Creating Meaningful Museum Experiences For K 12 Audiences

Creating Meaningful Museum Experiencesfor K–12 Audiences: How to Connect with Teachers and Engage Students is the first book in more than a decade to provide a comprehensive look at best practices in working with this crucial segment of museum visitors. With more than 40 contributors from art, history, science, natural history, and specialty museums across the country, the book asks probing questions about museum-school relationships, suggests new paradigms, and offers creative approaches. Fully up-to-date with current issues relevant to museums’ work with schools, including anti-racist teaching approaches and pivoting to virtual programming during the pandemic, this book is essential for both established and emerging museum educators to ensure they are current on best practices in the field. The book features four parts: Setting the Stage looks at the how museums establish and finance K-12 programs, and how to engage with the youngest audiences. Building Blocks considers the core elements of successful K-12 programming, including mission alignment, educator recruitment and training, working with teacher advisory boards, and anti-racist teaching practices. Questions and New Paradigms presents case studies in which practitioners reconsider established approaches to museums’ work with schools and engage in iterative processes to update and improve them—from evaluating K–12 museum programs to diversifying program content, to prioritizing virtual programming. Solutions and Innovative Models offers examples of programs that have been reimagined for the current landscape of museum-school collaborations, including practicing self-care for teachers and museum educators, investing in extended school relationships over one-time visits, and highlighting the stories of enslaved people who lived at historic sites.

Kids have profound and important relationships to the past, but they don't experience history in the same way as adults. For museum professionals and everyone involved in informal history education and exhibition design, this book is the essential new guide to creating meaningful and memorable connections to the past for children. This vital museum audience possesses many of the same dynamic qualities as trained historian—curiosity, inquiry, empathy for the human experience—yet traditional history exhibitions tend to focus on passive looking in the galleries, giving priority to relaying information through words. D. Lynn McRainey and John Russick bring together top museum professionals to present state-of-the-art research and practice that respects and incorporates kids' developmental stages and learning preferences and the specific ways in which kids connect to history. They provide concrete tools for audience research and evaluation; exhibition development and design; and working with kids as "creative consultants." The only book to focus comprehensively on history exhibits for kids, Connecting Kids to History With Museum Exhibitions shows how to enhance the experiences of a vitally important but frequently the least understood museum audience.

Today’s museum educators are tackling urgent social issues, addressing historic inequalities of museum collections, innovating for accessibility, leveraging technology for new in-person and virtual learning experiences, and cultivating partnerships with schools, businesses, elders, scientists, and other social services to build relationships and be of service to their communities. Despite the physical distance the pandemic placed between museums and their visitors, museum educators have remained essential -- sustaining connections with the public through virtual or modified programming, content development, and conversations that they are uniquely qualified to execute. Educators require updated resources to guide their efforts in navigating these new challenges and building upon the opportunities presented by current events and changing audiences. This book and its accompanying on-line resource share lessons from innovators in the field to support ongoing professional development efforts with essays about current issues. Additionally, it provides new models and tools to guide individual or group reflection on how today’s museum educators can adapt and thrive in a dynamic and ever-changing cultural sector. The additional resources include discussion prompts and adaptable templates to allow readers to customize the content based on current events, institutional discipline, size, budget, and staffing scenario of their organization. The book’s essays are divided into three sections: Changing expectations of visitors - inclusion, participation, and technology Training and preparation for responsive, resourceful educators Models for the future While a book can share ideas in the hope of inspiring change, the accompanying online resource (www.EvolveMuseumEd.com) provides a more flexible and responsive forum for sharing ongoing and evolving resources to encourage professional development for museum educators as they respond to the changing needs of today’s audiences.

Families are a critical audience for art museums and museums use many different strategies for reaching families, such as special family days and festivals, workshops, special tours, family backpacks and gallery guides, in-gallery materials or demonstration carts, and specific family galleries. Here is a practical guide based on research that helps art museum educators understand the role and value of spaces designed for families and helps them to create dedicated spaces for intergenerational play and learning. This book features insights, best practices, and lessons learned from years of experience in creating dedicated spaces for families in a wide range of art museums. Through case studies, in-depth stories, and engaging graphics and images this book identifies key issues that museum professionals need to consider when developing family spaces in museums. This book is a how-to guide to creating or updating an interactive family space. Everything you need to know, soup to nuts, from understanding your audience to hiring a designer and opening your doors to the public is here. Each section is situated within groundbreaking visitor research findings and how museum educators have used those findings to better understand the family audience and develop fun, safe, inclusive, spaces that inspire wonder and curiosity, as well as places for meaning-making and family bonding, all in the service of creating loyal and committed museum visitors.

What if museums could harness the emotional and intellectual connections people have to personal and everyday objects to create richer visitor experiences? In this book, Elizabeth Wood and Kiersten Latham present the Object Knowledge Framework, a tool for using objects to connect museum visitors to themselves, to others, and to their world. They discuss the key concepts underpinning our lived experience of objects and how museums can learn from them. Then they walk readers through concrete methods for transforming visitor-object experiences, including exercises and strategies for teams developing exhibit themes, messages, and content, and participatory experiences.

