sense of the institution’s strengths and weaknesses in this area. Major findings included:
• Adults felt TCM played a valuable role in their
family’s learning.
Spring 2005
2
Children’s
Museums
&
Research
Part Two of a
Two-Part Issue
I n
T h i s
I s s u e
The Family Learning Initiative at The Children’s Museum of
Indianapolis: Integrating Research, Practice & Assessment
Lynn D. Dierking, Kirsten Ellenbogen, Jessica Luke, Institute
for Learning Innovation; Nikki Anderson, Cathy Donnelly, Kay
Cunningham, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis . . . . 1
Museum as Learning Laboratory:
Bringing Research and Practice Together
Karen Knutson and Kevin Crowley, University of Pittsburgh
Center for Learning in Out of School Environments . . 3
Association of Children’s Museums Annual Report
(July 1, 2003-June 30, 2004) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Applying Research to Children’s Museum Exhibits
Mar y Sinker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Promising Practice Award Honorable Mentions 2004:
The Children’s Museum of Houston, The Children’s Museum
of Portsmouth and Staten Island Children’s Museum . . . 8
Correction:
The study Standards of Excellence in Early Childhood:
A Model for Chicago Children’s Museum was written
by Emily Beckstrom, Louise Belmont-Skinner, Leslie Bond,
Jennifer Farrington, Maeryta Medrano, Sam Meisels,
Don Pohlman, Justine Roberts and Fran Stott.
The Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) is a
professional service organization that endeavors to
expand the capacity and further the vision of children’s
museums. ACM’s mission is to bring children and
families together in a new kind of town square where
play inspires creativity and lifelong learning. Membership is primarily children’s museums, but includes
other museums with an interest in both child and
family audiences, individuals and corporate members.
Association of Children’s Museums
1300 L Street N.W., Suite 975
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone (202) 898-1080
Fax (202) 898-1086
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: www.childrensmuseums.org
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
PRESIDENT
Beth Fitzgerald
The Magic House, St. Louis
Children’s Museum
VICE PRESIDENT of
governance
Jeffrey Patchen
The Children’s Museum of
Indianapolis
VICE PRESIDENT of
PROGRAMS
Lynn McMaster
Canadian Children’s Museum
(Hull, Quebec)
VICE PRESIDENT of
MARKETING
Laura Foster
PleaseTouch Museum®
(Philadelphia)
TREASURER
Henry Schulson
Creative Discovery Museum
(Chattanooga)
SECRETARY
Connie Martinez
Children’s Discovery Museum
of San Jose
BOARD MEMBERS (2004-2006)
Julia Bland
Louisiana Children’s Museum
Gwen Crider
Austin Children’s Museum
Peter England
Chicago Children’s Museum
Lindy Hoyer
Omaha Children’s Museum
BOARD MEMBERS (2003-2005)
Andrew Ackerman
Children’s Museum of
Manhattan
Lori Fogarty
Bay Area Discovery Museum
(Sausalito)
Neil Gordon
Boston Children’s Museum
Charlie Walter
Fort Worth Museum of
Science & History
Executive Director
Janet Rice Elman
PAST PRESIDENT
Nan Miller
Science Museum of Virginia
Hand to Hand, a news journal for children’s museum professionals and
others interested in children, families and informal learning, is published
on a quarterly basis by the Association of Children’s Museums. Unsolicited
manuscripts, letters to the editor, artwork and photographs are welcome.
Hand to Hand is a benefit of membership in the Association of Children’s
Museums.
Opinions expressed in this journal are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the position of the Association of Children’s Museums.
EDITOR & DESIGNER
Mary Maher
609 East Market Street, Suite 102A
Charlottesville, Virginia 22902
Phone (434) 295-7603
Fax (434) 295-5045
E-mail: [email protected]
© 2005 Association of Children’s Museums. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission prohibited.
• Prior to their visit, adults had high expectations for
family learning, but no specific learning agendas; afterwards they could reflect on subject-based and social
learning opportunities.
• Two programs, Great Science Adventure Series and
Y-Press, had lasting and meaningful impacts on participants across four broad learning dimensions 1)
perspective and awareness; 2) social development; 3)
interests and motivations; and 4) knowledge and skills.
The programs influenced individual growth, but also
family dynamics and development and adolescents’
connections and contributions to their community.
Evaluation Activities
The initiative also involved a series of evaluation efforts.
In the first year institute researchers evaluated the National
Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Bones: An Exhibit Inside
You (Luke, Dierking, Wadman, Adams & Falk 2002), the
Welcome Center and Carousel. The studies revealed these
findings.
• Bones enhanced adults’ and children’s understanding of the subject and facilitated substantial
social interaction and collaborative learning.
• Carousel promoted child-to-child interactions,
particularly among families with young children.
• Few families interacted with staff in either
exhibit.
• Orientation experiences were adequate although
members and repeat visitors rarely stopped in the
Welcome Center.
• Families’ interactions with Welcome Center staff
were minimal and perfunctory.
Several recommendations emerged to help staff better facilitate family learning. Among those was the need
to shape family expectations and experiences before they
arrive and to better communicate the importance of family learning in order to help families understand the full
range of learning experiences possible at TCM. Marketing
materials now explicitly mention family learning, and staff
members have been specifically trained to facilitate family
learning by initiating conversations and questions. Another
recommendation was to reinforce main learning messages
explicitly, emphasizing what is important to notice/remember/do. This greatly influenced the “big idea” approach
for Dinosphere. The big idea— “Fossils are clues that help
us learn about dinosaurs”—was placed at the entrance to
Dinosphere, repeated in big, bold type across the scrim on
the ramp and repeated three more times in the exhibit.
There is also a series of parent prompts in Playscape, which
communicates to parents how their child is learning/playing in the exhibit and encourages them to take an active
role. Although many other children’s museums have similar
parent prompts, these are reinforced both by the floor staff
and with handouts.
Since major goals of the initiative included building
staff capacity to conduct assessments of family learning
experiences and creating a structure for systematically assessing those experiences, the most intensive evaluation activity
focused on the design, testing and implementation of the
Family Learning Assessment System (FLAS). This system,
developed by the institute in collaboration with museum
staff, is based on a foundation of existing family learning
research conducted in a wide variety of museums and in
particular, upon the specific findings from research studies
the institute conducted at TCM.
FLAS assesses family learning in two ways: a yearly
view across all galleries and an in-depth study of a selected
exhibition. The annual assessment allows staff to quickly
document the extent to which family learning experiences
are encouraged and accommodated in every exhibition,
providing an annual “snapshot” of the state of family
learning and a framework for tracking changes over time.
The in-depth assessment evaluates an exhibition in a more
extensive manner revealing the range and depth of family
learning experiences; the data include interviews with, and
observations of families.
It took a full year of several iterations of drafting,
testing and refinement to develop the instrument. Wendy
Blackwell, former director of education at Port Discovery
in Baltimore, offered her museum to test FLAS. An annual
assessment, conducted in the third year of the study, demonstrated that existing exhibit environments facilitate some
aspects of family learning, even though the exhibits were
not expressly designed to do so. Families naturally engaged
in some family learning behaviors including:
• sharing basic information in all exhibitions;
• engaging in thought-provoking experiences in
all exhibitions;
• interacting with artifacts in basic ways and using objects and reproductions to explore topics
in more depth; and most frequently
• working together as a family when collaborating and problem solving.
The annual assessment also identified areas where
existing exhibits do not strongly support family learning.
