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

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

Curiosity Is at the Top of My List

(Borealis Press)

“I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”  – ALBERT EINSTEIN

I’m putting curiosity at the top of my list. What list? A list with critical aspects of learning, 21^st century skills, models, standards, and threads for learning. Creativity, critical thinking, imagination, and problem solving often show up on these lists. It’s not that these skills and traits aren’t important, but I’m not sure creativity, for example, would have such a high profile if it weren’t for curiosity.

Considered both a trait and a disposition, curiosity is a natural, active interest in the world that we see everyday in children and adults. It is an attitude of wondering, an urge to find out more, a way of reducing uncertainty, and a means of getting at more complex or inaccessible aspects of the world. Expressed as watching, asking questions, predicting, taking things apart, and pointing, curiosity is a strength during childhood when it transforms a child’s world from new and unknown to familiar and predictable. According to Susan Engel, author of The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood, it is “…the lynch pin of intellectual achievement.” 

Curiosity unfolds when something in our surroundings sparks curiosity. A feeling of surprise or perplexity at some ambiguity captures our interest and sets in motion actions to find out more. We observe, explore through touch, smell, listening; we try to remember something that relates. This action leads to learning simple as well as more complex ideas and concepts.

Huntington Museum and Gardens (Pasadena, CA)
(Photo credit: Vergeront)

Curious From the Start

From birth, babies have an urge to understand what is happening in their immediate surroundings and the effect they can have on it. The world captures a baby’s attention with countless invitations to want to know and know more. Will someone come if I cry? What’s inside the box? How can I reach the ball? They watch people, objects, and events to try and explain what is not immediately apparent, what they can’t determine from interactions alone, or what explains the unexpected. Even before babies can talk or ask questions, they want to know what’s going on and enlist others in helping them find out. They point to indicate interest, curiosity, and invite others to wonder with them. Adults and older children respond with smiles, assistance, answers, or bringing the baby and object closer for better observation.

The nature of children’s curiosity and questions changes with age. Their earliest questions generally have to do with getting new information–What’s that? What does it do? In pointing to or asking about a strange object or the unusual behavior of a pet, a child tries to find out more about what is not immediately apparent. These questions seek clarification of what’s happening, fill out knowledge about a topic, and probe for deeper levels of understanding. They get at inaccessible information, like motives; at the unseeable, like germs; and the unknown, like God. Questions build on questions and answers connect with answers to construct a firmer foundation of knowledge.

At an early age, children are persistent about getting their questions answered. A child might ask a string of questions. Engel notes that children are capable of asking 10 questions in a row to satisfy their curiosity. She cites a study by Tizard and Hughes (1984) in which children 3 and 4- years of age asked an average of 26 questions per hour at home.

Young children are generally curious, but some are more curious than others. All 3-year olds ask more questions than 7-year olds, Engel notes. But all 3-year olds do not ask questions at the same rate and persistence. Individual differences may be apparent in a child’s general attitude of inquisitiveness or as a specific interest. Some children enjoy an intense interest in vehicles, sports teams, dinosaurs, or bugs. Cultural differences and family patterns also affect a child’s curiosity by encouraging or discouraging questions and exploration.

With age, curiosity becomes more social, shifting from a search for physical information to social-cultural knowledge. Interest is in the social layer of life, how people do something and what other people–family, classmates, neighbors–are like. No longer relying solely on adults for answers and information, children can satisfy their curiosity via one another. They explore and think together, pooling knowledge, scaffolding skills, and solving problems together.

Another remarkable change in curiosity occurs with age. Curiosity is alive and well early in life and peaks around 5 years of age when the urge to find out lessens.