Children are one of the major audiences for museums, but their visits are often seen solely from the point of view of museum learning. In Snapshots of Museum Experience, Will Buckingham draws upon Elee Kirk’s research amongst child visitors to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, to take a different approach. Using a method of photo-elicitation with four-and five-year-old child visitors to the museum, the book investigates children’s experience of the museum, and in the process undermines many of our assumptions about the interests, needs and demands of child museum visitors. Drawing together the fields of museum studies and childhood studies, the book considers children as active creators of the museum visit. It investigates the way that children navigate and take control of the physical and social spaces of the museum, finding their own idiosyncratic pathways through these spaces. It also explores how elements of the museum ‘light up’, becoming salient to the child visitor. Finally, it investigates how children make sense through intellectually and imaginatively engaging with these elements of the museum visit. Snapshots of Museum Experience gives a unique insight into the sheer diversity of children’s museum experiences and discusses how museums might cater more successfully to the needs of their child visitors. As such, it should be of great interest to academics, researchers and students in the fields of museum studies, visitor studies and childhood studies. It should also be essential reading for museum educators and exhibition designers.

In this one-of-a-kind volume, museum staff and social scientists begin to explore the many facets of the relationship between museums and families. They examine the museum's importance to the family as a source for socialization and learning. At the heart of this exciting book is a concentration on developing programs of experiential learning and knowledge building that will assist families in understanding their history and culture.

Designing Museum Experiences is a "how-to" book for creating visitor-centered museums that emotionally and intellectually connect with museum visitors, stakeholders, and donors. Museums are changing from static, monolithic, and encyclopedic institutions to institutions that are visitor-centric, with shared authority that allows museum and visitors to become co-creators in content creation. Museum content is also changing, from static content to dynamic, evolving content that is multi-cultural and transparent regarding the evolution of facts and histories, allowing multi-person interpretations of events. Designing Museum Experiences leads readers through the methods and tools of the three stages of a museum visit (Pre-visit, In-Person Visit, and Post-visit), with a goal of motivating visitors to return and revisit the museum in the future. This museum visitation loop creates meaningful intellectual, emotional, and experiential value for the visitor. Using the business-world-proven methodologies of user centered design, Museum Visitor Experience leads the reader through the process of creating value for the visitor. Providing consistent messaging at all touchpoints (website, social media, museum staff visitor services, museum signage, etc.) creates a trusted bond between visitor and museum. The tools used to increase understanding of and encourage empathy for the museum visitor, and understand visitor motivations include: Empathy Mapping, Personas, Audience segmentation, Visitor Journey Mapping, Service Design Blueprints, System Mapping, Content Mapping, Museum Context Mapping, Stakeholder Mapping, and the Visitor Value Proposition. In the end, the reason for using the tools is to empower visitors and meet their emotional and intellectual needs, with the goal of creating a lifelong bond between museum and visitor. This is especially important as museums face a new post COVID-19 reality; only the most nimble, visitor-centered museums are likely to survive. The companion website to Designing Museum Experiences features: Links to additional visitor-centered museum information Downloadable sample documents and templates Bibliography of sources for further reading Online glossary of museum visitor experience terms Daily checklists of "how-to" provide and receive visitor-centered experiences More than 50 associated Designing Museum Experiences documents

Purposeful Museum Programming Using Visitor Response Pedagogies offers museums of all sizes and genres practical, accessible, and inclusive programming ideas. Museums need to embrace a new model of educational programming, prioritizing and nurturing visitors’ personal responses to pieces while developing important skills in the process. By synthesizing research and teaching approaches in the field, this exploration demonstrates that museum programming grounded in effective theories of learning and emotional response is most impactful in building community among diverse learners, enhancing learning, and supporting social and emotional growth by validating visitors’ unique life experiences and perspectives. Grouped as Visitor Response Pedagogies (VRPs), programming that focuses on these elements and other transferable skills offers a new model in museum education that is adaptable at museums of all genres. The VRP A-Z Toolkit offers a multitude of ideas and highlights innovative responsive programs occurring at museums all around the world. This is the new “must-have” educational handbook for all museums seeking new ways to enhance their programmatical offerings.

The story of the civil rights movement. The characteristics of Japanese art and culture. The importance of innovation. The history of your community. No matter the subject area or the grade level, a school museum project can improve learning and teaching. Unlike science fairs or art shows, which highlight the work of individuals, school museums are collaborative, multifaceted projects that build understanding. As students engage in meaningful work and deepen their knowledge of a specific topic, teachers gain insight into best instructional practices. Through photographs and classroom examples, former curriculum director, teacher, and museum educator Linda D'Acquisto shows how school museums inspire students' curiosity and creativity; encourage responsibility and teamwork; and strengthen writing, communication, research, and problem-solving skills. You will learn the process for developing your own exhibition, including strategies for * incorporating academic content standards * assessing learning and understanding * guiding research, writing, and design * promoting partnerships among students, colleagues, parents, and the community * using the completed museum as a teaching tool With its step-by-step approach and practical resources, Learning on Display will help you transform your curriculum into motivating museum projects that make class work rigorous, memorable, and fun.