Nine Things Children Are Great At

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning 

How often do you find yourself surprised by children and their capabilities? I mean really surprised and by true capabilities. Not like when a 4-year-old spells Mississippi correctly; or when a 2-year-old knows their numbers; or when a child repeats a smart remark. Often that is memorization or mimicry, which, while important, is also part of children’s everyday repertoire of words and ways of engaging with caregivers. Very young children (especially infants and toddlers) are absorbing information at an astonishing pace, learning to use language —gestures, vocalizations, smiles, call-and-response—to invite the attention and care of bigger kids, parents, and anyone they engage with. 

Are you sometimes caught off balance by a child’s thinking? Do you pause, check your assumptions, and appreciate children’s insights, for instance, when 4-year-old Jake comes up with a timeline of world history as: “the dinosaurs, Baby Jesus, the knights, and me”? Does that just seem cute? Or do you recognize there is something more complex behind these and other insights? 

This matters. How we see children shapes how we engage with them, shape opportunities for them, step back or forward as they find their place in the world. Regrettably, when we consider children’s capabilities, we often highlight what they can’t do. Babies can’t feed themselves, toddlers don’t share, preschoolers can’t read or ride two-wheelers. We confuse children’s being novices with their being deficient. Using adult yardsticks to assess their capabilities, children not surprisingly don’t measure up. 

When, however, we slow down, look closely at children with genuine interest; when we are

open and appreciate the remarkable ways they make sense of the world, we see competence, capabilities, possibilities, a spark. The more we pay thoughtful attention to children, the more we discover their extraordinary strengths and capabilities. We notice that children have some great capabilities we hadn’t recognized. What are children great at? You might be surprised. 

1. Children are great at… making connections. They make connections between previous experiences and knowledge and new knowledge and new experiences. Young children connect actions and consequences; understand that symbols stand for words and numbers; find similarities between very different objects; and understand that expressions reflect feelings. This work starts early. When 2-year-old Gwen eats something she likes, she says, “I eat it all gone, none left for Mommy.” Later looking out a window watching a squirrel eat grass she says, “Squirrel eat grass, none left for Gwen's feet.” 

Parents, educators, and adult friends play important roles in creating the conditions that encourage children to make many, varied, and fresh connections. When adults step back and allow children to explore spaces; select unscripted materials; invite them to notice details and incorporate them into their play; when adults respond positively to children’s curiosity, ask open-ended questions and talk about shared experiences, they are nourishing children’s inclination to make and build on connections. 

2. Children are naturals at… developing theories. We don’t have to be scientists and run randomized control groups or develop theories. In fact, we constantly construct, test, and revise our theories about the world. Children do too. Driven to explain the world, they develop theories about how the world works. As young as 4 years, children develop a “theory of mind.” They gather information from interactions and observations about what others think and feel that are different from their own wants and beliefs. They analyze evidence based on what they experience, drawing conclusions and revising their theories. And they test their theories by asking questions, making new connections, and making predictions. 

The process of developing temporary explanations about all sorts of things is a precursor to critical thinking. Why did it happen this way? What will happen if…? Children notice patterns of evidence; they understand about contingencies and how different actions and objects have causal effects. 

Developing theories benefits from having time to understand nonobvious causal relationships. And that’s what happens when children play, explore material-and object-rich spaces, and learn with and from other children. 

3. Children are impressive at helping and finding helpers. While we often say children are self-centered, they, in fact, both help others accomplish their goals and enlist helpers in accomplishing their own goals. Children tend to know when to turn to others for help. Early on, they count on adults to act on their wishes and goals: to be fed, comforted, or reach something up high. Babies are reading us and our feelings. As they watch adults help, children learn to help others, including dolls and animals. 

When children see someone in trouble, they want to do something to help. They like helping. Children step in to help because they have an idea, a skill, or strength they enjoy using. They like being part of the group, playing with others, and accomplishing something bigger with others. 

Adults can show empathy, and act on behalf of others. Rather than socializing children to focus on their own work (Keep your eyes on your own paper), adults can invite children to think together and share ideas, offer multiple avenues for input. Mixed age and ability groups offer opportunities to help and be helped. It’s important to let children be helpful even if it means a bit more of a mess. 

