Seeing Joy: Part 1

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

How can we invite and encourage children to feel and express joy in our museums? 

This question has intrigued me. It comes from a long-standing interest in Reggio-inspired practice in children’s museums and planning in partnership with children. 

But it was photo above, this look of joy on this little guy’s face and the joy expressed in his body that made me wonder, how can we keep this joy alive? Where can we find it in our museums? Can we open our doors wider to welcome joy? 

Social Emotional Learning 

If we didn’t have a clear notion of the importance of social-emotional experiences in children’s lives before the pandemic, children’s absence from social settings and experiencing isolation has provided us with many examples and insights about this critical aspect of children’s growth, development, and wellbeing. We are seeing signs in our museums of children (and adults) emerging from social isolation being stressed out. 

Early social emotional development has lasting effect on our lives. Supporting children’s social emotional learning is complex, on-going, important work. Many children’s museums are focusing on this aspect of children’s development for the first time. Museums that serve children have a special opportunity to create possibilities for children to develop, learn, grow socially and emotionally with others; to build relationship skills, manage themselves, and become responsible decision makers. 

Museums are social places. They are spaces where families go to spend time together; where children and adults meet and connect with other children and adults. They share these public spaces, amiable environments, and novel materials with friendly strangers. They watch others try something and try it themselves. Children learn about sharing, taking turns, friendship, being part of a group. After a visit, families talk together and remember what they did, what they liked, what was new or hard. And they come back for more! 

Places of Joy 

Children’s museums want to be places of joy. Joy is referred to often in children’s museums. 

• We say… “Children play for the sheer joy of it.” 
• We highlight “joyful play” and “joyful learning” on social media 
• Our missions aspire to: 
•  … bring the joy of learning and wonders of the natural world to life
• … create unparalleled experiences to inspire excellence and a lifelong joy of learning

While we believe joy is important in children’s lives and finding their place in the world, we don’t seem to have a shared understanding of what joy is; a sense of what it looks, feels, and sounds like; its importance and benefits; and how we might support and encourage children’s experiences of joy in our museums. Looking at research, we know that: 

• A dose of joy boosts our immune systems, and fights stress and pain 
• Positive emotions like joy and excitement powerfully impact physical and mental health over the whole lifespan 
• Joy is a form of resilience: moments of joy can help our bodies recover from the physiological effects of stress 

These benefits get at why joy matters. And then there’s this:

"Joy, particularly through the activities that result from feeling joy, provides the individual with the opportunity to learn new cognitive and behavioral skills and forge new social relationships and skills which enhances resilience to future obstacles and threats." (1) 

If joy is important and we want to grow its presence in our museums, we need to be attentive and attuned to children’s experiencing it; to reflect on their expressions of joy; notice conditions that might have sparked joy; and invite joy in. 

Learning About Joy in Children’s Lives and Our Museums                                                 

For several years I have been working with WonderTrek Children’s Museum an emerging museum in Brainerd, MN. Our planning work includes co-developing a collaborative inquiry process for exploring how children direct their play. 

As part of this, I’ve been exploring joy. The museum’s mission includes, The joy of play and the wonder of learning and Experiencing joy is among a set of essential experiences in WonderTrek's learning experience framework. A site has been secured and a new building is being designed. WonderTrek believes it’s not too early in the process of opening a strong regional museum to use a research-and learning approach in: 

• planning experiences at a temporary 900 s.f. PlayLab 
• offering activities at locations across the region’s 5 counties 
• developing exhibit concepts and design 
• growing WonderTrek’s Center for Play and Interactive Learning 

WonderTrek’s project team has developed a collaborative, iterative inquiry process that actively engages children and adults including staff and consultants. We use a variety of methods to investigate and document roomy questions around children’s play, exploration, and learning; the role of the environment and materials; and how they understand place. 

We’ve mashed up and adapted several processes to fit the Museum’s interests. WonderTrek Inquiry (WTI) process brings together Team Based-inquiry from the NISE Network; Reggio-inspired documentation; practice-based research; and collaborative action research. We’re making up the process as we go along: developing and modifying it, sometimes at the same time. 

Supporting this practice-based research is a belief that, if we can recognize joy in our museums and find ways to encourage it, we can shift from hoping that children will experience joy to greater confidence in creating the conditions that support joy in exhibits, programs, environments, and interactions. We can invite more joy into our museums, tweak experiences, nurture resilience, and contribute to children’s long-term well-being.

WonderTrek Inquiry Process 

This is the WTI inquiry process in its neat and tidy form. Walking through it, this work clearly requires time. So far we have been able to prioritize time for several reasons. Not only is the approach key to developing museum experiences and environments, but its continuous professional development is core to creating shared understandings of WonderTrek's foundational ideas and putting them into practice from the start. 

Taking a quick spin through the cycle, the process starts with a Question, developed collaboratively. Often one person offers a question that has been floating around and we polish it together. Sub-questions support the lead question and focus the inquiry. At this point we probe why this question is important to the Museum. We've learned to value the time for thinking about importance.

The Question leads to an Invitation to Explore, which challenges us to think together about how we might shape opportunities to engage children and adults in exploring our question.

When we think about Investigation and documenting, we look for activity- and play-based methods—visual, digital, participatory methods that fit the question, setting, children and families, and our capabilities. We are particularly interested in ways to bring in children's voices and perspectives. These might include: brief written observations of children, conversations with them, photos, videos, a talk-back board for parents, and traces of children's works: drawings, constructions, stories.

We move into action, setting up the PlayLab, observing, listening, documenting. After reviewing and summarizing data, we debrief and synthesize. As part of Interpretation, we ask ourselves, "What are we seeing? What might it mean?" Moving from Interpretation to Advancing the inquiry, we do a group reflection, boil down or insights to a few take-aways and Re-frame questions. And we are ready to roll again.

In my next post, I will write about the work-arounds we needed to come up with to continue our exploration of joy when we encountered a challenge. We needed to grow our understanding of joy before we could proceed with an Invitation to Explore.

(1) Johnson, M. (2020). Joy: A review of the literature and suggestions for future directions. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15(1), 5-24