Science Museum Research Articles

Are neighbourhood amenities associated with more walking and less driving? Yes, but predominantly for the wealthy

Cities are home to a vast array of amenities, from local barbers to science museums and shopping malls. But these are unequally distributed across urban space. Using Google Places data combined with trip-based mobility data for Bogotá, Colombia, we shed light on the impact of neighbourhood amenities on urban mobility patterns. By deriving a new accessibility metric that explicitly takes into account spatial range, we find that a higher density of local amenities is associated with a higher likelihood of walking as well as shorter bus and car trips. Digging deeper, we use an effect modification framework to show that this relationship varies by socioeconomic status. Our main focus is walking and driving, finding that amenities within about a 1-km radius from home are robustly associated with a higher propensity to walk and shorter driving time only for the wealthiest group. These results suggest that wealthier groups may weigh the proximity of local amenities more heavily into travel decisions, perhaps based on differentiated time-money trade-offs. As cities globally aim to boost public transport and green travel, these findings enable us to better understand how commercial structure shapes urban mobility in highly income-segregated settings.

Inquiry in a Science Museum: Science Museum Educators’ Views and Practices

Our study looks into science museum educators’ views and their practices about inquiry in non-formal venues, such as NOESIS, Greece. On this ground, we developed an interview protocol to use as a basis in the semi-structured interviews conducted with four science museum educators to cast light on their views about inquiry. In addition, an observation protocol was modified in order to observe their practices when implementing educational programs for school groups. Data analysis showed that in regard to the museum educators’ views, they all expressed a slightly different view about inquiry, which was either empirically or intuitively based. They all agreed that inquiry is easier adopted in non-formal settings and argued that students’ main gain when they get engaged in inquiry-based activities is the actual involvement they experience. As regards the museum educators’ practices, a repertoire of teaching approaches was observed, ranging from a traditional teacher-centered approach to open inquiry. Building on our data, we suggest the development and implementation of a professional development course that will enrich science museum educators’ inquiry views and practices and empower them to integrate inquiry-based practices into their own.

How science museums can use their power

How science museums can use their power

Interactive Experiential Model: Insights from Shadowing Students’ Exhibitory Footprints

ABSTRACT As museums evolve and shift toward interactive exhibitions by utilizing cutting-edge technologies, there has been a gap in research that distinguishes interactive exhibit experiences from static exhibit experiences. Therefore, using the grounded theory method [Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm Strauss. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2014], we investigated how students feel, enjoy, behave, and learn when they use interactive exhibits in science museums. We examined the roles of expectation, attention, engagement, immersion, memory, and reminiscence in the context of the static exhibit experiential model, utilizing a wide variety of previous research. Additionally, we coded and analyzed the data obtained from a shadowing and interview process, which brought us to the conclusion that there is a distinguishable experiential model for interactive exhibitions, which includes the key elements of fun and sharing. The model was broken down into the pre-, during, and post-visit phases, considering each of the key elements separately. We believe the model we propose can contribute to the literature by providing an initial framework for visitors’ experiences with interactive exhibitions.

Math Learning in a Science Museum—Proposal for a Workshop Design Based on STEAM Strategy to Learn Mathematics. The Case of the Cryptography Workshop

In mathematics teaching, great efforts are made, and diverse teaching strategies are employed in order to facilitate students’ learning process. Informal environments have proven to be conducive and motivating spaces for science learning. In particular, science museums can be used as a complement and collaborate in order to leverage each of their strengths to motivate mathematics learning. Educational models give a global explanation to the learning process. Taking into account all these aspects and considering van Hiele’s model as didactic reference, we propose the design of a general workshop that has among its objectives the learning of mathematics. To do this, we start from the three main elements and processes set forth in van Hiele’s model: insight, reasoning levels and learning phases. The insight or student’s competence are formulated through Hoffer’s abilities, and for the development of the activities of the learning phases, the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and maths) strategy. Once the general proposal has been made, we use it to design a scientific workshop for learning mathematics about cryptography. Our greatest challenge was in generating activities adapted to the established requirements. It would be interesting, for future works, to design research to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposal presented. Moreover, it would be interesting to develop a proposal for assessing student learning.

