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| MoMA |
So often we write labels
and text for what we want to say or how we like to write. While an obvious
starting point, it’s one that excludes the very crucial audience for whom we
are writing. Writing text is tricky. Presenting the right amount of digestible content
with an appropriate and engaging tone and without jargon is a challenge
compounded by considerations of length, font size, and design.
While true for every
museum, for museums serving children, the challenges multiply. For instance, while
adults are the ones reading text panels, they are reading for both themselves and
their children. Only some of those children are readers themselves, but all are
active, mobile learners and curious explorers. An adult reading a label is very
likely also keeping an eye on a child–or several children of different ages–following
each, alert to their safety, and making sure everyone is having a great time.
Clearly parents and caregivers play a crucial
role in their children’s museum experience. Labels and messages are integral to
this complex choreography. In spite of all our cherished hopes of how a label
enhances an experience, it may also distract an adult’s attention, be
ineffective delivering information, intimidate a parent or caregiver, or
encourage an adult to launch a lecture.
Effective ways to message
to parents and caregivers has been drawing the attention of exhibit developers
and designers, educators, visitor service staff, and researchers working in and
with children’s museums and science centers. An important element in advancing museum
missions and meeting their goals for children, this focus also supports one of
8 areas in the Association of Children’s Museums’ research agenda: understanding and supporting adult–child learning.
A group of museums I have
been following have been exploring how to communicate with and engage parents
and caregivers in order to support and extend their child’s exploration. They listen
to parents and caregivers about their expectations and needs and act on what
they hear. Building on what others in the museum field are doing and learning, they
engage in their own process that generates new questions and experiments. Often
they are developing a larger toolkit of experiences and activities, images,
staff training, and media to support parents and caregivers. Through this
process, they find themselves refining their own pedagogy, approach, and
thinking.
Inquiring Museums
• Partners in Play has been a collaborative research project conducted
by 3 Washington children’s museums, Children’s Museum of Tacoma, Imagination Children’s Museum (Everette),
and KidsQuest (Bellvue). The 2013-2014
study Lorrie Beaumont and I conducted for the 3 museums focused on learning from
parents and caregivers how they view their child’s play at a children’s museum and
their role supporting it.
Interviews with 96
parents and caregivers visiting the 3 museums with children 2-7 years provided
interesting glimpses into play and the parent and the caregiver role. Across
the 3 museums, parents and caregivers saw play primarily as learning, imagining,
and creating. They characterized their roles in supporting their child’s play
in a wide variety of ways (observer, supporter/facilitator, family role, friend/playmate,
teacher and supervisor/guardian); at the same time, they saw that they had a
role to play. In playing these roles, parents and caregivers saw themselves as
extending learning, creating an intimate bond with the child, and providing
safety and security. Each of the museums subsequently conducted an action
research project probing parent and caregiver perceptions based on the research
results.
• Chicago Children’s Museum (CCM)
and Gyroscope, Inc. designed
SKYLINE, (2007) an exhibit offering free-form construction experiences
designed to engage families in social learning.
One intention of the project was to explore
approaches for increasing caregiver involvement in children’s informal science
learning.
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| Skyline Chicago Children's Museum |
One strategy in
particular addressed this objective. A set of graphic panels on the exhibition walls
provided examples of what a caregiver might say as part of an interaction. Using
photographs of real visitors in the exhibit and actual quotes in both English
and Spanish, the signs were huge. Text was kept to a single line, readable at a
glance.
The approach was
grounded in observations of how often families model from each other. Without
lecturing or being didactic, the signs also allowed the museum to indirectly
provide tips on how to use building materials. Finally, by mirroring
conversations they might have with their children and modeling interactions,
the panels suggested that
caregivers have an important role in supporting their children's
learning. Another focus of the
project, creating a research platform that could contribute new understandings
of family learning to the field, is still in process as the museum looks to
research how the exhibit functions with and without the signs.
• In 2013, The Children’s Museum, Indianapolis (TCM) drew on CCM’s work to test approaches to signage in their new Playscape exhibit for infants,
toddlers, and preschoolers. In 2 focus groups, mothers were asked to consider 3
approaches to signs they might find in the exhibit, which approach would be
most helpful to them, and how. One was a kind of parent tip, or suggestion for
a parent or caregiver to think or talk about in the exhibit. Another offered
basic information about child development. The third, using the CCM example, had
a sample question or comment a parent or caregiver might use, noting that quotes
would be paired with a photo of a parent and child playing together.