4. Children are accomplished at… pretending their way to more complex understandings. They are curious; they ask questions, think about possibilities, and imagine different ways the world might work. They do this through their theories, understanding something about an object or subject matter, and through pretense—in play. In imagination-based thought during pretend play, also known as counterfactual thinking, children imagine alternatives to the current picture of the world and reason about what might happen if? 

Children are adept at generating possible worlds in every day moments, about the house, in play, drawing on their growing knowledge of objects and events. Possibilities emerge as children imagine various ways things might go and bring new worlds into existence. They might pretend there is no gravity. They know that the world doesn’t act that way, but what if it did? How would we walk? fly? eat? These unreal scenarios draw on what children know about gravity, weight, movement and develop their ability to reason counterfactually. 

Adults can support children’s play with possible new worlds by encouraging imagination-based play, inviting children to think about alternatives and, predict what might happen. 

5. Children are naturals at… having wonderful ideas. Often launched with the  exultation, Hey, I got an idea! children talk to, play with, and connect with each other through ideas—how to build something, propose a story idea, solve a problem, make up a game, or make something work in a new way. Children are not just consumers of other’s ideas and creativity. Everyday they generate possibilities from what fascinates them, what they wonder about, their knowledge of the world, and their imaginations. There’s joy in the movement of ideas, ideas that build on other suggestions. Children delight in their ideas adding, I know what we can do and Let’s try this. 

Having wonderful ideas contributes to children’s intellectual and social development. Wonderful ideas help grow more wonderful ideas giving children a sense of the power of their minds, their imaginations, and their relationships. 

When adults step back, observe and listen to children’s ideas; provide space and time for children to make, test, and modify connections between ideas; and let children take their ideas where they need to go, children feel empowered in having and sharing ideas. 

6. Children are experts at… being informants on what they like, notice, value, and what is meaningful to them. In areas where they have first-hand experience, expertise, and familiarity, children have abundant and valuable information. They are eager to share their adventures, stories, and accomplishments; feelings emotions, ideas, and possibilities that excite them. They tell us who they are and are becoming, giving us a glimpse of what matters to them that is not otherwise available to us. 

When we don’t involve children as participants and co-constructors with us in making decisions on their behalf—in research, design of places for play and learning, creating activities, and selecting materials and objects— we miss insights we need if we are to empower them and serve them well. 

When we do partner with children, however, they talk, draw, act out, and use materials, to share their views and express their thinking. They narrate adventures, mention details adults overlook, and make novel connections. We find clues to how they view and make their place in the world. 

Several approaches—here, here, and here—inspire us with examples of engaging children in meaningful ways on topics that affect them, and places to live, learn, and play. 

7. Children are great at … making metaphors. We’re accustomed to thinking of metaphors in art, literature (she has a heart-of gold), and scientific advancements. Metaphor is, in fact, a way of understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. Basic to human communication, metaphor is something we use consciously and often unconsciously. 

Children are thinking metaphorically when they perceive a visual similarity between two very different objects that are not usually yoked together. Knowledge of the one object amplifies knowledge of the other. Play is full of metaphor, both verbal and visual. In play, the light may have a voice, a feather may evoke a sword, a bald head might be a “barefooted head”. 

There is something more complex behind these charming images. Children are using their knowledge of the world and their creativity to exploit the possibilities of an object’s features, opening up rather than confining its perimeters. Object- and experience-rich settings, opportunities to manipulate objects, freedom to explore their features and sensory qualities, varied ways to express ideas and solve problems, and questions such as what does it remind you of? invite metaphor and metaphorical processes. 

8. Children are natural … democratic citizens. Curious, engaged, born researchers, wanting

to belong, and attuned to the interests of others, young children possess the habits and dispositions related to democracy. They feel a sense of us which is evident when the child introduces an idea with, Let’s… When other children add, I’ll be the dog or I’ll drive the spaceship, they are playing with a shared mindset. Through listening, talking, and considering other points of view, they think and act for themselves. They create their own activities, make up their rules, solve their own problems, share narratives, and collaborate on projects—together. They create a world. 