Changes or additions that should be considered to enhance
these exhibits included simple changes such as providing
seats for visitor comfort, while also ensuring that such
seating still encouraged adults to be engaged in activities
with their children. This recommendation was used in the
design of upholstered family-sized benches in Dinosphere
that could seat a parent and two small children. These have
been placed in front of many of the computer screens.
Observations suggest that they have made a difference in
encouraging families to interact at the computers. Other
changes were more complex requiring additional staff
training such as learning to design interpretive experiences
that were informal, facilitated interactions and conversations, rather than emphasizing the delivery of information.
An in-depth assessment was conducted in ScienceWorks, a permanent exhibition, and when asked at the
conclusion of their experience, 77 percent of families
with children ages six to nine were able to make a specific
connection between the ways natural and physical science
were present in their everyday world, an overarching
goal of ScienceWorks. Families most often made personal
connections to animals and to family trips or vacation
experiences. However, few families made these connections overtly in conversations during their experience.
This resulted in a recommendation to help families make
connections between science and their everyday lives while
participating in activities. Personal connections were most
often related to animals or family trips/vacations. While
the study did not determine if the connections were made
at the exhibit or once the family left, extra effort to include
such examples may encourage connections.
Professional Development Activities
A major focus during the second year of the initiative
was to build internal capacity about family learning. The
initial approach included a series of four training sessions
to share research results with various departments of TCM,
then to brainstorm implications and new approaches. This
second year was far more process-oriented, and revealed
issues critical to the success of the initiative. For example,
early on it became apparent that some staff members,
particularly those in direct contact with visitors, were not
convinced that focusing on family learning made sense for
a children’s museum. Even more problematic was that some
felt that “we have been doing [this] all along.”
Based on the realization that not all staff was on
board, we took a very different approach towards professional development in the following year. Through
Patchen’s leadership, we focused our activities on training
a cadre of ten Family Learning Leaders, representing staff
educators and exhibit developers, along with staff from
membership, curatorial, visitor and volunteer services.
The ten leaders were carefully selected; many were in
managerial roles. The goals were to build their capacity
in family learning, to help them develop skills to inspire
their staff and ultimately to mentor and coach them in the
principles of family learning. The training was rigorous,
including four two-day seminars, advanced readings and
assignments, field trips and a special project designed to
integrate family learning into the specific day-to-day tasks
of the leader. Institute researchers served as mentors for
the leaders and coached them between seminar visits by
phone and e-mail.
In the fourth and now fifth years of the initiative,
professional development efforts remain focused on supporting Family Learning Leaders as they mentor staff
in their departments and as they play a leadership role
at ACM and AAM, including hosting and facilitating
a Power of Family Learning seminar. Since three of the
leaders are no longer at TCM or have moved into positions where they are less able to mentor staff members,
four new leaders will join the original group and receive
training. Additionally, staff benefit from reading literature
written by Family Learning Leaders. Kay Cunningham’
booklet, which describes the concept of family learning
and why it is important, is given to all staff at orientation.
continued on page 6
3
Museum as Learning Laboratory:
Bringing Research
and Practice Together
Kevin Crowley & Karen Knutson
University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out of School Environments
I
n the first article of this two-part series, we argued that
museums are fruitful locations for learning research,
research that can improve museum experiences as well
as inform broader questions in the learning sciences.
We described how we have built a research and practice
partnership with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. In
this, the second article, we describe processes of how we
have worked together to support family learning in the
new exhibits at the museum. In particular, we talk about
how ongoing learning research has been embedded into
the museum’s exhibit prototyping and signage development processes.
design process is figuring out how to be openly critical.
The blitz study facilitates an open critique by giving the
team the voices (experiences) of real visitors to lend weight
to a critique, while not authoritatively closing down a
discussion with absolute findings. The blitz study helps
the prototyping process remain open and experimental.
Finding a Place for Parents in a Children’s Museum:
The Role of Signage
Where do good interactive exhibits come from? Do
they come from moments of inspiration or from thorough
analysis of educational concepts? Certainly great exhibits
can come from inspiration. We can point to many instances
of exhibits that sprang from the mind of an inspired individual: they are artistic creations. The best of them also
provide the visitor a way to connect with powerful ideas
within a discipline. Another approach is to begin with
the education plan and work towards experiences that
will accomplish it. This approach, most often followed by
teams doing the classic three-year, federally-funded traveling exhibition, leads to an educationally relevant learning
environment. The best of these also provide powerful
visitor experiences.
No matter which approach a museum takes in the design of its interactive exhibits, there comes a crucial point at
which the educational or artistic vision must meet the real
time experience of an audience. In many cases the first suggestion of real visitor experience comes at the design table.
Museum staff are passionate. They bring to the table their
own ideals about education and their own beliefs about
what visitors do. Built on their own learning history and
memorable interactions they happened to see on the floor,
many museum staffers have an ideal visitor in mind. This is
the visitor they design for, and the visitor they judge their
success against. Strangely enough, this ideal visitor also
seems to embody their owners’ particular perspectives and
biases about museums. When debates emerge around the
project table, these ideal visitors are often brought forth to
defend a point of view. Museum design conversations can
sometimes get bogged down when people start “hijacking
the visitor” in this way (MacDonald 2002).
In many if not most museum situations the visitor’s
perspective enters the design equation only in these idealized hypothetical conversations. In more fortunate museums, front-end evaluation helps to bring at the very least,
the interests, attitudes and prior knowledge of visitors to
the design process. The case is quite different for science
museums, where, in many cases, some kind of “on the
floor” prototyping is incorporated into the design process.
This is true also of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh,
where we have been part of the process of building an
organizational culture of prototyping that grounds the
creative design process in a systematic analysis of educational impact—using the experiences of real visitors with
mocked up versions of new exhibits.
The University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in
Out of School Environments (UPCLOSE) researchers’
contributions to the prototyping process revolve around
the “blitz” study.1 These are quick, turn-around studies
that provide useable information to coordinate design and
learning objectives throughout prototyping cycles. The
typical blitz study occurs in a two-week window. When a
prototype or sign concept is ready to go to the floor, the
exhibit team and researchers brainstorm a few questions
for study. The research team designs a simple study that
often involves videotaping about 30 families using the
exhibit. Working with undergraduate research assistants,
the researchers do a quick coding pass at the data, tabulate
indices of success, categories of talk, types of interactions
or whatever else the team decided they wanted to analyze.
© Albert Vecerka/Esto
Prototypes and Blitz Studies
The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh’s Nursery Exhibit was
designed by Springboard Architecture Design Communication
with additional components and artwork designed by Josh
Space, Camille Utterback and Karen Mincemoyer.
So the question remains, why does the partnership
work? Trust is the key to the partnership.This
partnership did not emerge fully formed in the last
six months. We have been working together for eight
years. The partnership has grown and changed. The
sense of trust (and friendship) that has emerged is
central. It is central to both the management of the
partnership but also to the way that we work together
on prototyping. Trust is needed to share failure. For
many museums evaluation is something that marks the
success of a project. For us, much of our research occurs during the process, and it has taken some time for
both parties to become comfortable with sharing
a concept or a prototype that may not succeed.
The emphasis in the blitz study is on speed and highly
relevant information that will be needed for decision-making. Unlike our other research studies, blitz studies are not
designed to be published as peer-reviewed articles. We do
not spend months developing detailed coding schemes, we
do not go through several rounds of pilot work to develop
assessment instruments and we do not write formal reports.
In many cases the data we collect is used to inform later,
more involved research studies.
Blitz studies produce real data. But the data is not
the bulk of the contribution of blitz studies. The data
provides a concrete starting point for a conversation between the team and the researchers. The researchers dash
off a one- or two-page handout that summarizes patterns
in the data, interesting interactions and some noteworthy
quotes from visitor talk. But these handouts do not draw
conclusions. The interpretation and analysis of the findings
take place in large part around the team meeting table.
