Research into teaching and learning in science museums has led to innovations in pedagogy, exhibits, and educational programming. Science museum facilitators play a critical role in advancing the educational missions of their institutions, yet the roles that these facilitators have in academic research projects aimed at understanding learning…

This paper explores how biodiversity is represented at the "Life in Crisis Schad Gallery of Biodiversity" (Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto). Using theoretical perspectives related to science, technology, society and environment (STSE), and biodiversity in science museums, we conducted a qualitative case study of the exhibit. Data…

Scientific representations of human evolution often embrace stereotypes of ethnicity and gender that are more aligned with socio-cultural discourses and norms than empirical facts. The present study has two connected aims: to understand how ethnicity and gender are represented in an exhibition about human evolution, and to understand how that…

For the past seven years, we -- a museum educator and an academic radiologist -- have co-taught Seeing in Art and Medical Imaging, a first-of-its-kind medical humanities curriculum for residents in nuclear medicine and radiology based at the Harvard Art Museums. The program aims to foster residents' close looking and clinical skills,…

Historians sometimes view teaching and community engagement as peripheral to research. Self-reflection on the design of assignments, pedagogy techniques, and students' work aids teachers as they refine their teaching, and it can also inform research questions and methods. Teaching, research, and community engagement do not have to be separate…

The world faces complex and entangled environmental, health and social problems that can only be effectively grappled with if the research sector harnesses the knowledges and understandings of diverse cultures. Research education is a key site where more democratic and equitable processes of knowledge creation can take place. Drawing on de Sousa…

Museum-based mathematics exhibitions are increasingly prominent but under-theorized learning environments. In this study, we analyse the curriculum of United States mathematics exhibitions developed in the early 21st century in terms of their complex suggestions about the nature of mathematics and mathematical sense-making. We apply Rancière's…

During the unprecedented time of COVID-19, one art therapist noticed that her clients created images expressing their loneliness. To foster a sense of community catharsis, the art therapist worked with her clients to create an art display at a public mall to enable the general population to receive secondary therapeutic support for their own…

Recent proliferation of participatory performance forms has prompted debate on the agency of participants. Consideration of agential potential must go beyond the enactment of the work, however, to assess how participatory experiences can be self-documented and how such records may inform artistic pedagogy. Through discussion of a creative learning…

How can we help students understand the Holocaust in its full historical complexity, particularly when they often come to class with misconceptions arising from the representation of the Holocaust in popular culture? Over a three-year period, Sam Ineson set out to integrate the historical Holocaust into his school's formal and informal curriculum,…

Caring for many objects is one of the more challenging aspects of the museum profession. In museums that collect cultural belongings, utilizing best care practices ensures that objects of cultural heritage can be studied and appreciated by the peoples whose cultures they represent. Thus, providing collections care is necessary to support learning…

Across courses in the social sciences, instructors confront the challenge of how to teach (theories of) culture, yet no consensus exists as to what helps students best comprehend and digest its full complexity. This article offers a metaphorical and heuristic approach to culture that is accessible, multifaceted, and reflective of a wide range of…

In the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet museum curators began to establish a museal depiction of the war. This article analyzes these early beginnings of Soviet war commemoration and the curtailing of its surprising heterogeneity in late Stalinism. Historical research has largely ignored the impact of Soviet…

In December 2020, President Lincoln's Cottage, a museum and historic site in Washington, DC, opened "Reflections on Grief and Child Loss," an exhibit that aims to build understanding of Abraham and Mary Lincoln as bereaved parents and weaves their story together with those of modern grieving families. This exhibit was developed by the…

This paper reveals the journey of two settler-researcher-educators supporting learning in preparation for Carey Newman's Witness Blanket Art Exhibit. Invited to create curriculum for students and educators of K-12 who would visit the exhibit, the authors describe co-curricular making as a living, re-generative, re-cursive experience. The learning…