THE QUIBAS SITE (MURCIA, SPAIN): NEW HERBIVORES FROM THE EARLY-MIDDLE PLEISTOCENE TRANSITION

The Lower Pleistocene site of Quibas, in Sierra de Quibas (Murcia, Spain) was discovered in 1994 and has since then provided abundant material of typical Epivillafranchian taxa. This biochron belongs to the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition (1.2 – 0.78 Ma), characterised by a change in orbital cyclicity from a 41 kyr cycle to 100 kyr that intensified the climate and culminated in the most important faunal turnover of the Pleistocene regarding large mammals. The Group of Palaeoanthropology of the National Museum of Natural Sciences (CSIC, Spain) and the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES-CERCA, Spain) carried out four field seasons from 2015 to 2018. Here we present the large herbivorous mammals recovered from the field, including the first citation of two taxa new to the locality: Stephanorhinus cf. etruscus and Bison cf. voigtstedtensis. We also provide the first description of previously mentioned taxa: Dama cf. vallonnetensis and Sus sp. Together with the remaining herbivores, the faunal community shows a strong European affinity with some regionalism. Compared with other Iberian localities, the site of Quibas stands out for the lack of hominin fossils or any evidence supporting their presence in the area, a peculiar scenario given that the Early-Middle Pleistocene transition broadly speaking sees the arrival of humans into Europe.

Understanding Facilitation Techniques for Hands-On Chemistry Activities

ABSTRACT Educators play a key role in facilitating interactive learning experiences in informal science education settings, such as science centers and museums. Despite their importance, research around facilitation has generally focused on visitor impacts and not the strategies used by the educators themselves. The ChemAttitudes project studied and characterized facilitation moves used by educators during hands-on chemistry activities with visitors at two science museums. Building on previous research done by the Exploratorium, the project team defined a framework of three overarching categories of facilitation techniques: “Invite participation,” “Support exploration,” and “Deepen understanding.” (referenced in short form as “Invite,” “Support,” and “Deepen”). Each of these categories also included distinct facilitation moves that educators used throughout an interaction with visitors. Overall, data indicated that educators used Support moves most often, Deepen moves less frequently, and Invite moves the least. Although educators almost always started an interaction with Invite, afterwards, they moved flexibly back and forth between the three types of moves in a non-linear order in response to the visitors. The framework and findings from this project can be used to support training and professional development for other informal educators using hands-on activities with visitors.

Long-Term Positive Effects of Flexible Partnerships

ABSTRACT This article seeks to illustrate the outcome of entering partnerships with open and flexible goals and lines of communication. Two unique, long-term partnerships at a medium-sized, regional museum of art and science are described, with details of the impact of these partnerships and different audiences served. Using current research on best practices for community partnerships and anecdotal information, the article outlines ways to enter open communication with community partners and what to expect out of long-term partnerships.

Training of Future Chemistry Teachers by a Historical / STEAM Approach Starting from the Visit to an Historical Science Museum

The visit to a scientific historical museum represents a great opportunity for future science teachers to develop educational activities and effective laboratories for high school and first year undergraduate students. In this paper, a pilot educational project experimented in the frame of the course of ‘Fundaments and methods of chemistry education’ held at the University of Pisa (Italy) during the academic year 2019-2020, aimed to train future chemistry teachers, is described. The main steps of the project, from the visit to the Museum ‘Galileo’ in Florence (Italy) to the design of educational hands-on activities by the undergraduate students, are discussed. Emphasis will be given to the role of historical scientific collections, such as the Galilean thermoscopes and other historical thermometers’ collection, in stimulating the creativity and higher order thinking skills.

Towards Queer Tours in Science and Technology Museums

This paper argues that the Queering the Science Museum tour series (2018) provides an example of a conceptual pathway for translating queer tour guiding approaches found in socio-historical and arts museums into STEMM spaces. I use participatory methods and qualitative and quantitative participant data to reflect on my work on the tours in the context of wider practices of tour-guided interventions. I highlight how the Queering the Science Museum tours, at the Science Museum, London, moved beyond existing models of queer engagement in socio-historic and arts museums by introducing an explicitly critically queer approach to science and technology, which has the potential to expand the possibility of queer interventions in museums generally. I close by examining the limitations of tour-as-intervention for change within the museum, while exposing the tensions around how resolving such issues would challenge queer theory’s call for rejecting the making of queer ‘normal’ within displays.