Sparking Curiosity

City Museum (St Louis)
(Photo credit: Vergeront)

Children’s curiosity flourishes in intriguing environments with materials that attract steady attention and topics that engage interests. The setting that fascinates the 2 year old–the cupboard, a pile of dirt, the highchair–is unlikely to be equally fascinating to 5 or 10 year olds. But qualities that intrigue the toddler attract the older child and teen–novelty, ambiguity, complexity, surprise, and suspense. High places with extraordinary views, a leafy enclosure for hiding, a terrarium alive with critters, or something exotic engage and invite exploration and inquiry. Variations in patterns, unpredictable phenomena, hidden objects, or the suspense of what’s next mystify children and compel them to find answers. Drawn by complexity and ambiguity, children attend to novelty when something appeals to them.

Wondering, inquiring, and wanting to know more occur not simply because a child is intrinsically curious or the environment is fascinating. A child’s curiosity is strongly related to the adults surrounding her. Children look to them for clues about how to interact with the world, respond to objects and events, and interpret what they witness. When these adults display curiosity, smile and encourage the child, give informative answers, show interest, ask their own questions, and give permission to explore, children notice. Adult facial expressions and responses to children’s curiosity show them they think their ideas, experiments, questions–and they– are important.

These signals further fuel curiosity. When children ask questions and get them answered, they not only have answers, but they also develop a disposition to ask questions and actively seek answers from others. And they are likely to keep asking questions. Children care about the answers they get to their questions.

Curiosity Diminished

Just as curiosity fluctuates by age, it fluctuates from setting to setting. Intriguing environments, objects and materials, and responsive adults continue to spark curiosity after children start school, but they are present less. In the setting where children spend a significant amount of time–school–triggers for curiosity are sparse. The drop in children’s curiosity from the preschool years to kindergarten is sharp.

Paradoxically, the very place we dedicate to children’s learning does not cultivate it. Curiosity may accompany children to school, but it does not flourish there. Other responsibilities and objectives assume higher priority; mastery of a set of skills in the classroom is valued over expressions of curiosity; completing a worksheet about wasps trumps exploring a wasp’s nest.

Just as children notice when adults smile and encourage them to explore, they also notice when adults smile and encourage but do not invite them to explore–as Engel found among many teachers in her studies. Children are expressing curiosity in the classroom about phenomena, materials, activities, other students and the teacher. Teachers, however, deflect questions and curtail exploration in trying to keep everyone on task and accomplish curriculum objectives. In fact, in the classrooms Engel has studied, teachers rather than children ask the questions. Typically, students’ expressions of inquiry are channeled into a discussion of the topic at hand. And when children do pursue their curiosity in the classroom, these episodes are relatively short.

Extending Curiosity’s Range

Because curiosity triggers the best learning, it’s important to figure out how to extend it in age and across settings. Engel notes that at about 3 years children seem to either cultivate curiosity and a habit of finding out, or they don’t. She draws on research to provide examples of how schools can nurture open-ended curiosity. Teachers can be alert to children’s cues of what interests them, invite their questions, and encourage them to follow their ideas and questions. Curriculum, activities, and discussion can incorporate suspense and surprise, provide access to fascinating objects and materials, make room for extended lines of inquiry, and allow children to think together.

Kentucky Science Center (Louisville)
(Photo credit: Vergeront)

In this area, museums, libraries, and out-of-school programs have a prime opportunity, if not an actual responsibility. They burst with information, are unbound by curriculum and tests, and place learners at the center. In fact, museum collections are a great expression of curiosity.

With objects and through design, museums create fascinating environments and experiences that can prompt questions, provoke ideas, and spark explorations. In these settings a wider array of adults–museum educators, docents, play guides, and librarians–can model ways of finding out. This is especially important in influencing older children and children with less of a disposition to be curious who tend to be more susceptible to adult feedback. Extending episodes of curiosity also reinforces museums’ interest in increasing dwell time and prolonging active engagement. Museums’ professional development workshops for teachers can highlight practices that cultivate curiosity, stimulate investigation, model ways to find out, and make connections.

We think we value curiosity. Unintentionally, however, we undervalue it because it is obvious or so very basic and we are distracted by showier qualities such as intelligence and creativity. We use Leonardo da Vinci and physicist Richard Feynman as paragons of creative genius. Feeding their creativity, however, was relentless curiosity. There will not be as much creative thinking or remarkable imagination to celebrate or to change the world if we don’t assure curiosity has a robust and persistent presence throughout children’s and adults’ lives.