The idea is that the researchers are not being positioned
as the definitive experts on learning. The whole team is
engaged in experimentation. Anyone on the team can
pose hypotheses, make inferences and challenge what the
data might mean. Although the blitz studies have certainly
produced data that has helped the team to make specific
design choices, perhaps the larger impact has been through
the growth of a prototyping culture at the museum, where
staff work creatively, expect revision and hold up their work
for empirical scrutiny.
One of the most difficult moments in a team-based
Throughout the prototyping process, conversations
among researchers and museum staff began coalescing
around the role of parents. How should we think about
parents in a children’s museum? UPCLOSE research studies had begun describing how parents could guide and
extend children’s discipline-specific learning in museums.
The prototyping and blitz studies had provided many
powerful examples of parents and children collaborating
effectively. But they had also provided many examples of
missed opportunities: parents turning into teachers who
controlled the interaction; children working solo while
their parents stood back and tuned out; or parents who
tried to become involved but could not, for one reason or
another, find a way to engage effectively with their child
and the exhibit.
How can we make a place for parents in a children’s
museum? The first step was to make the environment and
the experience interesting to adults as well as children. We
were already working on this as part of the prototyping
process. But it soon become clear that exhibits and experiences were only one part of creating a place for parents.
The other part required some direct communication
between the museum and the visiting parent. We soon
realized that we needed some signage.
“Signage” is a fighting word in many museums. The
actual mechanics are hard but clear. There are lots of resources to help with the challenge of explaining complex
concepts and subtle curatorial intent in 50 words or less
at an eighth-grade reading level (e.g., Serrell 1996). But
what is not as clear as the mechanics is that those 50 words
represent a tangible statement about who the museum
thinks it is and how they think about their visitors (Bal
1996; Roberts 1997). Despite the difficulty and importance of the task (or perhaps because of this), signage is
often slapped on to an exhibition at the last minute.
The museum decided to embark upon the unusual
course of putting signage through the complete prototyping process. Starting one year prior to opening the new
exhibits, the director, developers, designers, educators and
researchers met several times per month to conceptualize
how parents could connect with their children in each
exhibit space. Voicing our opinions, often divergent and
always deeply held, it became clear that we had touched
upon the core of our beliefs about museum work. We were
not just talking about those 50 words. We were talking
about the ideal roles of museum visitors, of parents, children, families and the roles of the museum and museum
staff in creating, managing and mediating an experience.
The initial meetings were long, highly animated
and sometimes even painful. Two new staff members,
Amy Smith and Marti Louw, were assigned to develop
and design signage for the new museum. They walked
somewhat unbiased into a group of people, both staff and
researchers, who had earlier discovered where individual
points of view met, or were in conflict. Without strongly
drawn sides, these two were able to serve as outsiders,
and to ask the pointed or naive questions that pushed the
various participants around the table to engage in lively
philosophical discussions about museums and mediation.
After several of these meetings, the group developed
an organizing structure for the museum’s signage. Signage
was seen as an opportunity to communicate with visitors,
and an opportunity to enrich the museum experience.
There are four levels of signage in the museum. The
first two types are intended to provide visitors with the
continued on page 6
4
The 21st Century Learner
The Continuum Begins with Early Learning
Dear Friend of ACM:
Each year ACM works to improve services for
its members and to promote the value of children’s
museums. In the fiscal year 2004, ACM made huge
strides in these efforts through leadership initiatives
that broke new ground and engaged members, citizens and learning communities.
Beginning on September 18, 2003, ACM convened the 21st Century Learner Symposium. The
two-day symposium, held in Washington, D.C.,
included an audience of 300 librarians, educators and
museum professionals who braved the winds of Hurricane Isabel to advance a dialogue on early learning
and its relationship to lifelong learning.
The 21st Century Learner Symposium was just
the kind of town square event we envisioned—a
discussion on cutting edge research that led participants to think, plan and act as coordinated
groups dedicated to enhancing the learning lives of
children, parents, extended families and thereby local communities. Renowned researchers, educators
and cultural literacy professionals and practitioners
who participated in the symposium confirmed the
significant role that children’s museums and libraries
will play in creating a community of lifelong learners.
A few months later in January, the seven Go East!
traveling exhibits, which were in development for
more than a year, opened at their producing children’s
museums across the United States. Born of a desire
to increase American children’s understanding of
Asian cultures and a $7 million grant, the Freeman
Foundation Asian Exhibit Initiative, Go East!, is a
tremendous gift to the field. We are proud of ACM’s
role in administering the effort. Furthermore, these
cultural exhibits—with a wide range of topics such
as Korean music, a history of Hmong migration,
Vietnamese folktales, Chinese Peking Opera and
Japanese nature celebrations, pop-culture and art—
reflect the philosophy behind the children’s museum
movement: play and interactivity inspire a love for
lifelong learning.
The Louisiana Children’s Museum hosted InterActivity 2004: Strategies for a Changing World. Held
in New Orleans on May 3-5, ACM’s annual conference offered participants a balance of serious discussion on museum sustainability in a new economic
era and lighthearted fun in the Big Easy. Nationally
known keynote speakers, representing such diverse
fields as entertainment, economics and psychology,
spoke on the power of creativity and engagement to
shape the future of children and their communities.
We also presented the 2004 MetLife Foundation
and Association of Children’s Museums Promising
Practice Awards, which recognize innovative museum
programs, and in 2004 the foundation made it possible to grant a previous winner the means to train
others to replicate its program.
ACM welcomed more than 540 attendees to
the conference, the largest turnout since 2001. From
fiscal 2003 to fiscal year 2004, ACM membership
increased by fifteen percent, with total membership
at 440 strong. Greater participation and investment
in ACM enhances the growth of the services we are
able to provide. We will continue to work with and
promote allied organizations; provide valuable technical assistance to members; track milestones through
ACM surveys and publications; and continue to seek
new ways to help ACM members flourish as town
squares where children’s creativity and hands-on,
engaged learning is nourished.
As you read this report, please keep in mind an
important point: We are driven to increase ACM’s
capacity only so that we can better serve our member
museums, our constituents and the public interest in
children’s museums.
Janet Rice Elman
Beth Fitzgerald
Executive Director
President
2004-2006 September 18-19, 2003
Washington, D.C.
The 21st Century Learner Symposium brought together representatives from the museum, library, public
television, early learning and lifelong learning communiAssociation of
ties to encourage the development or strengthening of
Children’s Museums
local learning collaborations. Symposium attendees were
encouraged to attend in teams of community partners (e.g.
Annual Report
a representative from each field—museums, libraries and
July 1, 2003 - June 30, 2004
public broadcasting).
The symposium offered a unique opportunity to
FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
hear nationally renowned experts in child psychology,
Bromel, Grice & Huyett, P.A. performed the
gerontology, pediatrics, library science and children’s
fiscal year 2004 financial audit for ACM.
museums present the latest research on how people learn.
Lose the flash cards and rote memorization and substitute
ACM Statement of Financial Position
experiential learning was the message about a process that
June 30, 2004
starts long before formal classroom instruction and is a
continuum that extends far beyond the academic experiAssets
ence and well into old age. The new paradigm makes
Current Assets
museums and libraries places to play and to learn.
Cash and cash equivalents
$
290,765
Conference speakers were a who’s who in the study
Grants receivable
575,903
of learning throughout the continuum.