Children’s interest in the common good is expressed on behalf of a group of children in a class, on the block, or an informal group at a museum or library. Space that children can claim for themselves—on the front stoop, the sidewalk, in a fort, or under a tree—is space shared with other children, thought about collectively, and an opportunity for learning to live together. 

Rather than teach—instruct—children in democracy, adults can model inclusive approaches and provide environments that value differences; invite varied points of view; use language children can use such as I think, in my opinion. Offering children opportunities to see the community and be seen by the community and engaging them in research and planning brings insights into our understandings that are not otherwise available. 

9. Children are born creators of a culture of childhood. More than an age cohort, the culture of childhood is children’s shared experiences of growing up and finding their place in the world. It is a continuous dialogue: children form the culture of childhood which, in turn, forms them, shaping their social identity, creating a sense of community, and opening possibilities. Encompassing the hallmarks of culture—language, objects, materials, expression, meaning, and symbols—it is a continuing force of connection, community, and hopeful futures. Play in many forms is the native language of the culture of childhood. Children find and solve problems together; figure out, communicate and negotiate rules; and they fill roles that adults take when they were present. 

Adults can recognize and encourage the culture of childhood and make it visible. This may involve expanding the cultural space of childhood by engaging children, families, educators, and community members in co-constructing outdoor spaces, museum spaces, nature areas, play environments, and other informal learning settings where children can come together, experiment, and creatively explore using multiple modes of expression, materials, and media. And make their mark on the world. 

Before Our Very Eyes 

These and other capabilities fundamentally challenge our assumptions about what children can do early in life. When we are optimistic about children’s competencies at a young age, we discover extraordinary strengths and capabilities and are less preoccupied weaknesses and limitations. We don’t need to wait for these capabilities to emerge later in childhood. They are, in fact, present early in children’s lives, bringing joy, and enriching childhood. When we encourage and support these capabilities in children in rich, varied, and welcoming settings, children see themselves as thinkers and doers, makers and creators, friends, and helpers. 

Museum Notes 

• Becoming a Museum with a Strong Image of the Child 

• Engaging the Child’s Potential

• Observation: Seeing, Un-Seeing, Re-Seeing 

Also

• The Culture of Childhood: We’ve Almost Destroyed It

Observation: Seeing, Un-seeing, Re-seeing

These shifts of seeing again are precisely what the word ‘respect’ means. To look again is to ‘respect.’ Each time we look again at the same thing, we gain respect for it and add respect to it.

James Hillman, City and Soul

                                       

Over the past few months, I have been thinking about observation and its value as a tool for learning, stretching our thinking, seeing new possibilities, and being better museums.

Daily, we walk through our museums and what do we notice? We watch a family move through the lobby and pause before the door to a gallery. What is this moment about for them? We see someone step in front of a painting and lean in, peer closely at the lower right hand corner, and step back again. What new insight has that closer look added?  We watch someone slowly brush away gravel to reveal the form of an enormous bone. What happens next? What does it mean for them? What might we do differently knowing this?

These, among so many questions, reveal our on-going search for a deeper understanding of visitors and a greater familiarity with the conditions that encourage and support exploration and meaning making in museums. So much is going on in a single exhibit, program, gallery, or classroom in any one moment. Without thoughtful observation, what can we know and understand about what is happening around us in our museums, in the experiences we create, and the connections we hope to foster?

Yet, as powerful and valuable as observation is in advancing our understanding, thinking, and imaginations, we rarely engage in it extensively in museums–at least, from my experience and in my own work.

Of course, we do observe in museums. We engage in both formal and informal observation in research and evaluation, during prototyping, and sharing visitor comments. We follow visitors’ movements through an exhibit and sometimes sit in observation booths and videotape. This kind of observation, however, is typically short term and narrowly focused. It is intended to answer a single question, assess and fix a problem, or confirm what we already believe. Often it is to check whether exhibits are being used as intended.

Brief observation episodes that are ends in themselves or serve other agendas have a limited capacity to build new knowledge with long-term value that changes perspectives and reveals new possibilities about how people interact with objects and learn in museums.