Curiosity–the "whys" that are inside of us–matters. A gateway to other skills, dispositions, and accomplishments, curiosity is critical across the lifespan because as we follow our curiosity, we encounter all sorts of valuable moments and connections. The pleasure of finding out and then wanting to find out more goes at the top of my list.

“Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.”  – Richard Feynman

Related Resources 
• Engel, Susan. The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Curiosity in Childhood. (2015). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Grazer, Brian and Fishman, C. A Curious Mind. (2015). New York: Simon & Shuster.
• Gower, Reid. (Uploaded 2011) The Feynman Series – Curiosity. 
• Hollett, R. (6.2014). The Importance of Curiosity: Lessons from Richard Feynman 
• Perry, Deborah L. (2013). What Makes Learning Fun? Principles for the Design of Intrinsically Motivating Museum Exhibits. Lanham, MD: Alta Mira Press.

Cultivating an Experimental Mindset

Jeanne Vergeront

Museum Notes

Reposted January 8, 2021

In kicking off a planning process with a museum team, I often point out that we are engaged in a discovery process. Eyes widen, sometimes with fear and sometimes with excitement. I add that, while a discovery process, it is a disciplined discovery process, based on relevant organizational documents and information, following well-tested planning steps, informed by internal staff and board knowledge, and guided by clear outcomes and deliverables. We won’t, I assure them, just go off on any old trajectory. But honestly, we really don’t know quite where we’ll end up.

Often, however, I wish the process could accommodate more wandering and experimenting. While clearly not a precise definition of experimenting, this situation points to how museum work may be more of an experiment than we think it is.

Museums fortunately have a tradition of experimenting. Some like Shelburne Farms have their roots in earlier experiments. Others, like the Museum of Modern Art, was viewed 75 years ago by its first director, Alfred Barr Jr. as “a laboratory in its experiments the public is entitled to participate.” Museum experiments continue at many scales. An experiment that has transformed museums the Exploratorium continues to take experimenting seriously. More recent experiments have included maker spaces, satellite museums, and free admission.Word of a museum’s experimentation travels and can be documented by following replication, from Exploratorium exhibits to maker spaces to tapescapes. Images of a tape structure in an architecture magazine inspired a Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota board member to construct TapeScape in 2011. Introduced in the start up museum’s Play Lab setting, the structure merged an immersive exhibit, art installation, and re-purposed material. Tapescapes followed in Pittsburgh in 2013 and Manitoba in 2014. A fresh contribution, it has attracted followers and expanded the museum repertoire.

While museums have a tradition of experimenting, they aren’t necessarily impelled by an experimental mindset. Imitating and improving ideas from one museum to another is a valuable strategy for introducing change and increasing variety in experiences, but alone doesn’t reflect an experimental mindset. Prototyping, evaluation, and research are among museum practices that encourage experimenting. They can challenge assumptions and push boundaries, but may also be established practices that become routine.

A Typical and Frequent Response to Challenges

An experimental mindset is a proclivity to question, rethink options, and make changes. An attitude and outlook, it is a readiness to wonder, question, challenge, test-and-retest, and reinvest lessons learned into new efforts. More than an ability to ask questions and run small studies, it is a typical and frequent response to challenges, obstacles, and opportunities. With questions of “what might happen if…?” and confidence that there are more options than the most obvious course or what was done previously, a disposition to try and test supports evidence-based decision making, challenges perspectives, and delivers new possibilities.

An experimental mindset helps museums deal with complexity and uncertainty, realities inherent in their own organizational context and the dynamic communities they serve. This outlook tempers an understandable push for certainty. We may want assurances about what we will accomplish, how long something will take, its cost, and if others will approve. However, shadowing a process with “Will it get funded?” stifles risk taking, fresh thinking, and a search for better solutions.