Accounts receivable
14,621
• Dr. Alison Gopnik, a leader in the study of infant
Prepaid expenses 1,023
learning and author of Scientist in the Crib explained the
Total Current Assets 882,312
latest neuroscience knowledge about brain “plasticity” or
Property and Equipment
ability to change through experience.
Furniture, fixtures and equipment
57,025
• Renowned pediatrician and child expert Dr. T.
Less accumulated depreciation
54,488
Berry Brazelton and Dr. Joshua Sparrow of the Brazelton
2,537
Touchpoints Center at Children’s Hospital in Boston
talked about how innate knowledge opens the door to
Other Assets
acquired knowledge when children are given the freedom
Investments
349,053
and the encouragement to explore through play.
Deposits 3,100
• Drs. Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy
Intangible assets
22,572
Hirsh-Pasek, presented scientific evidence from their
374,725
book Einstein Never Used Flash Cards: How Our Children
Total Assets $ 1,259,574
REALLY Learn—And Why They Need to Play More and
Liabilities and Net Assets
Memorize Less.
Current liabilities
• Dr. Gene Cohen, Director of the Center on Aging,
Accounts payable and
Health & Humanities at The George Washington Uniaccrued expenses $
23,622
versity and author of The Creative Age, talked about adult
Deferred dues
96,180
brain development and the increased capacity to learn at
Total Current Liabilities
119,802
age 50 and extending well into the late 70s.
• Executive Director and CEO of AARP William
Net Assets
D.
Novelli
revealed that workers possessing intellectual
Unrestricted
516,097
capacity
and
academic training are now a more significant
Temporarily restricted 623,675
segment of the United States employed population and
Total Net Assets 1,139,772
will continue to grow.
Total Liabilities and
The symposium follows a professional learning conNet Assets
$ 1,259,574
tinuum that was launched with a conference in 2001 by
IMLS and may lead to future symposia and conferences
on lifelong learning.
To underscore the
ACM Statement of Activities
importance
of local colJune 30, 2004
laborations, the convenTemporarily
ing symposium partners
Total
Restricted
Unrestricted
announced the availabilSupport and revenue
ity of three $5,000 seed
Grants and contributions
$ 78,639
$ 135,596
$ 214,235
grants, that were awarded
on a competitive basis to
Revenue
partnerships with the poMembership dues
209,400
---
209,400
tential to impact children
Publications
36,002
---
36,002
and families communityEvent fees
236,757
---
236,757
wide. These grant recipiSponsorship
37,796
--- 37,796
ents will serve as models of
Other revenue
2,015
---
2,015
how museums, libraries,
521,970
---
521,970
public broadcasters and
others can join forces to
Net assets released from restrictions
build a lifelong learning
Satisfaction of program
community.
restrictions 389,966
(389,966)
--The 21st Century
Learner Symposium was
Total Support and Revenue
$ 990,575
$ 254,370
$ 736,205
convened by Association
of Children’s Museums;
Expenses
Association for Library
Program services
814,060
---
814,060
Service to Children, a
Supporting services
---
---
--division of the American
Management and general
116,948
---
116,948
Library Association; CivFundraising
4,582
---
4,582
il Society Institute; and
Total expenses
$ 935,590
---
$ 935,590
Families and Work In
Change in Net Assets $ 54,985
($254,370)
($199,385)
stitute. Co-hosted by the
Institute of Museum and
Net Assets—beginning of year
461,112
878,045
1,339,157
Library Services (IMLS).
Net Assets—end of year
$ 516,097
$ 623,675
The accompanying notes are an integral part of these financial statements.
$ 1,139,772
5
The Freeman Foundation Asian Exhibit Initiative
Administered by ACM
A 2003 survey commissioned by ACM indicated that
many children in the United States know a thing or two
about Asian cuisine, but aren’t familiar with many other
aspects of culture on the world’s largest and most populous continent. The study suggested, that while the vast
majority (97%) of American parents view their children’s
education about international cultures as important, most
of their children are unfamiliar with Asian art, traditions
and culture.
To engage children and families in learning about
Asian culture, the Freeman Foundation invested a $7
million grant to fund the Asian Exhibit Initiative, which
offers seven museum adventures that allow children and
families to “Go East” and sample such delicacies as Korean
music, Vietnamese folktales, Chinese legendary heroes,
Hmong migration, as well as Japanese animation, seasonal
celebrations, and popular culture. Administered by ACM
and produced by nine of its museum members, the seven
exhibits promise to excite children about Asia.
All seven exhibits opened at producing museums in
January 2004 to rave reviews from visitors and the press.
In July, the exhibits began touring the United States. By
the time the Asian Exhibit Initiative has completed its
run in 2008, the exhibits will have visited a total of 77
children’s museums. For a comprehensive description of
Go East!, please refer to the Hand to Hand spring 2004
issue (volume 18, number 1).
InterActivity 2004: Strategies for a Changing World
May 3-5, 2004
New Orleans, Louisiana
Host: Louisiana Children’s Museum
Keynote speakers addressed economic, technological and social changes in the world and presented three
divergent approaches to ensure that creativity, learning
and children’s interests are not lost in the shuffle. Kevin
Clash, the voice and puppeteer of “Sesame Street’s” Elmo,
described television’s potential to shape attitudes and influence public health around the globe. Richard Florida,
Ph.D., made the case that creativity is the key to ensuring
lasting economic and social stability in small towns and
big cities in the United States and abroad. As a follow-up,
Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen asserted that contributing
time and money to projects that build social capital and
individual imagination is one of the best investments a
corporation can make to increase profits and overall success.
And Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Ph.D., and Roberta Golinkoff,
Ph.D., discussed the importance of Play=Learning as a
gentle and effective alternative to over-stimulation, infant
advice guides and standards of learning that influence the
lives of children. ACM also named Clash the 2004 ACM
Great Friend to Kids Award recipient.
Metlife Foundation & Association of
Children’s Museums Promising Practice Awards
At InterActivity, ACM and the MetLife Foundation
awarded the sixth annual Promising Practice Awards to
innovative children’s museum projects that strategically
position institutions to thrive in a changing world. Totaling
$20,000, one of the awards was given to a museum with
an annual operating budget of $500,000 or less.
• Grand Prize Winner: Please Touch Museum®
(Philadelphia) won for its ACES program, a work-based
learning, enrichment and mentoring program for at-risk,
low-income teenagers.
• Prize Winner: Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh was
recognized for UPCLOSE, the permanent, on-site learning
laboratory with partner University of Pittsburgh that studies
how families use and learn in the museum.
• Prize Winner: Children’s Museum of the Brazos
Valley (Bryan, Texas) accepted an award for its Storytelling
Guild program, which is composed of allied community
service organizations dedicated to increasing literacy.
• Madison Children’s Museum received a $10,000
Promising Practice Replication Award for its First Feats
“green exhibit.” The museum will use the award to host a
training session at InterActivity 2005 and to create a Web
site on environment-friendly exhibit design practices to
benefit the field.
across the United States and Canada, museums extend
the value of membership. The program follows the calendar year, participation is voluntary and valid through an
annual fee to ACM. Museums may establish the level of
membership that includes the reciprocal benefit; however
ACM requires that the membership must be priced at a
minimum of $100.
ACM Member Services & Promotion
Executive Committee 2002-2004
Through a variety of outlets, ACM advances the work
of children’s museums on behalf of children in communities
across the country.