With this view of observation, we are unlikely to take time to study how families explore together in our museums; how visitors negotiate turn-taking with one another; how children of different ages approach open-ended materials; what traces of use and engagement visitors leave to offer glimpses into their thinking; what having an idea looks like; and what building on someone’s idea looks like.

What We Don’t Already See

How do we go beyond the obvious behaviors we are able to identify and code and the minutes we can count to glimpse the extraordinary moments in museums and other settings?

There is no quick, easy, or particular way to engage in deeper observation. More and longer observation episodes are likely involved. Time to give our careful and steady attention to what is around us without deciding too soon what is before us is critical. In opening ourselves to being present to what is happening we can create room to notice what we don’t already see.

Observation is a process of attending, noticing, capturing, and revisiting. Keeping notes, taking photos and videos, and charting and mapping give value but not certainty to what we notice. What we have captured even temporarily allows us to return to the traces of those moments and ask, what am I noticing? How can I account for it? What does it mean to me? To others? What might others bring to the process to probe what matters here?

As good observers, we must also be observers of ourselves, studying our attention, checking our assumptions, and registering our focus. Questioning ourselves as we observe reminds us that we arrive at subjective interpretations, partial findings, and, hopefully, new questions.

Seeing Differently

As I was working through these thoughts, the subject of observation surfaced in my Thursday study group with Lani and Tom, two recently retired educators in the Twin Cities. As these weekly conversations so often do, this one pushed my imagination not just further, but into a different realm: from seeing more to seeing differently.

Lani had marked a passage to read from Art and Creativity in Reggio Emilia: Exploring the Role and Potential of Ateliers in Early Childhood Education by Reggio atelierista, Vea Vecchi. This brief, but extraordinary account of when Vea started in the Reggio schools in the 1960’s describes her year of observation.

At the direction of Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, Vea was asked to observe children in the school. She invited 4 children at a time into a studio space to work with paints in a nonfigurative way. Her observations of 90 children of different ages in the school continued over the year with Vea taking notes on her observations of children and their paintings. She also referred to books by more knowledgeable guides like Jean Piaget, Herbert Read, and Viktor Lowenfeld that Malaguzzi had given her. Malaguzzi then poured over her notes and the children’s paintings. He commented on her observations and shared his interpretations with her. At the end of the year, using his notes and comments, Vea wrote a report for the school on the children’s work; it later became a book.

Vea has described Malaguzzi’s strategy that changed her mental framework and identity from a secondary art educator to a professional in a new role as an atelierista. Malaguzzi helped create the conditions for change with a process of observation, formative reading, notes, discussion and shared interpretation, and documentation through which Vea unlearned her certainties and opened her eyes to the potentials of the children.

See, Un-see, Re-see

Tom called this process: see, un-see, and re-see. In observation, as in many activities we engage in, we think we are being neutral and seeing the truth. Actually we are often affirming what we already think, reinforcing beliefs we have arrived at by other means. This happens for a number of reasons. Learning, memory, expectation, and attention shape what we perceive, see, and believe. Pressures of accountability in schools and other institutions subtly insist we see what we are asked to see around standards and benchmarks. In museums we are susceptible to a dominant view of learning imported from schools that is content focused and teacher directed. We are also eager to demonstrate our value to supporters with evidence. These factors influence what we see when we observe in galleries, study exhibits, and describe museum visitors.     

Even when we do see something new, we are likely to name it something else, something we have seen before. Twentieth century philosopher and public intellectual, Marshall McLuhan, expressed this as, “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”

Realistically, un-seeing is difficult, if not literally impossible. But we can work to undo old learning, find ways to displace certainty, and see fresh versions of what we are viewing. The conditions of Vea’s extraordinary journey are not easily replicated, but her effort and goal can encourage us to observe from a new stance. We can shift our observation from looking for what we expect, to looking for what we haven’t seen before. We can be open to what surprises us.