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| Playscape, The Children's Museum, Indianapolis |
Both focus groups were unhappy with the first
approach; the label copy inferred that parents didn’t know what to do with
their children. The second approach received a mixed review because of text length
and information available online about developmental milestones. The third
approach received a positive response. Participants said they read this as
a suggestion, rather than a direction, offering something concrete to use or say
while playing with their children.
• In 2015, Kentucky Science Center (KSC)
opened Science In Play,
a 11,000 square foot early science learning space. Designed with Hands On!, the new permanent exhibit built on what KSC and Hands
On! learned from two 5,000 square foot experimental versions. These versions
allowed the collaborators to test and expand on concepts like the Shapes &
Stuff Store and explore communication strategies.
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| Science In Play, Kentucky Science Center |
KSC heard
from parents that they “didn’t care” about the science. Rather they were interested
in how to build on their child’s play behavior and support the learning embedded
in it. In the next round, text focused on a child’s activity in terms of school
readiness skills. This approach took a friendly tone as if an experienced
friend were standing by, modeling and scaffolding interactions and conversations
with a child. A conversation
between the executive directors of these organizations describes the process of
developing the communication strategy.
• Providence Children’s Museum (PCM) has been engaged in a succession of investigations
into the connection between play and learning for children and adults. Interested in developing new ways to support adults’
awareness and appreciation of children’s learning through play, PCM has looked at what caregivers understand about learning through play
and translated this into exhibit text.
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| Play Power, Providence Children's Museum |
Guided by input
that indicated caregivers were interested in why behaviors they had seen in
their own children were important and what these behaviors could show about
children’s learning, PCM edited its signs. Play
Power signs shared a consistent structure that:
• Began with, “Through play…” and identified one skill
that children learn or practice by playing.
• Placed “kids” as
the subject of every sentence and used active verbs.
• Used thinking behaviors that were observable
in children’s play and recognized by caregivers.
• Linked a specific behavior with what children
gain from it.
In a follow-up
set of interviews, revised text elicited much richer responses from caregivers
than the original signs had.
Worth Noting
These are the briefest of
overviews of informal studies done for different reasons at museums of
different sizes. All their implications can’t be discussed here. Furthermore,
the focus of each study is somewhat different and none, as far as I know, have
been adequately researched to really test these approaches.
Yet, a few observations
are worth noting. First, consistent among these studies is a stance of being
highly responsive to parent and caregiver perspectives. Also there is an
interesting convergence among the findings. They cluster into 3 areas that work
well together, if not actively support one another.
Parents
and caregivers are interested in connections
between children’s play and learning being made explicit. Both PCM and KSC heard
from parents that they were interested in why behaviors they had seen in their
own children were important and what these behaviors could show about
children’s learning. One implication is that parents and caregivers appear to be less interested in content, such
as science or child development, than is often assumed. This also came through
at both KSC and TCM. By making connections between play and learning, thinking
and learning, or a behavior and a readiness skill, museums are providing
something both valued by parents and caregivers and hard for them to find
elsewhere.
Parent
and caregiver roles and interactions are supported by a clear, overarching message. Trying to communicate too
many messages can interfere with communicating any one of them effectively. One
basic, distilled message powerfully delivered can support multiple cues and
hints. Chicago Children’s Museum’s overarching message may be: there is a role
for parents and caregivers in children’s play and exploration. At the same
time, CCM layered several ideas into its wall panels. Realistically, one idea,
or message, will be presented and supported in many ways–written, verbal, images,
and media–in briefer and more complete versions.
A
corollary to this finding, supported by the interviews in the Washington study,
is that parents and caregivers appear to want a role to play. Roles for parents
and caregivers should be planned for and clear.
Parents
and caregivers need highly readable signs. Signs are in the fiercest of competition with
children for parents’ and caregivers’ attention. Adults may be reading while
moving, comforting, at a distance, and (or) in a nanosecond. At their best,
signs claim some of that attention, distracting them as briefly as possible. Highly readable signs need to be short and quickly read as
both CCM and TCM noted. A consistent sign structure like PCM’s facilitates
parents’ and caregivers quickly accessing information assisted by a predictable
format. Positioned for readability places signs high on walls, as at CCM, or where
children spend more time (because adults are also more likely to spend more
time), as at PCM. CCM’s signs were huge which made a single line of text easy
to take in. Dual language text, for instance, English and Spanish, makes
messages accessible to more parents and caregivers–and also doubles the amount
of text–to underscore the need for brevity. Finally, tone matters, as the two
TCM focus groups indicated.
This
important area of inquiry for museums serving children is undoubtedly engaging
other museums. I invite other museums exploring similar questions to share
their word and where they have landed. On similar findings or something
different? What’s working and what isn’t?
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