Children\'s Museum: Critical Analysis of the Exhibit.

Children's Museum: Critical Analysis of the Exhibit.

For many young children, family visits to local science museums or zoos are commonplace events in their lives. The increasing popularity of science museums as sites of choice for family recreation and learning is affirmed by the surge in construction of new children's museums and continued increases in science museum attendance rates in the U.S. (Association of Children's Museums, 2009). Children's museums commonly include exhibits that focus on both sciences content and process skills. In 1975, there were approximately 38 children's museums in America while 243 exist today. Furthermore, an additional 78 children's museums are currently in the planning stage throughout the country.

Similarly, museum attendance in the U.S. has increased to the point where it is estimated that one in five Americans visited a science museum in 2008 (Association of Science and Technology Centres, 2009). Families account for more than half of science museum visitors and many science museums have developed special exhibits and programming for young children. Such exhibits and programming are costly investments for both science museums and families on tight budgets in these economic times. I recently visited one such museum exhibit with my family. This is a description of my visit to a children museum exhibit.

Children's Museum Exhibit Design.

The design of the Museum Exhibit is an important part of the exhibit. Museum professionals including designers, educators, and evaluators strive to develop exhibits that "do more than entertain" (Allen, 17-33). The design of this exhibit was user friendly as stated by Allen who provided her perspective on recent design and evaluation research at her science museum. She discussed many examples of how exhibits were designed and redesigned to facilitate science learning and the types of learning outcomes that were studied. Allen identified four characteristics of successful educational exhibits: immediate apprehend ability, physical interactivity, conceptual coherence, and broad appeal. These four characteristics mainly stem from a user-cantered design approach and efforts to make the conceptual foundations and applications of exhibit content explicit to visitors.

The Children Museum exhibit enhanced my knowledge as well as provided recreation. The design of this exhibit was multi-sided (i.e., exhibits included three dimensional components), multi-user (i.e., multiple users could interact with exhibit components at one time), multi-outcome (i.e., exhibits allowed visitors to pick and choose which exhibit content to explore), multi-modal (i.e. exhibit components invited visitors to use different learning modalities: visual, auditory, tactile, orkinesthetic), readable, and relevant. This type of designs are user friendly and are most effective exhibits for promoting desired learning behaviours among families. Previous research studies also found that such exhibits allowed family visitors to interact with the exhibits and each other in a manner that was more suitable for their individual needs and interests.

Like majority of visitors my motivation, to attend the museum exhibit was more recreational than learning. Mostly visitor attend museums for many different reasons; which impact what they do and learn on their visits. Falk (108-111) used interviews, questionnaires, and a modified concept mapping technique called personal meaning mapping to determine how the personal agendas, that is, the motivations and visit strategies, of 40 adult visitors affected their learning at a geology exhibition at a natural history museum. He also documented six different categories of motivations representing the full range of perceptions people have about museums and their potential for leisure and learning. Interestingly, they noted that most visitors have more than one motivation for visiting museums (Falk, 1998). In general, individuals with strong educational motivations show significant conceptual learning while individuals with strong entertainment motivations show significant vocabulary development. Individuals with both strong educational and strong entertainment motivations show significant vocabulary and conceptual development. Furthermore, visitors with strong educational motivations spend longer periods of time in exhibits compared to visitors with weak educational motivations.

Museum enhanced my knowledge and it proved recreational for me. There was a slide show for children before visiting the science playground. It helped to motivate the children and enhanced their curiosity and interest. Kubota and Olstad (225-234) compared exploratory behaviour and post-visit knowledge of 64 sixth-grade children from intact classes at one school who visited a science playground at a science centre. This relevant pre-visit orientation helped children and they demonstrated more specific exploratory behaviour at the exhibit and gained greater knowledge of exhibit content. There was also a retail shop and we bought eatables and enjoyed our visits to the museum (Kubota and Olstad, 225-234).

Benefits for visiting Children Museum Exhibit

Anecdotal evidence suggests that early visits to informal science learning institutions have great potential to awaken and sustain long-term interest in science. Many scientists and engineers have acknowledged the important influence of early visits to science museums and zoos on their career choices. Furthermore, Miller (273) reported that adults engaged in Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) careers participate in informal science learning experiences such as science museum visits more frequently than adults engaged in non-STEM careers (Miller, 273.). These individuals likely visit science museums with their spouses and children. This is significant because some evidence suggests that adults who visited science museums as children are more inclined to take their own children to museums and view museum visits as a worthwhile use of their leisure time (Hood, vol. 1). A clearer understanding the role science museum visits play in the lifelong science learning of individuals is needed, especially during early childhood when science museum visits are typically family events.

Recreational and Cultural Aspect

The visit to the Museum Exhibit has a recreational as well as educational value. The personal context of learning is composed of the diverse motivational and emotional cues that influence learning (Falk & Dirking, vol.1). Within the informal learning environments of museums, individuals are generally intrinsically motivated to learn. They usually attend museums by choice and they receive no rewards other than the pleasure of the experience. Furthermore, interest, the psychological construct that includes attention, persistence in a task, and continued curiosity, acts as a filter for the abundance of sensory input at museums (Falk & Dierking, vol. 1). Visitors pay attention to what interests them, and personal interests frequently arise from positive prior experiences with topics. The positive feelings, attitudes, and emotions surrounding prior experiences promote visitor interest, which in turn influences the specific museums and exhibits they choose to visit.

In museums, visitors often interact with each other and with socially-constructed tools, signs, and symbol systems. Each visitor brings to these interactions a unique complement of values, beliefs, and norms that influence his/her perceptions and behaviour. These values, beliefs, and norms are cultural products that are transmitted across generations from parent to child. For example, when parents take their children to museums to "do the museum," experience a new exhibit, or use the reading room; they are demonstrating the value of museums as places for learning.