Publications & Member Resources
• Collective Vision: Starting and Sustaining a
Children’s Museum
• Capturing the Vision: A Companion Volume
to Collective Vision
• ACM Annual Membership Directory
• ACM Salary Survey
• Vision Marketing Kit
• Hand to Hand, ACM’s Quarterly Journal
• The Forum, ACM’s Quarterly Newsletter
• E-Update, ACM’s Periodic Electronic Newsletter
• CHILDMUS, ACM’s Public Listserv
• ACM’s Web site www.ChildrensMuseums.org
Member Technical Assistance
ACM maintains a comprehensive database of statistical information on its member museums, which is
complied through an annual membership survey. In fiscal
year 2004, ACM staff performed more than 200 database
queries according to individual member needs. Full museum members are entitled to six free database queries per
year; emerging museum member are entitled to three. Additionally, staff answered a variety of questions related to
establishing nonprofit status, strategic planning, museum
policies and procedures, and networking among members
and contacts at related organizations.
Affinity Program
School Specialty, Inc. (SSI) is one of the largest suppliers of supplemental education supplies and materials
for pre-kindergarten through twelfth-grade children in the
United States. In partnership with SSI, ACM members
receive a 10% discount on total supply purchases from
SSI’s online store, which offers more than 80,000 items,
and free delivery on all shipments.
ACM Reciprocal Membership Program
In 2004, more than 130 ACM museum members
participated in the ACM Reciprocal Membership Program. By participating, museums agree to honor museum
memberships within the ACM reciprocal network. By
granting children and families admission to museums
ACM Support and Revenue
Year Ended June 30, 2004
500,000
ACM Expenses
Year Ended June 30, 2004
47%
450,000
400,000
400,000
350,000
350,000
300,000
300,000
250,000
24%
21%
250,000
200,000
200,000
150,000
150,000
100,000
100,000
50,000
3%
40%
4%
36,002
37,796
236,757
209,400
468,605
Grants & Membership Publications Event Fees Sponsorships
Dues
Contributions
1%
2,015
Interest
25%
17%
13%
5%
50,000
371,030
Conferences
48,685
Promiisng
Practice Award
236,539
Asian
Initiative
157,806
Member
Services
121,530
Management &
Fund Raising
Media Relations
As an advocate and resource, ACM serves as the
primary point of contact for media inquiries about the
children’s museum field. As ACM’s spokesperson, Executive Director Janet Rice Elman is frequently asked to
comment on trends and events in the field and to offer
insights into the growing industry. ACM also serves as a
clearinghouse for information and statistics complied from
the ACM Annual Membership Directory.
2004 ACM Board of Directors
Nan Miller, President
Science Museum of Virginia (Richmond)
Kathy Dwyer Southern, Vice President of Governance
National Children’s Museum (Washington)
Lynn McMaster, Vice President of Programs
Canadian Children’s Museum (Quebec)
Beth Fitzgerald, Vice President of Marketing
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum
Laura Foster, Treasurer/Secretary
Please Touch Museum® (Philadelphia)
Lou Casagrande, Past President
Boston Children’s Museum
Janet Rice Elman, Ex-officio
Association of Children’s Museums
ACM Board Members
Gwen Crider, Austin Children’s Museum
Al DeSena, Exploration Place (Wichita)
Lori Fogarty, Bay Area Discovery Museum (Sausalito)
Jeffrey Patchen, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Henry Schulson, Creative Discovery Museum
(Chattanooga)
Carol Scott, Kidspace Children’s Museum (Pasadena)
Charlie Walter, Fort Worth Museum of
Science and History
Jane Werner, Pittsburgh Children’s Museum
2003-2004 ACM Supporters
Freeman Foundation Asian Exhibit Initiative
Freeman Foundation
Capacity Building
Civil Society Institute
MetLife Foundation & ACM Promising Practice Award
and Promising Practice Replication Award
MetLife Foundation
Sponsor Museum Members
Boston’s Children’s Museum
The Magic House, St. Louis Children’s Museum
Brooklyn Children’s Museum
Minnesota Children’s Museum
Exploration Place
National Children’s Museum
Kidspace Children’s Museum
Please Touch Museum®
Corporate Benefactor Member
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Annual Fund
Carol Scott
Lou Casagrande
Beth Fitzgerald
Nan Miller
SmallExhibits.com
Gwen Crider
Lori Fogardy
Jeff Patchen
Kathy Dwyer Southern
Al DeSena
Laura Foster
Carleen Rhodes
Charlie Walter
Janet Rice Elman
Lynn McMaster
Henry Schulson
Jane Werner
Peter England
InterActivity 2004 Supporters
Julia Bland
Kids First Coalition for Quality Children’s Media
The Children’s Museum of Houston
Louisiana Children’s Museum
The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis
Please Touch Museum®
Civil Society Institute
21st Century Learner Symposium Funders
Civil Society Institute
Excelligence Learning Corporation
Institute of Museum and Library Service
6
Museum as Learning Laboratory
continued from page 3
minimal information needed to engage with the exhibits.
Advanced organizers are large-scale graphics and text that
mark major exhibition areas. Information signage includes
safety and usage instructions. These kinds of signs have
always existed in the children’s museum.
The next two types are the main focus of the signage
prototyping process. Disciplinary content signage is intended
to provide parents with background information about the
content of exhibits. The idea here is that parents often have
the interest and opportunity to learn about what their child
is exploring. These signs address the parent as a learner in
adult terms. Parents will be stronger educational partners
for their children if they continue their own lifelong education in art, science and culture. Signage that speaks directly
to parents as learners has become part of the museum’s
overall effort to make itself interesting and comfortable
for all members of the family, not just for the children.
The final level of signs are called interaction scaffolds
for parents. These signs are intended to seed parent-child
conversations, suggest novel manipulations and otherwise
encourage parents to engage with their children and the
exhibit. These signs are often small, direct and placed at
the center of the action where parents will notice them
when they are engaged with the children. Sometimes this
took some work to figure out. For example, in the early
childhood space we ended up projecting interaction scaffolds on the floor because parents were mostly spending
their time bending down to be with their crawling babies.
This approach to signage is intended to be a tool rather
than a prescription. Not all spaces need all four types of
signs. Furthermore, the look, the contents and the system
are developed to match the look, feel and concepts of each
of the exhibit spaces.
Conclusion
As we write, the new museum has been open for
four months. UPCLOSE and the Children’s Museum
of Pittsburgh are now at the beginning phases of a year
of research that will feed into developing the next round
of prototyping and signage. Studying visitors in the new
museum’s spaces suggests that some of what we developed
appears to be working while other elements clearly need
to be revised. This is perhaps the most important element
of our partnership. We have agreed that the process of developing a museum should never be complete. Revision is
expected as we learn more about who our visiting families
are, how they use the exhibits and what we, as a museum,
believe about our role in promoting family learning.
So the question remains, why does the partnership
work? Trust is the key to the partnership. This partnership
did not emerge fully formed in the last six months. We
have been working together for eight years. The partnership
has grown and changed. The sense of trust (and friendship) that has emerged is central. It is central to both the
management of the partnership but also to the way that
we work together on prototyping. Trust is needed to share
failure. For many museums evaluation is something that
marks the success of a project. For us, much of our research
occurs during the process, and it has taken some time for
both parties to become comfortable with sharing a concept
or a prototype that may not succeed.
But perhaps the most important key to our relationship overlap is our core organizational missions. The
museum strongly values research and has incorporated
research as a key agenda item. The UPCLOSE mission
is centered on the study of learning in informal environments. We don’t dabble in the study of visitors, we don’t
want to do an occasional study at the museum; research in
museums and other informal settings is our core mission.
At some level we are outsiders functioning as insiders at the
museum. Over the course of our work together we have
developed a shared set of understandings that facilitate our
ongoing discussions of large issues like supporting parent
mediation in a children’s museum. At the same time we
have the distance and organizational remove to be able to
offer honest commentary without institutional barriers
that sometimes hinder internal evaluators.
