As museums and science centers work to reach broad and diverse public audiences, staff face challenges in aligning learner-centered educational approaches with the needs and motivations of audiences with varying identities and agendas. This article synthesizes several years of practitioner-driven work, in which science center staff revised an engineering design exhibition in response to visitor feedback and observations in practice. Analyses examine practitioners’ perspectives about the unanticipated challenges within the original design of the exhibition, and the ways in which museum staff updated their expectations and pedagogical strategies. Analyses are grounded in two theoretical models: (1) Falk’s Museum Visitor Experience Model, which describes how people use museum visits to affirm specific aspects of their identities; and (2) Dawson’s Access and Equity Framework, which describes structural forms of inaccessibility and exclusion that become embedded within museum spaces. These frameworks are used to examine the systemic changes that staff made to multiple facets of the visitor experience, including signage, framing and facilitation of activities, curation and preparation of materials, and the design of adjacent exhibits. This ever-expanding process was a necessary investment to realize the exhibition’s original intention of building on visitors’ existing knowledge, identities, and lived experiences.
The Roads Taken Project utilized fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine necessary and sufficient conditions for achieving STEM involvement of alumnae(i) of six intensive STEM-based youth programs 15 to 25 years after participation. Outcomes included overall STEM involvement (including STEM academics and careers, personal STEM involvement, community STEM involvement, and long-term STEM identity), and post- program and program contribution to social-emotional learning and development. We identified conditions contributing to pathways to these outcomes. Results revealed that, although differing for the varied participant groups, social-emotional learning and development played a role in all the pathways but was particularly prominent in pathways to community STEM involvement. High program dose accompanied by a sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy in programs with highly varied strategies led to social-emotional learning and varied by participant groups. Along with presenting findings, this study highlights fsQCA as a method for revealing the complex relationship of social-emotional development to STEM outcomes and the multiple pathways for achieving them.
Youth programs in museums have traditionally aimed to provide teens and young adults with opportunities to learn new content, develop skills, and have positive socio-emotional experiences. While these qualities are essential for positive youth development, learning is often unidirectional and led by program staff. This approach to youth programming can inadvertently limit youth from becoming active contributors who shape programmatic goals and outcomes. Positioning youth as experts of their lived experiences in youth programming can lead to a bidirectional exchange of knowledge benefitting both youth and museum staff. This case study examines how high-school and college-aged museum workers participated in annual out-of-school-time fellowships to explore public health concepts and integrate their lived experiences when designing research instruments, workshop activities, and exhibit experiences for fellow youth.
This resource exchange describes a free toolkit that introduces children ages 8-11 and their families to the engineering design process through hands-on experiences in museums, makerspaces, and at home. The toolkit builds on research within the maker movement that highlights the importance of engaging learners in addressing problems that are personally meaningful, and the critical role that caregivers play in supporting and guiding children's learning across out-of-school settings and over time. The toolkit includes workshops that use familiar themes (like Animals, School, Home, and Clothing) to guide children in creating prototypes to solve everyday problems; an app that offers additional support both during the workshops and at home; take-home activities to help children get started making at home and practice the engineering design process; and resources to help caregivers support their children's learning in the makerspace and at home. Workshops and at-home activities were designed to use accessible materials that families have access to at home (such as recyclables, fabric, tape, rubber bands, etc), and to allow families to work at their own pace with support from facilitators and/or the app. Toolkit resources were iteratively developed and tested through a design-based research process that involved media producers, researchers, and staff at multiple makerspace sites across the US. Learning outcomes for children include engagement in defining a problem to solve, brainstorming and planning solutions, building a prototype, and testing and iterating their design, and using the app or at-home activities to continue practicing the engineering design process over time. Goals for caregivers also include increases in knowledge, interest, and confidence in supporting children's engineering design projects. The toolkit is free and publicly available; links to download all resources are included in the conference paper.
