Articlebronze2008

The unintended effects of interactive objects and labels in the science museum

Leslie Atkins Elliott · Lisanne Velez · David Goudy · Kevin Niall Dunbar

59 citations0/0 files storedScience Education

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

Museums and Cultural Heritage Science Education and Pedagogy Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes

Abstract

Abstract What effects do different setups of museum exhibits have on visitors' conversations and interactions? The study reported here is an investigation of the role that labels and associated materials play in visitors' conversations and interactions at a heat camera exhibit. After we introduced a label to help visitors explore the insulating properties of clothing, we found a dramatic shift in the kinds of activities and participation structures of visitors. Not only were visitors, as expected, discussing why clothing was warm, but they were doing so in a fashion more consistent with formal education than the typically more collaborative conversations seen in informal learning environments. Overall, our analyses reveal that labels and activities presented serve to frame both the activities that visitors engage in and the types of conversations that ensue and that this has deep influences on visitors' experiences at the exhibit. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Sci Ed93:161–184, 2009

Citations in this library

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 59 citations exist upstream.

References

1978Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes 1960A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales 1999Dialogic Inquiry: Discourse, Learning, and Teaching 2016The Museum Experience 2003Learning Conversations in Museums 1993Framing in Discourse 2003Dialogic inquiry in life science conversations of family groups in a museum 2003Looking for Learning in Visitor Talk: A Methodological Exploration

Cited by

2012The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning 2012Scientific Thinking and Reasoning 2013Scaffolding Informal Learning in Science Museums: How Much Is Too Much?2017The value of learning talk: applying a novel dialogue scoring method to inform interaction design in an open-ended, embodied museum exhibit 2018Digital Exhibit Labels in Museums 2015Family Learning in Object-Based Museums: The Role of Joint Attention 2024Digitally enriched exhibitions: Perspectives from Museum professionals

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.