Imagining the Brain, Engaging the Body: Designing Visitor Engagement in Science Exhibition Experiments with Art

Science museums have increasingly experimented with bringing art into their exhibitions to attract and engage visitors. While the prevalence and popularity of such experiments is growing, research on the rationales for collaboration and their outcomes, as well as the challenges involved, remains scarce. This paper analyzes and discusses how art is used as part of engaging visitors in two contrasting exhibitions about the brain and neuroscience: one using art as illustration of ready-made science, the other inviting artists as co-curators in evoking a feeling of science in the making. Drawing on models of public engagement and art-science collaboration, it discusses how notions of science communication and visitor engagement are imagined and enacted in the two exhibitions, and how they relate to different ‘logics’, or rationales, of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Archaeometric Characterization of Wall Paintings from Isera and Ventotene Roman Villas

The authors present the first results of an archaeometric research project set up by the Rovereto Civic Museum Foundation in collaboration with MUSE–Trento Science Museum, aiming at analysing and comparing Roman plasters from different sites in order to highlight similarities and differences related to the preparation and realization of Roman wall renderings. The data concern the characterization of plaster samples from the Roman Villa of Isera and Ventotene (northern and central Italy) by means of a thin-section mineropetrographic examination under an optical microscope and a scanning electron microscope (SEM).

Museum Facilitator Practice as Infrastructure Design Work for Public Computing

In this paper, we emphasize the importance of looking beyond technology itself and including interactional and experiential elements in our research gaze in informal computing education in science museums. We argue that, in these contexts, facilitation can be understood as design work that is both complex and challenging. We identify how focusing on infrastructuring—the process by which an exhibit’s support systems emerge, shift, and are sustained in practice—can help develop a richer understanding of the complexity of this work. In this study, we examine facilitators’ experiences of facilitating and supporting a computational exhibit in a science museum. We identify how facilitators’ expertise, roles, and responsibilities shape their facilitation work. Through analysis of video-recorded interactions at the exhibit and interviews with facilitators, we showcase how facilitators’ in-the-moment design moves addressed breakdowns of the exhibit’s infrastructure. These design moves emerged from the complex interaction of each facilitator’s epistemological views of computing and museum education, values, past experiences, and disciplinary background, as well as the museum culture and other institutional constraints. This analysis represents an important challenge to technocentric stances in informal computing education with implications for informal educators and managers, as well as designers and design researchers more broadly.

Students' engagement with Socioscientific issues: Use of sources of knowledge and attitudes

AbstractThe current study is about students' engagement with socioscientific issues (SSI). We explored the use of sources of knowledge about SSI and attitudes toward SSI among a sample of 1676 Dutch 8‐ to 16‐year‐old students. First, we developed a questionnaire that measured students' use of four sources of knowledge about SSI: Social Resources (online media use and talking with parents and friends), In‐Class Resources (in‐class talk and in‐class offline media use), Visit Resources (visiting the zoo or a science museum with parents or school), and Offline Media Resources (engaging with issues or the news via books, magazines, newspapers, or TV). Second, we performed a latent profile analysis to explore students' patterns of use of these sources. This resulted in five profiles: Social Visitors (5.9%), Offline Media Consumers (10.6%), Media Discussers (14.3%), In‐Class Users (21.0%), and Non‐Users (48.3%). Third, we related these profiles to students' attitudes toward SSI, as measured with the Pupils' Attitudes toward Socioscientific Issues (PASSI) questionnaire. In line with the sources of knowledge profiles, the Non‐Users felt and thought most negatively about engagement with SSI, while the Media Discussers showed the most positive attitudes. We believe that our exploration of the profiles adds to the discourse about students' socioscientific capital. Moreover, this study informs teachers about the resources that students may bring into the learning environment and their decision‐making about SSI. The study concludes with practical suggestions about stimulating the use of sources of knowledge for certain groups of students and fostering positive attitudes toward engagement with SSI.

Research on Exhibition Space Design based on Textile Culture

China's textile culture has a long history and profound foundation. With the innovation of modern society, modern textile knowledge system and textile industry system are developing constantly. The establishment of textile culture exhibition hall provides a good opportunity to inherit and carry forward our textile culture. By using the research methods of literature review, design practice, case study, etc., combined with the exhibition space design practice project of Textile Science and Technology Museum of Wuhan Textile University, this paper expounds the design concept and process of the exhibition space in this university in detail, and summarizes the design methods and strategies of exhibition space based on textile cultural characteristics.

