Children at the center has a ring to it and, at least in my networks, is
referenced often enough to be familiar to many. But, is it a powerful tool or
an empty buzzword? Yes–and both. With some teams I work with, children at
the center sparks an interested,
highly engaged response. From other teams the phrase produces a polite blank or
bored look, signaling a readiness to move on.
A suspiciously attractive
phrase, I nevertheless think placing children at the center extends well beyond a professional belief invoked
with passion. What is at the center is what is important. Occupying a central
position serves as a reference point towards which other considerations and
actions are oriented. Children at the center asserts that children, their healthy growth and
development; their resilience in the face of adversity, small or large; what is
in their long term interest; and their joy are all important.
At its fullest, this idea
offers an asset-based approach to building social capital in communities–better
day-to-day experiences for children now as well as brighter futures. Children
at the center has the capacity to
align interests among multiple organizational partners to work towards long-term
change for a community, its families and children. Finally, it is a compelling
idea with enough gravitational pull to consolidate and focus a shared set of
understandings and practices to better serve children in a museum, school,
childcare, or community program.
While placing children at
the center can advance these significant strategic, organizational, and
learning interests, it does so only with deliberate and steady work among a
group, or even an active network, of people. The work starts with developing a
deep, clear, shared understanding of what placing children at the center means.
Seeing Strengths
Seeing children as strong,
capable, competent, and full of potential is at the core of placing children
at the center. The strengths and
possibilities of even the very youngest child refute the easy assumption that
children are simple and in need of correction, direction, and filling up with
facts. Through movement, thought, reason, and language, infants and toddlers
notice, follow sensations, organize information, seek out others to engage
with, and make and change meaning. We might even view children as the original
hackers, with their innovative customization of their world.
Children’s amazing
potential is captured in an experiment of delivering a box of
tablet computers in sealed boxes to two remote Ethiopian villages.
The purpose was to see if illiterate children with no previous exposure to
written words could learn how to read by themselves by experimenting with the
tablet and its preloaded programs. Within 5 days, children had opened the
boxes, figured out how to operate the tablets and were using an average of 47
apps each.
It is not just children in
remote villages with comparatively limited opportunities to spark an
eagerness to explore that illustrates their strengths and capabilities.
Evidence from everyday moments abounds. Children use others, often adults, as tools
to accomplish their goals: to access something on a high shelf, roll the ball
back to them and play, decode text, lift them up for a better view. Children observe
others doing something they can’t do and then imitate them. Now they do it by
themselves.
Our perspective influences
what we see in children’s curiosity, expressions, persistence, and successes. When we see a strong, capable child, we see an active agent in exploring and
learning. We view a child’s marks, questions, and choices as intention to make meaning–something
we value greatly. We notice an extended focus on a purpose a child has invented
herself rather than presuming a short attention span. We believe each child has
something to say; each brings a narrative to the moment. It might be an observation about time, such as one 5-year old’s chronology of world events,
“Dinosaurs, Baby Jesus, the Knights, and me.” These
are some of the magnificent offerings of children.
New Starting Points
Museums that
internalize a view of children as strong and competent are in a position to activate
the potential each child has. This sounds ambitious, and it is. The careful
work of placing children at the center requires a deliberate shift from
creating exhibits and programs that fill heads with facts or impress museum peers
to centering the museum’s language, thinking, planning, and actions around
children.
Learning from, with, and
about children offers significant new starting points for a museum’s work. Who
are these children? What do we know about them? What fascinates them? How do
they explore, think, and make meaning? If children are the focus and source of what is
important, then everyone across the museum becomes interested, patient
observers. This is precisely the same as everyone being alert to safety
everywhere and all the time.
Focusing on children’s
strengths and capabilities reveals their competence as authors of their own
experiences. They follow interests, investigate materials, make choices, modify
approaches, and express possibilities. Children’s use of their many languages
or ways of representing and expressing their
ideas and emotions comes through in their spoken and written words, visual arts,
drama, movement, and more. This focus opens new understandings about children and
allows a museum to imagine ways the child’s agenda can be the starting point
for explorations that will generate new thinking. Approaches shift to make room
for children’s competence in building knowledge and seeking meaning in the
environments the museum creates, the interactions it facilitates, and the relationships
it nurtures. Rethinking environments, experiences, exhibits, and programs that
invite children to wonder and extend their investigations is inevitable.
The sustained work of placing
children at the center relies on listening to, being responsive to, and sharing
in a child’s world attentively and respectfully. While evidence of children’s thinking
and connections and their own words about what they are doing and understanding is
rich, varied, and plentiful, it is all but overlooked in most settings. Documentation, an approach that gives visibility
to children’s processes and accomplishments, brings together listening,
recording, photographing, and reflecting on children’s actions, work, images,
and words.
In making children’s
thinking visible, documentation gathers evidence of an individual child’s or a
group of children’s thinking from their words, drawings, questions, actions,
and exchanges. In a program, at an exhibit, during a drop-in activity, and
while prototyping, staff may listen to a child’s questions about what keeps a
ball aloft; observe a child's repeated adjustments of objects around a light source
to change shadows; notice a child’s persistence blowing bubbles; or reflect on a
child’s varying the base of block structures. Notes, transcripts, photos, and
children’s drawings that staff collect fuel discussion and interpretation about
how children approach and think about the experiences the museum has created
for them, or that they have created or discovered. Documentation is an iterative
process of reflection, distillation, and sharing. It yields insights into how
to support and extend children’s explorations, and modify environments where
children will choose to invest their curiosity, imagination, and creativity.
At its best, documentation
is a teaching, learning, and research tool. It illuminates children’s thinking
and learning to them, to parents, and to staff. It frames new questions, and informs
future planning.
Centering the Museum Around
Children
There is no straight,
short, or simple path to placing children at the center of a museum in a
meaningful way. However, when educators, developers, designers, and visitor
service staff from across a museum wholeheartedly and collectively engage in
placing children at the center, momentum builds and change occurs along many
dimensions.
Seeing children as strong, capable thinkers, planners, and doers readily translates into seeing colleagues across the organization
as capable and competent. Colleagues are recognized for bringing valued perspectives and complementary expertise needed to advance a shared vision. Staff
working in different departments become collaborators in explorations and
documentation that informs and deepens their work. A larger community of
learners and partners with and around children takes shape.
Centering the museum’s
language, thinking, planning, and practice around children takes hold
gradually. New and more ways of placing children at the center begin to appear
earlier in planning an exhibition, developing programs, framing the budget, hiring and training staff, forming partnerships. Through
each project insights into children’s strengths and capabilities deepen, revealing new insights. A
shared vocabulary develops. New ways to support more elaborate explorations
unfold. Cycles of documentation are tried, shared, and modified. Existing
practices evolve and new ones emerge, clustering into an increasingly
supportive set of everyday practices with children at the center. Museum-wide practice aligns thinking and
links qualities of environments, experiences, exhibits, programs with
children’s thinking and knowing.
All museums have
aspirations. Yet few actually translate these aspirations into change
at a meaningful scale for a community, its citizens, or even itself. A shared vision
and a sustained commitment are required. Placing children at the center of a
museum’s long-term interests can be a way a museum matters in the life of its
community. This commitment may be adopted as a value, a foundational principle,
or a vision statement such as, “We envision a child-centered community
that makes decisions based on what is in the long-term interest of the child's well-being.”
Stated clearly and at the highest strategic level, placing children at the center
can inspire, guide, and unify a museum’s varied and complex work across
multiple formats and over time.
