ABSTRACT

Increased recognition of the need to study child development outside of research labs in naturalistic contexts has led to the formation of partnerships between researchers and museums. Researcher–museum partnerships provide researchers access to families and naturalistic contexts in museums to study learning and social development. Although benefits for researchers are well established, benefits for the museum and museum visitors are less clear. To investigate the potential benefits of research exhibits for museum visitors, we compared the impacts of a research toy exhibit and permanent museum exhibits on parents and caregivers attending a children’s museum. Although caregivers reported that their children had less fun at the research exhibit, caregivers learned more at the research exhibit and reported that the research exhibit raised more questions and had greater relevance to them compared with permanent exhibits. Caregivers who visited research exhibits were also more likely to be reminded of and to apply ideas from the exhibit to their daily life compared to those who visited permanent exhibits. Our findings support the unique benefits of research exhibits for caregivers and indicate a need to showcase potential learning opportunities for visitors in future researcher–museum partnerships.

摘要

人们越来越认识到在自然背景下的研究实验室之外研究儿童发展的必要性，导致研究人员和博物馆之间建立了伙伴关系。研究人员与博物馆的合作关系为研究人员提供了接触家庭和博物馆自然环境的机会，以研究学习和社会发展。尽管对研究人员的好处是众所周知的，但对博物馆和博物馆参观者的好处还不太清楚。为了调查研究性展览对博物馆参观者的潜在好处，我们比较了研究性玩具展览和永久性博物馆展览对参观儿童博物馆的父母和看护者的影响。尽管看护者报告说他们的孩子在研究展览中没有那么开心，护理人员在研究展览中了解了更多信息，并报告说，与永久性展览相比，研究展览提出了更多问题，并且与他们具有更大的相关性。与参观永久展览的护理人员相比，参观研究展览的护理人员也更有可能被想起展览中的想法并将其应用到日常生活中。我们的研究结果支持研究展览对护理人员的独特好处，并表明需要在未来的研究人员与博物馆合作中向参观者展示潜在的学习机会。