A sojourning multilingual family's sense-making in a science museum: A repertoire approach

Despite a growing scholarly interest in bilingual children's heritage language learning, little attention has been paid to how sojourner children learn their heritage languages in content areas at home and in their communities in preparation for return to their home country. This study examined how a Korean sojourner child, Jun, and his mother employed semiotic resources to create learning opportunities for Jun to engage with science discourse in a local science museum and expand his linguistic repertoires. Using ethnographic and multimodal interaction analysis methods, I analyzed Jun and his mother's interactions in a local science museum ten times over 18 months. Findings revealed that Jun's family created translanguaging spaces to meet their needs, such as learning and using their heritage language in the scientific examination. This study calls for partnership between parents and teachers and between schools and local museums to provide learning opportunities for sojourning multilingual children and families.

Evaluating Interactive Digital Exhibit Characteristics in Science Museums and Their Effects on Child Engagement

Interactive digital exhibits (IDEs) in science museums are widely used to improve visitor engagement. The human–computer interaction characteristics of such exhibits play a key role in holding the attention of visitors, especially children. To determine these characteristics of IDEs and their effects on child engagement, 60 representative digital exhibits in two science museums were selected and analyzed, and eight characteristics were identified and scored. The holding time of the children was measured at each exhibit, and the average holding time (AHT) across exhibits was calculated. Then, the correlations between the IDE characteristics and engagement levels of the children were evaluated. The results show that three characteristics, namely, competition, social interaction, and visitor control, of IDEs have important effects on child engagement. The reasons for these results were also analyzed, and design considerations and principles for IDEs were identified.

Improving STEM Museum Accessibility in Pennsylvania for Diverse Communities

A baseline of scientific literacy among the general population is crucial for laypersons to be able to understand and evaluate data-driven recommendations for addressing public health and environmental crises. While updated formal education standards can help improve knowledge gaps for upcoming generations, they do not reach beyond K-12 students. Informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) public learning spaces, including museums, can potentially have broader impacts; however, the benefits are limited by accessibility. Notably, there is a lack of policy regarding sociocultural barriers that may exclude underrepresented communities from science museums. The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) has demonstrated a willingness to support museum research and resource development throughout Pennsylvania (PA). However, resource availability alone does not guarantee the capability to meet the needs of disadvantaged groups in STEM learning spaces. Thus, there is a need for policy to establish standards to make science museums both more accessible and culturally aware to effectively serve their purposes of public learning and engagement. We recommend that the PHMC requires museums to form diversity and inclusion committees to collect and implement community input about museum content and establishes a requirement for exhibit information to be available in multiple languages to increase visitor diversity and improve public learning outcomes.

Towards developing speaker diarization for parent-child interactions

Daily interactions of children with their parents are crucial for spoken language skills and overall development. Capturing such interactions can help to provide meaningful feedback to parents as well as practitioners. Naturalistic audio capture and developing further speech processing pipeline for parent-child interactions is a challenging problem. One of the first important steps in the speech processing pipeline is Speaker Diarization—to identify who spoke when. Speaker Diarization is the method of separating a captured audio stream into analogous segments that are differentiated by the speaker’s (child or parent’s) identity. Following ongoing COVID-19 restrictions and human subjects research IRB protocols, an unsupervised data collection approach was formulated to collect parent-child interactions (of consented families) using LENA device—a light weight audio recorder. Different interaction scenarios were explored: book reading activity at home and spontaneous interactions in a science museum. To identify child’s speech from a parent, we train the Diarization models on open-source adult speech data and children speech data acquired from LDC (Linguistic Data Consortium). Various speaker embeddings (e.g., x-vectors, i-vectors, resnets) will be explored. Results will be reported using Diarization Error Rate. [Work sponsored by NSF via Grant Nos. 1918032 and 1918012.]

“Missionary lizards” – Palaeontological exhibits and the creationist agenda

The use of fossils, and especially dinosaurs, in the exhibits of creationist museums, and their use in the programming efforts of these and similar outlets has become increasingly common. Museum professionals, including scientists, curators and educators should be aware of the appropriation and misuse of palaeontological specimens and data for use in the promotion of a narrow theological and political agenda, that of biblical inerrancy and young earth creationism. By its very nature, this effort attempts to undermine the scientific and educational underpinnings of modern society as part of a larger culture war. The growth of museum-style exhibitry and programming by the creationist community for partisan purposes risks damaging the credibility of natural history and science museums in the eyes of the general public, as the line between data-driven presentation and advocacy becomes blurred.