In this article we have described two examples of how
research has become embedded in the museum’s prototyping and signage processes. Our focus in this article has been
ways that the museum has utilized the researchers with an
eye towards improving museum practice. However, there
is another story to tell as well: It is the story of how our
learning research has become more connected to the cog-
nitive ecology of childhood. We began this two-part series
of articles arguing that museums are increasingly being
identified as potential learning laboratories. As the learning
sciences realize the importance of context and family structures in “basic” learning theory, there is an exploding need
for places to do research on families engaged in everyday,
authentic learning activities. We’ve seen the interest as we
and other researchers present findings from our museum
work to the learning research community. We think the
time has come for children’s museums to become more
than merely consumers of learning research. They have a
significant responsibility to become part of producing the
next generation of knowledge about how it is that children
learn and develop as individuals, as parts of families and as
members of larger communities.
References
Bal, M. Double Exposure: the Subject of Cultural Analysis. London: Routledge, 1996.
Macdonald, S. Behind the Scenes at the Science Museum.
London: Berg Publishers, 2002.
Roberts, L. From Knowledge to Narrative: Educators
and the Changing Museum. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1997
Serrell, B. Exhibit Labels: An Interpretative Approach.
Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 1996.
1
We borrow the name “Blitz Study” and some of the concept
from Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Automated Learning and Discovery, a university/corporate research partnership.
Kevin Crowley, Ph.D. is director of UPCLOSE and
associate professor of Cognitive Studies, School of Education
at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on family
learning in out of school environments, and he is particularly
interested in the development of early scientific literacy, and
the emergence of naive theories of understanding the discipline
of science. [email protected]
Karen Knutson, Ph.D., is associate director, Arts & Humanities UPCLOSE, and director of research and evaluation
at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Her research is focused
on visitor learning and organizational practices in museums.
Her work examines how disciplinary beliefs and values impact and change the design of exhibitions, and how visitors
use museums to support their learning. [email protected]
The Family Learning Initiative
continued from page 2
Integrating Research and Evaluation
Findings into Practice
An essential ingredient of this collaboration is that all
efforts are designed to specifically influence and improve
practice. For example, FLAS continually assesses family
learning experiences, identifies enriching strategies and
provides concrete suggestions to staff for how to enhance
their efforts.
TCM synthesized research findings while developing
Dinosphere, the museum’s newest permanent exhibititon
and the first in which family learning was fully integrated
from the start. In the first year of the initiative, two researchers joined the Dinosphere team, attending team meetings
in person when possible, and participating at other times
by e-mail and phone. They played a number of key roles:
1) they reviewed early ideas and provided advice/review
for ways to integrate family learning principles into experiences; 2) they facilitated brainstorming opportunities
for specific aspects of experiences; 3) they coached and
mentored team members about developing and testing
interactives and writing family-friendly labels; and 4) they
suggested readings and examples of other national efforts to
investigate for useful ideas. Both researchers had worked as
educators in museums prior to becoming researchers. They
participated in the creative process, yet brought objectivity
and experience from other institutions, which the team
found helpful.
In year three these institute researchers became even
more active members of the Dinosphere team, reviewing
design drawings, label copy and anticipated visitor pathways. Researcher Kirsten Ellenbogen was a former exhibit
developer at the Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago
and was able to bring additional expertise to the team at
this critical juncture.
Opportunities & Challenges
The initiative has just entered its fifth year. Have its
goals been accomplished and if so, what has been learned?
If not, why not? What challenges and opportunities have
emerged through the collaboration?
At TCM, there is strong institutional commitment
to integrating research and evaluation into all museum
practice. For the Institute for Learning Innovation, this
initiative represents one of its most important projects.
Although by design, the institute’s role is less prominent
as Family Learning Leaders assume increased responsibility for supporting family learning, institute researchers
continue to work closely with staff and are undertaking
a new effort this year to integrate family learning into
Web-based activities, both on the museum’s Web site,
but also through virtual experiences in galleries. Institute
researchers will work closely with staff to define design
parameters for on-line activities and virtual experiences
that will facilitate family learning. They will also collaboratively explore how to build meaningful assessment
into Web-based efforts.
Despite the overall success of the effort, there have
been challenges, many of them unanticipated. For example, terminology was a problem in our research and
evaluation activities. The institute entered the collaboration with a distinct understanding of what was meant by
research as distinguished from evaluation. After the first
year, it became clear that these distinctions were not as
obvious to museum staff and consequently, as a team, we
have had to work together to be more precise about when
we are engaging in fundamental research (How do families
use TCM to accomplish their learning goals?), evaluation
(Does ScienceWorks support family learning? If so, in what
ways? If not, why?) or some blending of the two.
As described earlier we had to make fairly dramatic
changes with regard to professional development. Our initial approach of hosting a series of training efforts to share
research results throughout TCM departments was not
successful. Developing a cadre of Family Learning Leaders, representing diverse staff, worked far more effectively.
Probably the most interesting challenge though was
that both partners underestimated what it would take
to become family-centered rather than child-centered.
These challenges were both substantive and obvious. For
example, the need to rethink typical design parameters
of children’s museums with their focus on child-sized
furniture, physical spaces and child-focused content, to
considering more nuanced issues such as ensuring that
interpreters looked at children and adults and think
about developmental appropriateness for adults also.
Often simple changes made all the difference. Prior to
the initiative, a typical greeting when families arrived was,
“What are your children interested in?” but now visitor
service staff ask, “What do you like to do together as a
family?” This subtle, yet as we have discovered, not so
subtle distinction can have a profound effect on the family
museum experience.
Five years ago TCM leadership decided that the role
of family learning in a rapidly changing society was too
important a goal for a lifelong, free-choice learning institution to ignore. They set out to change their institution,
and fortunately the Institute for Learning Innovation
was invited early on to help shape and collaborate on
this initiative. Institute and museum staff are hopeful
that this effort represents one approach and set of tools
to understand and tap into the power of family learning
so that children’s museums can truly become settings for
meaningful learning.
The Family Learning Initiative has been an extremely
collaborative project between the Institute for Learning Innovation and The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. Lynn
Dierking, associate director, Institute for Learning Innovation, has been on the team since the project’s inception, as has
TCM’s Nikki Andersen, director of research & evaluation,
Kay Cunningham, vice president for education & experience
development and Cathy Donnelly, exhibit developer. Kirsten
Ellenbogen, senior researcher at the Institute for Learning
Innovation, was project director in years three and four and
Jessica Luke, senior researcher, was project director in years
one and two. We would also like to acknowledge the efforts
of the seven original Family Learning Leaders: Leslie Power,
Debbie Young, Ieva Grundy, Tristine Perkins, Jenny Burch,
Stuart Lowry and Betty Perry.
7
Research serves to make building stones out
T
ouring the showroom of a major toy manufacturer
a number of years ago, I was delighted to see a new
line of well-detailed, very robust dinosaur figures, just
right for enlivening a young child’s fantasy (and power!)
play. Sharing each package along with the beautiful dinosaurs, however, were chunky people in “caveman” dress.
Puzzled, I turned to the guide and said, “But there weren’t
any people living at the time of the dinosaurs!” He grinned
sheepishly and said, “That’s exactly what the kids said when
we toured them through last week!” So, I asked, why did
they include a person with each dinosaur they sold? Well,
to increase play value.
