In this article Christine Woywod contemplates what her students' artworks would look like if she taught in a way where art was transient, not about objects, but rather experiences. As an example, she describes experiencing an exhibit including interactive works by Nathaniel Stern where she got to jump and swat at projected words that floated past…

Research has shown that supporting tinkering and exploration promotes a wide range of STEM related literacies. However, the open-endedness of tinkering environments makes it difficult to know whether learners' exploration is productive or not. This is especially true in museum spaces, where dwell times are short and facilitators lack a history of…

Arts & Minds programs aim to promote well-being for people with dementia and their care partners. Educators must balance the needs of participants with the given conditions of display in the museum. While connection to the art historical canon is a consideration for program planning, the choice of artworks for contemplation and dialogue…

Little information exists regarding intention behind the design and development of Extension outreach and educational exhibits. An evaluation of response to the exhibit "A Salamander Tale" indicates that the methods used to develop the exhibit resulted in an effective way to present information to an adult audience. Survey questions were…

In alignment with the National Art Education Association's (NAEA) 2015-2020 Strategic Vision, Enid Zimmerman conducted an evaluation of Summer Vision DC (SVDC), an NAEA-sponsored, museum-based art education professional learning community program. The purpose was twofold: to provide feedback to the leaders of the program (including Renee Sandell,…

Museums as colonial institutions are filled with the tensions and contradictions of competing discourses. This makes them complex sites of public pedagogy and informal adult education and learning. But they are also becoming important spaces of counter-narrative, self-representation, and resistance as Indigenous artists and curators intervene, and…

Educators' work is a key element in museums' learning experience, yet knowledge about their professional development is still limited. In this study, we followed three science museum educators' professional growth during collaboration with researchers, with special focus on the introduction of research-based frameworks in their practice. To…

This is a personal reflection on an encounter with the works of the nineteenth-century painter J. M. W. Turner in London's Tate Britain exhibition "Late Turner: Painting Set Free". The article discusses the deeply subjective nature of engaging with artworks, and touches upon theories that might account for the ineffable but moving…

Author Julie Pelletier recently became part of a new committee at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR): the Indigenous Education Working Group (IEWG). The IEWG is a working group made up of Indigenous individuals with a background in indigenous education. The first project the IEWG undertook was assisting with the development of Indigenous…

Classrooms and museums have long provided the perfect environment for students to engage information on multiple levels. Some of the information is in the form of worksheets, textbooks, and interpretive panels others in the form of societal conceptions derived from their surroundings. Museums are supposed to be equitable spaces where facts can be…

This paper offers an insight into the use of poster presentations as a means of helping students prepare and develop their arguments for their final project work to be submitted for assessment. The five students, all from a Masters in Social Work course in Gothenburg, Sweden participated in an international conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. The…

Based on classroom management fostering autonomy support and intrinsic motivation, this study examines effects of reciprocal peer-monitoring of learning behaviours on cognitive and affective outcomes. Within our study, 470 German secondary school students between 13 and 16 years of age participated in a multimodal hands- and minds-on exhibition…

The idea of a shared place in the universe--a shared history--was embodied in 2019. The heft of the Smithsonian--its unparalleled collections, its diverse and deep-rooted expertise, and its outsized ability to connect with millions of people--is being brought to bear on the most critical issues of all time: conversations about democracy, identity,…

This article describes the vision and realization of the DEAF CULTURE CENTRE as a beacon of Deaf heritage contribution in Canada and internationally, with a focus on community-generated accomplishment and celebration. The authors highlight the unique historical role of the DEAF CULTURE CENTRE as a freestanding cultural space set in Toronto's…

This paper begins with two parallel, although not identical, images. The first is of Ota Benga, a Congolese "pygmy" brought to the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 and displayed in a cage for the entertainment of the visiting public. The second is of a Red Maple tree in a large concrete pot on the campus of Simon Fraser University on the…