In this project, the research team--a collaboration between teacher researchers and university researchers--was interested in finding out about how "children as teachers" might engage their "families as learners" at a museum. This project had two parts. First, it was about young children as museum guides, explaining their…

Museum educators and instructors of English as a Second Language (ESOL) at a community college in New York reflect on their experiences facilitating a program designed to enrich the language, cultural, and visual literacy skills of adult immigrant students. The CALTA21 program brought together three stakeholders, immigrant ESOL students, language…

This qualitative study presents an analysis of how guided visits to an art museum can provide leadership lessons for developing school leaders. The principal interns participated in teaching artists-facilitated guided arts engagement sessions at a large metropolitan museum. The sessions included art-making, observations of portraiture in the…

The purpose of this article is to describe the process and products associated with a successful Earth Day collaboration between a children's museum and a university education department. Using the idea of an "educational ecology" as a metaphor, we illustrate the collaborative development and implementation of this event hosted and…

In this article, we reflect on ways that young adolescents learn through embodied practice, which we define as moments when the body is "caught up" in learning activities. Our observations draw from two workshops conducted as part of the "IMC Sky High!" program which annually involves over 150 Year 7 and 8 students from schools…

This article describes a Museum-in-Progress (MIP) project--a classroom museum model combining social, intellectual, and physical experiences that stimulate students' different learning styles and provide team-bonding opportunities. Student curators research, collect, categorize, create, exhibit, and interpret primary and secondary resources about…

Annual fieldtrip visits offer an excellent opportunity to engage teachers and students in learning opportunities that may not otherwise be available in their classrooms. Here we describe a collaborative project designed to support teacher engagement before, during, and after a classroom fieldtrip to a children's museum. We found that providing a…

Few digital tools are designed to support identity exploration around careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) that may help close existing representation gaps in STEM fields. The aim of this project is to inform the design of games that facilitate learning as identity change as defined by the Projective Reflection…

This co-authored article describes a community literacy oral history project involving 14 undergraduate students. It is intellectually situated at the intersection of writing studies, oral history, and African American rhetoric and distinguished by two features: 1) we were a combined team of 20 collaborators, and 2) our narrator, Frank Gilyard,…

"Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition" is a traveling exhibit based on the popular television show. When housed at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, it included a traditional, interactive free flow exhibition space followed by a live facilitated show. This paper describes results from an experimental study about the effects…

In recent decades, research has shown the challenge posed to teachers by science education in informal contexts such as science museums or centres. In addition, there is consensus that in the case of pupils visiting a science centre, learning improves when the visit is connected to the classroom curriculum, so the teachers' involvement in…

Organizations like the Native Women's Association of Canada have been working tirelessly for well over a decade to draw attention to the scope of the problem of violence against Indigenous women, and by 2010 (the year in which federal funding for their research, education, and policy initiative on violence against Indigenous women and girls was…

In recent years, the integration of computation with crafting has garnered increased attention. Partly spurred by the growth of the "maker movement" and also by recognition of the importance of broadening computational interest and proficiency, computational crafts have become more familiar to educational technologists and designers. For…

Museums offering archaeological programs often attempt to use the "sandbox approach" to simulate archaeological excavation work. However, in light of the definition of simulation, and given the realities of actual professional practice in archaeological excavation, the author argues that the activity of troweling for artifacts in loose sand places…

The Smithsonian American Art Museum has created and will tour an exhibition on a most unusual but extremely popular art form--"The Art of Video Games." As one of the largest and first of its type, this exhibition will document and explore a 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects and the…