Photo: Madison Children's Museum

Knowing what will and won’t work ahead of time is impossible, but small experiments in fact can reduce uncertainty. More iterative than definitive, an experimental mindset shared across a museum anticipates that the group will arrive at a collective understanding, valuable insights, or a satisfying resting point but not a certain destination. The twists and turns in finding out what works better and what’s expendable inevitably challenge comfortable, well-established practices. Perhaps more important, an institutional commitment to questioning and research also invigorates work, delivers unanticipated outcomes, and offers shared learning.

The Sweep of an Experimental Mindset 
Karina Mangu-Ward, EMCArts Director of Activating Innovation explores the potential of shifting from models to a mindset in her guest blog post, We Don’t Need New Models, We Need a New Mindset. While she does not speak directly about an experimental mindset, her construct assumes complexity rather than relying a distilled and fixed set of assumptions. She suggests that a mindset sidesteps set priorities, simple solutions, and easy-to-count metrics. Whereas models encourage replication, a mindset revises understandings in response to information, changes and challenges.

Cultivating an experimental mindset assists a museum in living its core values. A museum with creativity or innovation as institutional values needs an organizational culture that expresses them and translates them into major decisions and daily actions. While celebrating failure for visitors, museums do not seem as eager to make new mistakes themselves. If critical thinking, experimenting, and tinkering with ides are valuable for visitors, a museum needs these same qualities as part of its own DNA. Becoming an organizational learner is as important as supporting life-long learners. When it has internalized its values, a museum hires staff and recruits trustees with a tolerance for ambiguity, an appetite for risk taking, and a metabolism change.

A disposition to act on questions is not limited to a single department or division. It engages every organizational level and brings greater clarity about where and how to strive to achieve impact. Each new program or initiative; every new exhibition, interactive component, or acquisition; a revised membership incentive; or a community collaborative is an opportunity to experiment with how a museum might invite participation, build loyalty, engage visitors more fully, extend engagement, or increase impact.

Columbus Museum of Art

Engaged in reimagining itself over the past 6+ years, the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) has fielded a suite of projects covering the entire museum. Reframing creativity, rethinking art education, reimagining the drop-in visitor experience, and remaking space has engaged trustees, volunteer docents, and staff across the museum. CMA’s sustained experiment, or set of experiments, clearly demonstrates the critical role museum leadership plays in asking bold questions; reframing and responding to opportunities; and supporting a journey to someplace with new possibilities. It is also illustrates how leadership becomes distributed across the museum, helping to advance an organization-wide commitment to reflect, question, and act. Leaders with hearty appetites for disciplined discovery often view the museum’s approach as an opportunity to grow support for roomy questions rather than small certainties.

A museum supports an experimental mindset by making room for experimentation. Time is given to what is valued; it is critical for getting beyond easy answers, finding out what works. On the other hand, a compressed time frame for a team might actually support experimentation by concentrating creative energies on strengthening ideas rather than searching for hopefully better ones. Writing about innovative exhibition design on ExhibitTricks, exhibit designer Axel Hüttinger believes “the exhibition must become a laboratory, in which there virtually are no prefabricated results which the visitors are served.” Teams or groups operating with an experimental mindset are alert to fortuitous accidents and unintended consequences–and make good use of both. Museum Camp at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History tries out a new and original camp format for engaging museum professionals in creatively investigating a novel theme such as “space.”

The questioning and reflective frame of mind supported by leadership and nourished by available time informs how museum staff navigate everyday activities and responsibilities. By asking questions of their own practice and searching for answers, staff examine the impact of museum experiences on visitors who come through the door, visit regularly, participate in programs, explore exhibits, or participate on-line. Recently, Michelle Grohe, Director of School & Teacher Programs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (Boston, MA) shared a regular practice Gardner Museum educators engage in as they reflect on and assess student tours.The practice draws on both big picture ideas and specific questions that museum educators ask of themselves, partner teachers, and students. As answers to these questions accumulate, the museum has data to anchor plans for developing new programs, revising and improving programs, and understanding the impact of programs on students. 