Tom, Lani, and I thought together about what might create movement from seeing to re-seeing to create a crack in our thinking through observation by:

• Being curious, open, and eager to be surprised

• Wholeheartedly pursuing the opportunity of the moment

• Revisiting the experience and its possible meanings  

When we are open, curious, and eager to be surprised, we are:

-        Awake to our surroundings and the people, spaces, and materials

-        Accepting uncertainty and the complexity of what we are noticing

-        Comfortable with not knowing what we are seeing

-        Exposing ourselves to other thinkers and knowledgeable guides

When we wholeheartedly pursue the opportunity of the moment, we:

-        Are prepared to capture traces of the experience in multiple ways: notes, video, photos, images

-        Are open to what we may be seeing that is contrary to the apparent direction and we follow it

-        Observe until we are surprised

When we revisit the experience and its possible meanings, we:

-        Return to all of the collected traces of observation: notes, photos, images, and videos

-        Pursue questions to reflect on what we have noticed: how do visitors influence each other in exploring an exhibit? How do ideas about how something works change over the course of an experience?

-        Attend to strategies, not outcomes: ways that individuals engage with the group; patterns of choices; leaps in thinking; the roles conversation plays

-        Share, and invite others to contribute what they see

-        Stretch to consider what something might mean that is beyond our imagination

-        Think together: what might we do to make this or that unusual gesture or activity more likely to happen again?

This is a bigger, more complex, process than can possibly be captured here. In fact, the above list, or any list, is fundamentally at odds with deep, open-ended observation. We must keep in mind that seeing what we already see is a poor strategy for the positive change and transformation we seek for our visitors, our communities, and ourselves. Fortunately, the benefits of what Lani calls a radical openness to what’s out there and what it means are ample and worthwhile: a livelier, richer experience of our work and its potential value. Are you ready to be surprised?

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Making Learning Visible. What Does It Mean? 

• In Between Research, Theory and Practice

• Documentation: From Reggio Schools to US Museums

Thank you, Lani and Tom

Stand aside awhile and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different.

­Loris Malaguzzi

21st Century Skills in the Wild

Everyday we encounter evidence of how the next generation’s success hinges on not only what they know, but also on their ability to think, act creatively, and connect with others. These are often referred to as 21^st century skills and are necessary for navigating increasingly complex life and work environments and succeeding in work, life, and as a citizen.

Museums are, in many ways, well positioned to cultivate 21^st century skills. Rich learning environments with fascinating objects and filled with people, we create experiences to engage visitors’ interests, fire their curiosity, inspire creativity, and invite critical viewing. Furthermore, museums have mission-related interests in these skills as well as view themselves as offering learning value.

While these are critical attributes for cultivating 21^st century skills in museum learners, they are, relatively speaking, the easier conditions to put in place. Just as some conditions for building skills must be present, others must not interfere. Alignment of our understanding of 21^st century skills with learning and active, learner-centered experiences is critical to having the right conditions in place.     

What view of learners and learning informs the experiences we create? What sources of information shape our ideas of what these skills look like? How are we supporting the practice of these skills through self-directed learning in our informal learning environments? We might think about these questions from the perspectives of agency and emergent skills of competent learners.

Agency for Museum Learners 

Increasingly, I have been wondering how we actually view and provide for agency for learners in the museum experiences we create. In an earlier post I asked: How do museums create experiences that allow visitors to complete the experience by directing it and changing it? 

Agency is very much at the heart of that question. When we view museum visitors as curious, motivated to try an activity, making choices, and engaged in conversation, we recognize them as learners with agency. We see them as active in directing their learning, shaping their experience, and making sense of their world.

Agency may be intrinsic to learning, but it is not assured. In a recent blog post, early childhood educator Tom Bedard reflected on the agency children have and he has as a teacher in the classroom. Children’s agency, he observes, is intertwined with his agency as a teacher. Neither something he has nor children have, agency emerges in the space between the materials, the children, and him.

This is true for museums as well. In museums, valuing agency means leaving room in the experiences we create for learners, for multiple solutions and uses of resources we never imagined. Learners, as active agents, can make connections with each other that we have not planned for them; they can discover possibilities and construct pathways to new understandings that are relevant to them. Drawing on our creativity and imagination to create experiences, present objects, or set challenges for museum learners, we can encourage them to explore and develop skills with opportunities to make, think, question, and imagine.