There was important learning in that experience that
has informed my role as an exhibit developer. I realized
what a responsibility we have to children: quite simply, one
of our jobs as adults is to introduce children to the worldas-it-is. We can’t just throw away what is known and add in
new, untrue things because it might be more fun. Though
“let’s pretend” and fantasy play are important, we are entrusted to provide children with a well-researched exhibit
foundation, to help them experience and understand that
blue is blue and water is wet and that there weren’t people
when dinosaurs roamed the earth. We have to get it right
so that they can use our base as a point of departure. Of
course, as they get carried away in play, children are going
to take those same model dinosaurs and find some smallscale people figures and join them all together—the same
way they’ll lay the dinosaurs on the floor and carefully cover
them with a tissue so they can go to sleep. Fantasy play
is terrific, and should be encouraged in all ways—but in
a museum, building a framework of reality is important.
Three A’s
The underpinning of a good exhibit is good research.
Research helps to both broaden and narrow our focus.
Obviously, there is a difference between doing research
and applying it. In this article, I am talking about applying
research to an exhibit while foundation stones are gathered
and assembled into an exhibit plan. At this stage the exhibit developer relies on the research of others—scientists,
thinkers, doers, writers, educators—who have looked at
a topic, studied it, considered how it relates to children’s
lives and development. Applying this sort of research isn’t
a substitute for more direct research with kids, but it is a
precursor to it as we seek to determine the “Three A’s” of
exhibit development research: Is it accurate? Is it adequate
in scope? Is it appropriate for our audience?
Accurate
What is known about this topic? What are the facts
and figures? Who are the experts? What are the icons?
What are the issues? Diving into a new topic is thrilling.
It involves reading books, articles and Web sites; looking
at pictures, diagrams and maps; and talking to people who
work in this field, including doing research and forming
their own opinions on what is known about the topic. As
new ideas, details and views are discovered, enthusiasm for
the topic grows right along with the increase in knowledge.
Distilling all this information into the reality of an exhibit
concept and then into a series of exhibit experiences is
a guaranteed brain stretcher (and, quite possibly, also
ensures bored dinner companions as you talk about your
latest interest). Immersion in the topic is an enjoyable and
necessary first step.
Adequate
There are two very simple problems with exhibit
research: knowing where to begin and knowing when to
stop. Most exhibit topics are absolutely huge, whether a
concrete topic like dinosaurs or a much fuzzier topic such
as diversity. Researching the topic helps define the boundaries—it shows you the scope of the topic, as well as where
the edges are. The size of the pie is seen, the flavor of pie
is determined and then the decision is made about which
piece of pie will be presented. Is that single slice adequate?
In narrowing the topic, have the most important elements
been kept? Will children (and their adult companions)
have enough to delve into so that they, too, are enthused
about the topic?
Appropriate
Not only does the exhibit topic require careful study to
ensure that it is accurate in detail, nuance and culture—and
adequate in scope—but so does the audience. Our visitors
come in all ages and sizes. Does the topic match the audi-
of stumbling blocks. —Arthur D. Little
Applying Research to Children’s
Museum Exhibits
Mary Sinker
ence? Will this concept be grasped by a five-year-old? Will
an eight-year-old still be interested? We have to ensure that
the concepts are educationally appropriate for the target age
group and are also understandable at a range of levels (and
in a variety of ways). We have to be confident that children
are physically capable of using each exhibit interface we’re
planning; that we are matching their emerging skills. Can
a three-year-old reach that handle? When can a child pedal
a bicycle? The best exhibit in the world won’t be appreciated by a child who can’t grasp the concept or isn’t able to
physically operate the interface!
Becoming Knowledgable
Doing the initial research on an exhibit topic has never
been easier. It used to be that one started with a trip to a
museum and/or a university library. It began with careful
searches through card files and discussions with people who
specialized in helping people research. While these are still
excellent resources farther along in your research, nowadays,
the search—the research—begins at the computer...and
what a merry chase it can be, as one’s eyes and cursor enter
and leave research facilities big and small, approach universities across the land, study in museums all over the world.
One Web site leads to another. An image search often
helps to clarify thinking and shows the way to yet undiscovered Web sites which, quite honestly, wouldn’t be discovered
if looking strictly on the Web. For example, researching an
exhibit concept on shelter, we began to wonder about the
many animals that lived in and around a large tree. So to
Google. Enter “fox den.” Weed through the references to
Fox News, foxy lady, the Fox family tree, and here, among
other rich sources, is this perfect Web site put together by
a person who researched urban populations of foxes for a
master’s degree at the University of Minnesota. Amazing!
Links to more places. Still wanting a really good image of
a fox den, Google’s own image search engine is used. Type
in “fox den” and there are pictures and more pictures of all
kinds of dens and yup, there’s a tree with a fox den at the
base. A beautiful BBC Web site is found on the sixth page
of images, along with a downloadable article.
And so the research process continues. A trip to the
children’s library to pick up a collection of children’s books
about animal homes yields another wonder-filled treasure
trove. Reading children’s books is not only about gathering more information about the topic, but is also valuable
for seeing how information is presented to different age
groups. The very nature of children’s museum exhibits is
that they appeal to children across a broad age range, and it’s
important to know what science writers and other experts
offer to children at different ages and stages.
A major reality check for a topic can be found by reading through your state learning standards. The purpose is
not to develop your exhibit so that it is a formal classroom
learning environment, but rather to discover the depth and
breadth of what educators consider important about the
topic or general theme for different age groups. Reading
the standards might, for example, lead to thinking about
including a microscope for older elementary age kids to
look at the microorganisms that live in the soil around the
tree with the fox’s den at its base. Riverdeep, an excellent
Web resource, has a handy clickable U.S. map that links to
each state’s standards. Scholastic, the book publishing company, has an excellent Web site that is chock-full of ideas
for projects and enhancements for a large variety of topics.
Talking to Experts
There is no substitute for a relationship (sometimes
surprisingly long-term!) with a person whose life work is
devoted to your topic. It isn’t only their knowledge that they
contribute. There is a tangible excitement and passion that
they will offer you. No, it’s stronger than that: they’ll give
you their zeal. From listening to the amazing process by
which sugar beets are transformed to granular sugar (did
you know that limestone is a key part of this?) to touring a
south Texas farm at sunset in order to learn about irrigation,
there is absolutely no substitute for listening to a professional talk about the work they love. Experts aren’t just at
universities and museums: they’re sugar-factory managers
and farmers and pickle packers—and all can make huge
contributions to your exhibits.
Test-Fitting
In the course of learning about the topic, information about “appropriate” is also being discovered. That’s
part of the reason for looking at the state standards and
children’s books. Children’s developmental milestones are
important, too; knowing what a child is capable of—and
what they’re interested in—at different ages will help you
“test-fit” your exhibit to your audience.
The books listed below (golden oldies!) are simple,
direct and address the small nuances that help to ensure
an exhibit that is appropriate for the audience, considering not only what is happening cognitively and physically,
but also socially and emotionally. There are excellent Web
resources for this, too. The University of Michigan site
has been listed below because it has proven useful, and
has excellent links to other sites. As with any topic, there
are many sites that help. The important thing is to keep
dipping back into child development resources. There is
always a turn of phrase that strikes resonantly or a small
idea that hadn’t been noticed before. Reading about
children’s development: how they think, how they move,
what they feel, what they do is a story that is always new.
Stopping
If you’re a procrastinator, you’ll understand that stopping your research can be as difficult as starting. With the
unlimited resources now available, it is possible to research
a topic forever. It is such wonderful fun; there’s always
just one more place to search; it’s a great way to postpone
other chores. When you suddenly realize you are at the
point where you have enough information for an entire
museum called “Life on Earth” when what you meant to
do was create a single exhibit element about the animals
living in and around one tree, it’s probably time to stop.
