Background: Museum exhibits encourage exploration with physical materials typically with minimal signage or guidance. Ideally children get interactive support as they explore, but it is not always feasible to have knowledgeable staff regularly present. Technology-based interactive support can provide guidance to help learners achieve scientific…

The William Penn Foundation launched Philadelphia's Informal Learning Initiative (ILI) to support the development of literacy-rich programming for families with children aged 3 to 9. The initiative was designed as a network of partnerships in which a cultural organization--usually a museum--paired with one or more, community-based organizations…

How do informal learning organizations work with schools as part of a broader educational ecology? We examined this question through a comparative case study of two collaborative efforts whereby informal arts education organizations, a children's museum and a community-based organization, worked with an urban school district to redefine the…

In this article, we use two studies conducted in art museum settings as a means to discuss some of the opportunities and challenges for the field of informal art education. The first study explores artmaking processes that take place in a children's museum, highlighting the need to consider the social nature of learning in informal environments.…

Informed by literature on childhood expertise in high-interest topics and parent-child conversation in museum settings, this study explored how children's level of dinosaur expertise influences family learning opportunities in a natural history museum. Interviews identified children with high and low dinosaur knowledge and assigned them to expert…

Reports on a study of parent-child interactions in a children's museum demonstrating that parents shape and support children's scientific thinking in everyday, nonobligatory activity. Finds that when children engaged an exhibit with their parents, their exploration of evidence was observed to be longer, broader, and more focused on relevant…