Conversely, the experiences we create can circumscribe learners’ opportunities to practice and stretch the very skills we hope to encourage. By driving the process of creating learning experiences and feeling accountable to outcomes and funders, we risk limiting learners to our learning objectives and what we have conceptually constructed for them. Without realizing it, we may be inculcating our way of thinking in them or influencing them to think what we want them to think. In confining their agency, we also limit the related agency of the museum, its designers, educators, and interpreters.

We don’t know what sense visitors will make of their experiences and what they will take away. We need them and their agency, however. They engage and enrich our learning, learning that is essential to our increasing the value of the experiences we deliver. Ultimately, a museum learner’s meaning making empowers them and makes possible our realizing our goal to inspire life-long learning.  

Ideas about teaching and learning weave through the concept of agency. Learning actively serves the interests of agency as Loris Malaguzzi, co-creator of the Reggio philosophy, notes. He observes that, "… between learning and teaching, we honor the first. It is not that we ostracize teaching, but we tell it, ‘Stand aside for a while and leave room for learning, observe carefully what children do, and then, if you have understood well, perhaps teaching will be different from before.’” A recent museum blog post, on the other hand, illustrates how teaching steps in before learning, “Every educator is in a position to teach students how to gather information, evaluate it, screen out distractions and think for themselves.”

When we insist on teaching skills rather than observing and understanding them and when we direct activities rather than trust learners’ capabilities, we eclipse agency.

Finding Skills In The Wild

I once heard Blake Ward, Museums Program Manager at Minnesota Children’s Museum, observe that 21st century skills are skills children have naturally and in abundance; I was delighted. We tend to think we’ve discovered skills and abilities when, in fact, we are overlooking their ample presence in children as well as in youth and adults. It’s as if valuable skills aren’t present unless we have decided they exist. In deciding to focus on particular skills we assume we are fostering them; we think we are directing them. We may be curtailing them.

Where do we get our idea of what the 21^st century skills are and what they look like? The multiple taxonomies of 21^st century skills are geared to skills that “students” need, “student outcomes,” and the context of school settings geared to measurement and testing. If we are interested in cultivating skills sturdy enough to meet the challenges of our rapidly changing century, we can’t limit ourselves to skills contained in classroom activities or museum exhibits.

Rather, we need to look into places and situations that share a high correspondence with the real world where these skills are applied, tested, and truly matter. We need to fish where the fish are. Because our goal is for people to succeed in life, not get better at museum exhibits, we need to understand skills in contexts with varied materials, shifting conditions, human interactions, and real-life consequences.

What do versions of 21^st century skills that are meaningful to museum learners–from babies to elders–look like? Beyond the museum walls are myriads of real life experiences, activities, and contexts in which people think critically, respond with empathy, communicate clearly, and collaborate with others. If we focus on people engaged by their choice, guiding their own experiences, using their selected strategies, and making their own decisions, we can both grow and refine our sense of what these skills are. We will have greater clarity about what they look like in work and life situations if we observe them in the wild.

Imagine how we might deepen our understanding of 21^st century–and other valued–skills by following learners as they hike, trim tree branches, fix a bike, or prepare a meal. What 21^st century skills are at play as someone throws a pot, builds a fort, repairs a broken zipper, starts a fire, or learns to juggle? When someone plays a guitar, figures out a bus route, coaches a co-worker, or plays with the wind at the shore?

Focusing on these everyday moments we will undoubtedly glimpse learners’ existing capabilities and appreciate the emergent skills they possess, valuem and are honing. We may discern a prior question they are exploring or something that matters to them. Given thoughtful attention, we may notice how learners approach a situation, perhaps back up and rethink a step. We may discover some of the ways they enlist the help of others, adapt tools and materials to suit their purpose, and how they come up with ideas or moves we have not seen nor imagined. Their faces, gestures, and words will give us greater insights about the role agency plays and how feelings of accomplishment empower. As we further reflect, we can imagine how these behaviors and those strategies could be applied in other situations, in museum exhibits and programs. We can begin to envision museum experiences that are responsive to the learner’s agency and support skills that correspond to real life situations and many contexts.

