Taking seriously
what happens in the moment: rethinking the role of museums in the lives of
young children
Dr Abigail Hackett
The grand room is dominated by a huge dining table. The dining table
is laid with a full dinner service, covered with a glass dome so people cannot
actually touch it. There are big windows, fireplace and portraits in this room.
In the dining room, Izzy and Anna ran round and round the dining room table –
faster and faster they ran in circles, giggling and maintaining eye contact
with each other. They were getting a little manic and I tried to calm them
down.
Hackett, 2012, p.7
In this post I want to think about the role of museums
in children’s lives and learning. In particular, how is museum learning similar
to and different from learning in school, or in any other sort of place?
In my ethnographic research, family visits to museums
with toddlers were dominated by movement, which I have argued “must not be
dismissed as the ‘noise’ that happens in between focussed learning and
engagement in a museum (or any other environment) but as a central aspect”
(Hackett, 2014, p.20). Practices such as banging a drum or pressing a button to
play music and dancing around the gallery seemed important to the children, and
uniquely inspired by the spaces and objects in the museum, yet difficult to
categorise as ‘learning’ in a traditional sense.
Other scholars who have looked at the experiences of
young children visiting museums have come to similar conclusions. For example,
Weier and Piscetelli (2003) have described young children’s museum visiting as
“hot and sweaty learning”, Dicks has written about the social and sensory
nature of children visiting a science centre, and Kirk (2014) emphasised the
fast embodied way with which children navigated around a museum.
Rethinking museum learning
So are we to conclude that children of this age are
simply too young to visit a museum ‘properly’ or to learn anything meaningful
from the experience? Rather, I would argue that such observations should encourage
us to think differently about what museum learning does or could look like, and
to rethink the role of museums in children’s learning.
Airey (1980) charts the development of museum education
since the 1960s, highlighting its original focus on partnership working with
schools and Local Education Authorities. Early museum educators prioritised
encouraging schools to visit museums, loaning objects to schools, and children’s
close observation of museum objects to facilitate learning about, for example,
history and science. Overall museum education was positioned in a supporting
role to school learning, and the purpose of children’s museum visits was
projected into their future adult lives; both in terms of the history and
science knowledge they needed to acquire and in terms of children appreciating
the importance of museums and museum objects.
I have found Rautio’s (2014) writing about children’s intra-action
with objects helpful for thinking about alternative ways of conceptualising the
potential role of museums in children’s lives. Rautio writes about the need to
take seriously what children do, even if it seems pointless or defies adult
explanation. In particular, Rautio urges us to take seriously what happens in
the moment. She contrasts this focus on the moment with traditional “educational research which tends to overlook the momentary
in favour of learning for the future.” (ibid,
p.4). So, in the vignette with which I began this post, we would need to
take seriously the running around the table, even though it might seem
unproductive, disruptive and not a good example of purposeful learning.
(Obviously the caveat here is that museums must prioritise the safety of both
their collections and other visitors – running round a table is not always safe
or appropriate!)
Some new directions for thinking about the purpose of
young children in museums
Taking seriously what happens in moments like running
round a table or dancing in a gallery, leads me to ask, rather than seeing
museums in a supporting role to school learning (or in the case of younger children,
school readiness), could they offer something completely different?
The space of a museum is unlike anything else young
children are likely to experience. It is bigger than a house. It is indoors and
public, yet often seen by families as safer than other large spaces (a shopping
centre for example), perhaps allowing children more scope to explore independently.
Young children discover such spaces by
moving through them, encountering colours, textures, objects, dark enclosed
spaces or bright expansive spaces. Perhaps this experience of space itself
could be a starting point for thinking about the role of museums in children’s
lives, and the potential for a different kind of learning experience?
Additionally, much of what young children experience in
museums seems to exist in between fantasy and real life. Taxidermy is a good
example of this. I suspect am I not the only one with very clear childhood
memories of standing in front of large stuffed animals, holding my breath and
waiting to see whether they were going to move! Both the spaces and things in
museums can offer children the chance to play and interact in ways that are
distinct from anywhere else, exploring notions of fear and
reality.
As research on museum education increasingly draws
attention to the sensory nature of museum visiting, and the physical, wellbeing
and emotional benefits of these sensory experiences, it is an exciting time for
thinking about the role museums do or could play in young children’s embodied,
playful exploration of their worlds.
Abigail Hackett is an independent researcher and
consultant. She blogs at www.abigailhackett.wordpress.com
References
Airey, V. (1980) History of Museum Education in the United Kingdom. The
Past Twenty Years. Journal of Education
in Museums, 1, 10-15.
Dicks, B. (2013)
Interacting with….what? Exploring children’s social and sensory practices in a
science discovery centre, Ethnography and Education 9 (3), 301-322.
Hackett, A. (2012)
Running and learning in the museum: a study of young children’s behaviour in
the museum, and their parents’ discursive positioning of that behaviour. Childhoods Today, 6 (1).
Hackett,
A. (2014) Zigging and zooming all over the place: young children's meaning
making and movement in the museum. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14 (1), 5-27.
Kirk, E. (2014) Crystal Teeth and Skeleton Eggs: Snapshots
of Young Children’s Experiences in a Natural History Museum. Unpublished
thesis.
Rautio, P. (2014) Mingling and imitating in producing
spaces for knowing and being: Insights from a Finnish study of child matter
intra-action, Childhood 21 (4), 461-474.
Weier, K. and Piscitelli, B., (2003) Hot and
sweaty in the museum: Young children learning about nature, culture and
science. Journal for Education in Museums, 24, 19–23.
