Museum Visits

Abstract

18 museum visits are a popular field trip for elementary school children, special education children those with reading, language, or cognitive delays may not visit museums as frequently as their typically developing peers. Teachers of special education classes indicate that the museum setting is often too anxiety-provoking for their students. In addition, teachers doubt that special education students will benefit from the educational aspects of museum visits.1 While many museums have made accommodations for persons with physical disabilities (motor, sight, and hearing), children with cognitive disabilities have not received the same attention. This is especially true for natural history and art museums where exhibits are not necessarily designed for children. Such museums rarely have hands-on exhibits. Poor language or reading skills make most exhibit labels inaccessible to children with such disabilities. Museums are also complex settings. There are numerous exhibits, other people, new spaces, various sounds, and variations in lighting. For some children this can be exciting. For those with cognitive delays who may have trouble processing a lot of information, these settings can be anxiety-provoking because there is too much to pay attention to and all of it is unfamiliar. Under these circumstances special education students may not retain much information about the content of the visit.