If we are serious about cultivating 21^st century skills–or any other skills, for that matter–in museum learners, we need to value agency as well as the capacity of experiences to support it. We are going to be in the 21^st century for a very long time. We need to do our part to ensure museum learners experience agency and want more.

Photo credit: NASA

The Uneasy Relationship Between Play and Educational Outcomes

Among the queries on ChildMus in 2015, one in particular caught my attention. A museum educator asked for suggestions in dealing with a funder request. The funder wanted to support exhibits with specific measurable educational outcomes for at-risk children at his museum, a museum geared towards play and primarily serving 4 and 5-year olds. A rumpled copy of my reply resurfaced recently. That, along with recent work on outcomes, impacts, and a logic model for an art museum, reminded me of how museums struggle with similar versions of this expectation.

A push to close the achievement gap and show results is frequently at odds with a value on children’s play in museums, preschools, kindergartens, and at recess. While there’s no simple way to reconcile these well-intentioned interests, it would be a mistake to abandon play in favor of measurable educational outcomes. Similarly, it would be irresponsible not to work at making visible the value of play for children in museums and other settings. The need to move beyond a collision of these perspectives is imperative to serve the interests of children, museums, and their communities. What follows is the core of my response on ChildMus with some changes for flow and clarity.

The situation you describe around play vs. measurable educational outcomes is one we can all relate to and one that is frustrating. I agree with some of the responses you’ve received about play and educational outcomes. And I would go further, laying out an approach that explores what play can deliver in the spirit of play and equivalent to outcomes. The organization that wants to support exhibits with specific measurable outcomes for at-risk children is well intentioned but misunderstands some basic realities about learning, museums, and play.

The Nature of Learning

Learning does not occur through a single episode, a well-structured brilliant lesson, or even one-on-one tutoring on a specific concept. Not in museum exhibits, programs, and not in schools. That’s not the nature of learning. 

Learning is the accumulation of experiences a learner has, connects with, and makes meaning of through sensing, reflecting, thinking, and talking. That’s largely true regardless of age, setting–school, museum, program, or exhibit, library, playground–or strategies such as reading, playing, moving, or experimenting. Without the agency of the learner, relentless repetition, revisiting past experiences, time, and social and physical interactions with objects, materials, people, and the environment, learning does not happen.

Professionals in museums and other informal learning environments need to be clear about the nature of learning themselves as well as educate stakeholders, partners, and supporters about this. Clearly others are doing a better job of insisting on educational outcomes for play than play advocates are at communicating the value of play.  

As learners we construct our understanding not from a single experience or source, but from a variety of episodes over a stretch of time and often in relation to others. Regardless of their learning approach, museums serving children can take advantage of this. Children will learn about the world–or the slice of the world an exhibit invites them to explore–by engaging, comparing, experimenting, watching others, asking questions, trying and failing, moving, and making connections among objects, tools, materials, and environments. Even without museums setting any measurable learning objectives for them, children will learn in rich, engaging museum environments. It happens through play.

Play, A Powerful Learning Strategy Play is a powerful strategy for learning. From infancy on, children are readily drawn to play in its many forms: sensory, exploratory, construction, physical, imaginary, and dramatic play. Understood as freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated, play embodies qualities critical to learning as well as to children’s well being.

This, however, is what makes meeting a request for outcomes difficult. The learning that occurs through play is unlikely to resemble the kind of learning we think of in schools. Active, fluid, joyous, play crosses domains and disciplines. Isolating moments as evidence that math or science learning is taking place or a child has learned a particular concept is elusive (and illusive).

While play’s benefits do not appear as tidy measurable learning units, they are no less valuable. Their value is of a different nature. Learning is unlikely to occur without motivation. The curiosity that characterizes play is an urge to find out more, reduce uncertainty, and get at more complex or inaccessible aspects of the world. In play, learning crosses affective, emotional, physical, and cognitive domains. Children gather information about materials and test their properties through play. The capacity to think counterfactually, connecting facts not ordinarily viewed together, emerges spontaneously during pretend play. In building tall and wide, climbing and testing physical abilities, taking on a role, and negotiating story ideas, children’s competence and confidence grow. Through play, children learn what is essential for life that others cannot teach them.

