MUSEUM NOTES

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

What's a Learning Framework, Anyway? was the question explored at a session at the Association of Children's Museums' annual conference in New Orleans April 26-28. I was asked to start the session with some background on learning frameworks. Three children's museums presented their learning frameworks: Tiffany Espinosa and Lisa Williams from Children's Museum of Houston; Hardin Englehardt from Marbles Kids Museum; and Peter Olson from Wondertrek Children's Museum. 

In 1992 I was head of Exhibits and Education at Minnesota Children’s Museum when we started planning for a new, much bigger museum in downtown St Paul. We invited 5 colleagues from other museums to be peer reviewers for a programmatic master plan that would guide development, design, and fabrication of 20,00 square feet of gallery space and new programs. 

At our first gathering, the MCM team asked the peer 

reviewers, “What’s a programmatic master plan?"

Everyone shrugged their shoulders and looked perplexed. It wasn’t the response we’d hoped for. Undaunted, our peer reviewers did work with us to create a programmatic master plan that went beyond “what” exhibits and programs would be about. It also focused on the children for whom the experiences were intended. We connected exploration, play and learning; identified varied engagement strategies and how we thought children would be likely to explore the spaces, materials, and activities; and the roles of adults. 

That 1992 Programmatic Master Plan was followed by an Education Framework in 2000. MCM’s 2013 Visitor Experience Master Plan for its expansion and renovation updated its approach to learning experiences. In 2019 a Learning Framework was developed. 

Children’s museums have been charting a course from “what is a programmatic masterplan?” to having a learning framework as a best practice — asking new questions, drawing on current research, deepening an understanding of what learning looks like, how we can support it in our settings for the children, families and communities we serve. 

Still, learning frameworks are generally newcomers to museums’ core documents including a mission, vision and values; a strategic plan; business plan, and marketing and communications plans. 

This movement enjoyed a boost when a project of ACM’s Children’s Museum Research Network in 2014 looked at learning frameworks in 5 network museums. It noted that learning frameworks are both institutionally specific and have the potential to inform the larger field’s understanding of how children’s museums conceptualize and operationalize learning. 

From my work developing learning frameworks in our field over the last 30 years, I’ve noticed that: 

• Learning frameworks are both becoming an established practice and are evolving. 
• There’s variety among learning frameworks from one museum to another. 
• Learning frameworks are developed by museums at all stages of development, from emerging museums to ones that are expanding or reinventing themselves; or doing some backfill on their learning focus. 
•  And interestingly enough, I think children’s museums are leading the way among museums in developing, using, and advancing learning frameworks. What is a learning framework? 

As the 2014 Research Network study concluded, there are many answers to this question. For me a learning framework is a process and a product that consolidates and articulates a museum’s most important ideas around learning and learners for its intended audience and its community. It’s a: 

• foundational set of ideas grounded in its vision, mission, values, and audience 
• resting on research and conceptual foundations around children’s growth and development, their play and learning, and their futures 
• and is developed collaboratively. 

A learning framework gets at not only what a museum does, how it does it, and why that matters. What museum couldn’t benefit by better understanding that? 

The process of creating a framework articulates the relationships among the aspirations of vision and mission, the experiences visitors enjoy, children’s take-aways; and how the museum believes it can help a community accomplish its goals for children. 

The framework itself focuses and sets priorities about where a museum intends to direct its expertise and resources to bring valued, engaging experiences and opportunities to children in family, school and community groups. 

As a tool, a learning framework assists a museum in doing its work. It informs exhibit, experience and program development and design; guides evaluation of exhibits and programs; and research on what the museum makes possible. 

A clear focus helps a museum be accountable. Instead of just hoping that children will engage in child-directed play, or thinking critically, or working cooperatively, we can deliberately shape experiences, select materials, offer choices, and create possibilities that are likely to do so. 

For instance, a framework could focus on connecting children’s play with being life-long learners. It might base its view of children as learners who are curious, social, and active in research; identify relevant social-emotional skills; prioritize compelling engagement strategies; and create contexts that that are fascinating and meaningful to children. 

The framework provides a common vocabulary and understanding about the meaning of core ideas on project teams, writing grants, staff development, even website design. Do you mean what I mean when I say “agency?” or “place-based experiences?” or “multiple entry points?” Do Marketing and exhibits share a vocabulary based in the learning framework? Equally valuable is the role these frameworks play in communicating with partners and stakeholders about how the museum fits into the local learning, cultural and civic landscape; or have a positive impact on the lives of children in the region. 

To the question of why children’s museums seem to be taking the lead among various types of museums in developing learning frameworks, I have a hunch. “Traditional” museums such as art, history, and science museums rest on an accepted body of work, a canon. Even if that canon is evolving and being challenged, it is associated with a discipline and connected with content, processes, and tradition as well as school curriculum and careers. While not tailored to a particular museum, community or age group, those bodies of knowledge serve some of the functions that learning frameworks serve for many museums. 

While children’s museums engage children with varied content, that is not their primary focus. Children are. Children’s museums are for children, not primarily about something. We may be envious of a museum’s having pretty much of a ready-made framework in a canon of knowledge. For me, however, adopting a ready-made framework for children’s museums is unimaginable. How would a canon of knowledge acknowledge the naturally interdisciplinary

Mud is quintessentially interdisciplinary

way that children investigate mud or explore and find their place in the world? In fact, developing a learning framework for a children’s museum is an opportunity to articulate how we support children’s burgeoning interests and capabilities; their ways of making meaning of their experiences; and how we champion children in our communities. 

You may have noticed that I’ve slipped “play” and “exploration” in with learning. Frameworks allow museums to define their interests, agendas and their roles in their communities. With a focus on children and families, as free choice settings, as object centered, children’s museums are not required to follow formal-education, its methods, standards, or assessment. Rather, learning frameworks allow us to define learning broadly—social, emotional, physical, cognitive, and linguistic learning; to connect play and learning; focus on engagement; and characterize the positive changes we believe are possible. That’s perhaps why frameworks have shifted from being called programmatic plans, to education frameworks, to learning frameworks, to play and learning frameworks. Every framework reflects its museum’s interests. 

That variety is, in my view, a good thing. What’s important is having a learning framework grounded in a museum’s mission, vision, and values; actively using it in planning and evaluating experiences to deliver learning value; and benefiting children, families, and the community in planned and unplanned ways.