Tying a Bow Around It
The immersion in the topic has been completed; the
ideas have been carefully thought through. Potential exhibit experiences, like sugar plums, are beginning to dance
in your head. You’ve gotten re-inspired about children’s
development. At this point (if I can wait this long) I start
looking for a quotation that will capture the whole of the
exhibit: its spirit, heart and intent. The search isn’t easy;
it can mean looking through, literally, hundreds of quotations about the topic. Quotation Web sites are abundant.
There are books, too, that are collections of quotations,
and I like the two listed below that are targeted at children.
Suddenly, a quote pops out at you and there is a great aha!
as you realize that yes, that’s exactly what this is all about,
and hey, wow, it was Albert Einstein who said it!
If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be
called research, would it? —Albert Einstein
Mary Sinker is a child development specialist working
with children’s museums on exhibit development.
Resources mentioned in the article:
Internet:
www.google.com
www.images.google.com/
www.foxes.org/urbanfox
www.pack670.org/images/A%20fox%20den%20
in%20a%20tree.jpg.
www.riverdeep.net/pro_development/standards/standards.jhtml.
www.teacher.scholastic.com/lessonplans/
www.med.umich.edu/1libr/yourchild/devmile.htm
Child development:
Mary Sheridan. From Birth to Five Years: Children’s
Developmental Progress, London, Routledge, 1973.
Mary Sheridan, Play in Early Childhood: From Birth to
Six Years, London, Routledge, 1993.
Chip Wood, Yardsticks: Children in the Classroom Ages
4-14. Greenfield, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children,
1994.
Quotations:
www.quotationspage.com; www.quoteland.com
www.wisdomquotes.com; www.quotegarden.com
Adrienne Betz, Scholastic Treasury of Quotations for
Children. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 1998.
J.A. Senn, Quotations for Kids. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 1999.
8
MetLife
Foundation
and
Association
of Children’s
Museums
Math Path
Promising
Practice
A
w
a
r
d
Honoring innovative
management and programming practices in
the children’s museum
field.
HONORABLE
MENTIONS
2004
math path
The Children’s
Museum of Houston
Museum Discovery Guides, dressed up as Math Superheroes Captain
Plus (above left) and Subtracta, attract visitors to Math Path Cart
activities, called Magnificent Math Moments (M3). Annually, more than
17,000 visitors take part in M3 activities facilitated at the museum’s
Math Path Cart.
Math Path provides children with opportunities to “do math” and enjoy it via interactions
with hands-on informal learning activities. Programming includes daily facilitation of math
activities at The Children’s Museum of Houston, use of math-based signage in the museum’s
exhibits and ongoing training for afterschool caregivers who facilitate Math Path activities
throughout the year.
At the core of Math Path is a set of 120 bilingual activities called Magnificent Math Moments (M3). M3 activities, created by the museum, feature each of the ten mathematics standards
identified by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and are designed to be facilitated
by adults with no special math training on behalf of children ages four to twelve. M3 activities
are fun ways to build math skills and connect math to real world scenarios through involvement with games, puzzles and other challenges that can be played by a parent and a child or by
groups of children with the support of an adult facilitator. Bank It is an M3 favorite game among
afterschool centers incorporating Math Path activities into their offerings. Bank It highlights and
reinforces basic counting skills, helps children learn to identify and classify money with respect
to denominations and can lead children to anticipate the outcome of chance occurrences and
to adopt strategies that reference the laws of probability. Unlike other forms of curriculum, M3
activities can be presented to children in any order and require no special materials other than
those that are commonly found in homes and afterschool centers. Bank It requires only a die
and coins (or play money borrowed from a board game).
Family Learning Events provide parents with opportunities to try out M3 activities with
their children as museum staff and volunteers model these activities and provide support and
advice. Parents leave events with descriptions of a subset of M3 activities so that learning may
continue at home.
Museum to You (MTY), an initiative of The Children’s Museum of Portsmouth, creates
a temporary children’s museum with exhibits, performances, educational programming and
artist workshops in under-served towns throughout the region. MTY is designed to eliminate
socioeconomic and physical barriers to museum attendance such as lack of time, transportation, money or awareness. MTY provides a comprehensive museum experience to families and
schools in communities where high quality art, science and cultural learning opportunities are
not readily accessible.
By remaining in a community for four to six weeks, MTY becomes more than a traveling
exhibit or single program. It creates a satellite version of The Children’s Museum of Portsmouth
complete with performances, daily art projects, workshops and a wide range of exhibits. Because each MTY location is different, a creative and flexible approach is essential in deciding
everything from exhibit layout, to hours of operation, to choosing artists for concerts and
workshops. For example, a family concert featuring Polish folk music by a celebrated New
Hampshire accordion player was presented in a community with a large Polish population proud
of their ancestry. Several MTY programs provide opportunities to directly involve community
members in exhibit and program development. With Family Album: Our Immigrant Origins,
museum staff work with community members to produce an exhibit that incorporates photos
and stories about their own immigrant ancestors. Family Album celebrates the town’s cultural
diversity and fosters new connections among its citizens.
Since 2003 when MTY hit the road, seven communities have hosted the traveling museum. More than 11,250 visitors have attended MTY in towns as small as 6,800 and as large
as 107,000 people.
Museum to You
Young visitors try on colorful painted masks from Africa, Japan, Mexico
and Indonesia in the Museum to You exhibit Different Lands, Different
Masks, which provides an introduction to the traditions, ceremonies and
arts of different cultures through the study of its masks.
Museum
to You
The Children’s
Museum of
Portsmouth
(New Hampshire)
Ladder 11
Staten Island
Children’s Museum
Ladder 11
A visitor dons authentic firefighting gear and climbs
into the cab of Ladder 11, a child-friendly exhibit
created to remember the events of September 11
and how they affected Staten Island.
After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, which took place across the harbor from the Staten Island
Children’s Museum, the museum wanted to help the community come to terms with what had happened. Ladder
11 is a unique project developed to meet the museum’s constituencies’ emotional needs. Staten Island lost 297
residents on September 11, a third of whom were Police Department, Fire Department and Port Authority workers. The museum remained very quiet during the weeks that followed the tragedy. Eventually families returned.
Staff kept a lookout for familiar faces, especially some of the firefighter fathers who often took their children to
the museum on weekdays. Sadly, not all of them returned; the museum lost forty neighbors within a twenty-block
radius on that day, including the firefighter husband of a staff member.
The museum responded during this difficult time with free programs, milk and cookies at storytime, the
creation of murals for local firehouses and the gathering of mental health professionals to help parents talk to their
children about recent events. Eventually the museum wanted to do something permanent to remember September 11. Children have always loved firefighters and fire trucks, but after the tragedy firefighters assumed an even
more heroic status. To provide a memorial suitable for young audiences, the museum accepted as a gift a 1941 fire
truck from the Volunteer Fire Department of Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania. The Seagrave pumper truck, with its big
chrome grille, shiny bumpers and bulbous headlamps, looks like a full-size version of a child’s toy fire truck. It is
not an obvious memorial. The fire truck, one of the heroic images of 9/11, is used as a setting where children may
feel more comfortable discussing the tragedy and where parents may feel more comfortable answering their questions. Although an automotive antique, Ladder 11 has been outfitted with contemporary fire-fighting equipment
including a radio, Halligen tool and flashing lights. Since role-play is a way for children to express themselves, they
are invited to climb aboard and emulate a real fire fighter responding to an emergency.
In a changing world, it is important not to avoid difficult topics, but instead to address them in a sensitive
manner that encourages discussion. Ladder 11 is a fun exhibit, but it is also a way in which a children’s museum
responded to the particular needs of its community at a unique time in our history.
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