The uneasy relationship between play and measurable outcomes is also visible here.

Articulating Play’s Benefits 

While museums for children may be passionate about the value of play, they have generally not been diligent in articulating play as a productive strategy for learning and its benefits. A convincing case for play cannot be made with simple statements such as, “Play is learning,” but must be constructed and fully integrated across museum experiences. A solid understanding of skills, concepts, dispositions, or awarenesses important for children now and in the future is essential. It must draw on relevant research, be supported by observations of how this appears in a particular museum. Without this clarity, we simply chase after others’ priorities, are limited by personal preferences, and fail to follow-through.   

When we can’t point to the change we believe is possible for our visitors, we are not able to contribute to those changes deliberately, advance play as a credible strategy, or cultivate support among funders and friends.

An approach to building a convincing case for play starts with a museum identifying particular skills, attitudes, and dispositions where it believes it can contribute to a positive change for the child through play experiences at the museum. These are dispositions, knowledge or skills that research indicates emerge from play. Not facts, math problems, calculations, or the direct results of activities, they are recognized as possible dividends, benefits, or impacts of play. These benefits could include, persistence in getting desired results; becoming more exact in using a skill; enlarging a working vocabulary by describing materials more precisely; trying a new skill in a different situation; communicating coherent narratives; or feeling a sense of well-being and optimism.   

This may be a fine list of possible benefits of play for a museum; a museum can’t, however, simply import a list from here, from a recent study, or from an admired museum. Skills and dispositions must emerge from a museum’s larger purpose, knowledge of its audience and community, and its own expertise and capacity to create engaging experiences likely to impact children in desired ways.

Developing a deep understanding of a set of skills, dispositions and understandings is neither quick nor easy. It involves delving into research and what these experiences look like in this exhibit, at that component, or in this program. • Observing how mastery of a material or tool looks for a 3-year old or 7-year old child. • Developing a shared understanding of how what an enhanced vocabulary might be for children with fewer experiences and with more varied experiences. • Considering how these dividends might benefit parents and caregivers and a community.

Delivering Play’s Benefits to Children

We are accustomed to think of a museum’s work as creating exhibits and programs and managing collections or archives. Those activities, however, are in service to larger purposes. For museums focused on play, the larger purpose relates to delivering play’s benefits to children and through them, to the community. Exhibit and program experiences and staff engagement create the conditions for play: engagement, interactive experiences touching on multiple play patterns, and prolonged play episodes connected to the play benefits of greatest interest. The better aligned those play benefits are with specific components, activities, images, materials, and caregiver, staff, and volunteer interactions, the more likely children will benefit. 

Connecting what the museum does to the impact it hopes to have is its theory of change. This describes how and why it expects desired changes associated with the opportunities offered in its exhibits, programs, and events. For a museum with a play approach, this theory of change suggests that more children spending more time in rich, connected play will enjoy those benefits. It can also touch on how these changes might benefit parents and caregivers and the larger community.

While not the same as measurable educational outcomes, specific play-related benefits laid out in a theory of change and, hopefully, a logic model demonstrate comparable interests, efforts, and rigor. Connecting the pieces logically also provides the necessary foundation for being more precise about what those changes look like for children, their parents and caregivers, and community. Furthermore, a theory of change provides a museum with a plan for action. The focus, connections, and reasons for believing change is possible will lead to identifying outcomes that could be characterized as measurable. No less important, these are the steps allowing a museum to clearly communicate the value of its work to others–including funders that want to support its work. 

 Resources on learning in museums, skills, dispositions and executive function

• American Journal of Play. The Strong

• IMLS. Brain-building Powerhouses 

• Deborah L. Perry. (2012). What Makes Learning Fun. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, How Children's Social Competence Impacts their Well-being In Adulthood

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Creativity, Play and Learning

• Essential Experiences

• Curiosity is at the Top of My List

• Exploration & Play, Play & Exploration