A Framework for Organizing a Cumulative Research Agenda in Informal Learning Contexts

Abstract

been shifting from a singularly inwardlooking role as repositories for the display of valued objects, organisms, or artifacts, toward a multifaceted, outward-looking role as hosts who invite visitors inside to wonder, encounter, and learn. Although this shift has been under way for many years, and in spite of the sustained and persistent efforts of a few committed researchers from both the museum and university communities, a field of research on informal learning in museums has not yet cohered. This lack of coherence exists in part because of an overriding concern in museums with the evaluation functions of research an understandable concern, but not one that has been grounded in theory or motivated by the goal of constructing a cumulative knowledge base. The lack of coherence is exacerbated by the fact that the learning research community has until recently paid scant attention to informal contexts. The inattention persists because researchers in psychology and education tend to work from assumptions and methods originally developed to explore learning in laboratories and schools. These assumptions and methods are often inadequate for the very different learning challenges and opportunities in museums. For example, museums do not, by and large, aim exclusively or even primarily for improvement on measures of subject matter knowledge but instead tend to emphasize wider goals better captured by terms like enculturation, development, attitude, and socialization. In a museum, each visitor's treatment is unique, because museums afford choice and variability in learning rather than mastery of a common curriculum. Moreover, learning effects of a museum visit may have a very long cycle time, sometimes emerging years after the encounter occurs. These features make