Engaging students in conversations around science and engineering design can be challenging. Sparking such conversations during field trips at an interactive science center has additional challenges. First, students vary considerably in age from day to day: science center employees might work with first graders one day and sixth graders the next.…

This article discusses a current research project being undertaken by Tate Liverpool with a local university. The study is exploring the impact of a school-in-residence programme on children, teachers and the gallery. The invitation to schools to undertake these residencies fits with current agendas within the museum and galleries sector where…

The raising of Henry VIII's warship, the "Mary Rose," from the sea bed set in train an extraordinary programme of interdisciplinary research, relentlessly pursuing the clues to Tudor life and death provided by the remains of the ship, its cargo and crew. In this article Clare Barnes offers fascinating insights into the way in which this…

Everyone has an object that holds a special meaning. It is human nature to collect these objects and value the stories they tell. Entire buildings have been built just to hold and display such items. Museums not only house these objects but help us connect to the past and our culture as well as the culture of others. In the state of Arkansas, few…

This study expands on the concept of outreach programs: museum initiatives that look for ways to reach and share knowledge outside their installations, often to schools. We aim to study approaches for the development of content for a history museum outreach program using digital technologies. The significance of this lies in investigating ways to…

The aim of this article is to investigate ways that young children interact with touchscreen devices during museum visits and during the process of making a digital story in their kindergarten classrooms related to these visits. Drawing on children's communicative embodied museum experiences and the notion of wayfaring and lines of movement, I…

In December 2017, the Smithsonian unveiled a new Strategic Plan. It expands on the five "Grand Challenges"--Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe, Understanding and Sustaining a Biodiverse Planet, Valuing World Cultures, Understanding the American Experience, and Magnifying the Transformative Power of Arts and Design--by setting goals…

Although museums for peace claim peace education to be a primary mission, their definitions of "peace" and their aims and practices for peace education vary widely. In this article, we draw from the field of critical museology and the knowledge construction perspective to understand the role of museums for peace in the service of peace…

Ethics in research and evaluation has a long standing history, one steeped with legal and moral implications. This article addresses the technicalities of ethics in evaluation as well as highlights the importance for museum educators to prioritize adopting such practices. While understanding the myriad of ethical concerns and best practices can be…

The maker movement, with its focus on-hands on learning through creating with familiar materials, has seen growth in both formal and informal learning spaces. This article examines three informal learning spaces that have redesigned their space (or a portion of it) to accommodate several tenets of the maker movement and in various ways have become…

In this article, the authors bring together the cultural studies of emotion with theories that foreground the agency of place and objects in order to analyse the entanglement of place, children and emotion (particularly fear) in children's play encounters. When children, objects and places come into play with each other, intensities and emotions…

In this article, I suggest that providing opportunities for agency (student choice or control) in the early childhood classroom could enhance student learning. One important way that young children demonstrate agency is through expressing color preference. I encourage teachers to look for opportunities to give children choices and control in the…

In the summer of 2016, the Staten Island Museum was challenged with developing an audience for its new building and location. With exhibitions that change infrequently, programs became the way guests accessed museum resources. Museum staff reinvented the personality of museum programming while putting its new location "on the map." The…

In 2016, the education department at the National Building Museum offered a series of Late Night programs in conjunction with the Summer Block Party installation, ICEBERGS. The museum wanted to evaluate the programs but had limited resources to do so. In the following article, we describe the use of critical appraisal, an economic method applied…

In western countries, engagement with neighboring communities is an expected part of a museum's mission. However, in other parts of the world, this is often not the case. In Egypt, the focus of museums has been primarily on foreign tourists. The re-opening of the Mallawi Museum provided the opportunity to undertake a case study to adapt western…