Everyday Studies

Strategic experiments can be a solvent for an organizational culture that is stuck or for navigating areas of persistent frustration. Even a quick study lasting 30 minutes or 30 days can be a cost-effective experiment yielding significant insights.

Many museums would like to reach more youth before they age out. A move from wanting to grow this part of the audience to understanding what’s working, the relevant conditions, and which ideas are more likely to work ahead of time requires both motivation and mindset. A museum might start with a set of questions: What has staff noticed about where the 9-12 year olds who do visit spend the most time? What do these children find most engaging about those experiences? How do they talk about what they like doing? How can these qualities be adapted to and incorporated into other exhibits? Staff might observe, interview, and conduct focus groups. Small studies harvest staff’s informal knowledge about the museum and its visitors, where they spend time, use patterns, noise levels, etc. It brings cross-departmental knowledge and strengths together–marketing, visitor services, education, and exhibits–and is likely to extend to other museums with a similar interest. Building internal capacity as well as better serving the museum’s audience are likely results of following through on persistent questions.

Experiments help progress towards larger goals. After completing its strategic plan, Grand Rapids Art Museum (MI) staff began a set of small experiments to improve the visitor experience. One experiment responded to visitor feedback on being told not to touch the art. Using gallery observations, staff logs, and guard interviews, staff developed a concept to try: turn the message from, “Don’t touch the art” to “Why can’t we touch the art?” Framed mirrors installed in the galleries were paired with text encouraging visitors to touch the mirrors and notice the oils left behind. In the three months following installation, guard reminders to visitors declined to one.

Every museum possesses some valuable assets for cultivating an experimental mindset. A board member keen to ask questions; an organizational value on innovation; an eager, boundary-pushing floor staff person; teams passionate about their projects; a membership director who wants to try something new; visitors asking, “why?” Each staff member, trustee, and volunteer in every museum also shares one great advantage in advancing an experimental mindset. Learning by experiment has worked since the earliest days of life when we engage a parent with a smile, or pump small legs and move the mobile. If a museum can encourage, align, and harness individual dispositions to wonder, question, and push boundaries, imagine the potential institutional force for significant internal and external change.

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Four Key Practices 
• A Disposition to…

Four Key Practices

With Building a Shared Understanding I cast one of the five practices I have accumulated over the years as the queen of museum practices. Perhaps somewhat of a stretch, it is, nevertheless, useful in distinguishing it as a high-level, long term, organization-wide practice from other productive, but nevertheless, supporting practices. On their own, the remaining four practices do important work in strengthening the museum in small ways towards their larger interests. 

1. Building a Shared Understanding
2. Making Meaningful Distinctions
3. Breaking Things into Smaller Parts
4. Crossing Boundaries
5. Experimental Mindset

Making Meaningful Distinctions 
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (1995) is a landmark study by

Marko Remec at Mass MOCA

Hart and Risley on parent talk to young children at home and the lasting difference it makes for children. The title alone consolidated for me a valuable practice around highlighting important differences among otherwise similar ideas or situations. These distinctions, connected to driving ideas or supported by evidence, are crucial to building shared understanding, capacity, consistency, quality, and value.

Familiar concepts or favored ideas often have several or fuzzy meanings with invisible implications–until they collide. A half dozen words now enjoying currency in museums–creativity, participation, play, engagement, impact, learning–have multiple meanings across the field and even with in a single museum. Meaning that seems intuitive to one person rarely is to another.

I recently read a museum master plan that used the terms scientific thinking, science learning, and science literacy interchangeably throughout. While these concepts are related, they’re not same. Each possesses meaning or attributes the others don’t. Undoubtedly one is more consequential to the museum’s driving ideas than the others. In what ways is one concept more resonant with the museum’s interests, supported by evidence, or related to community priorities?

Making distinctions is more than just defining words or word-smithing. Less busy work, it facilitates work, for instance, guarding against false dualities that stymy discussion. Are we about art or people? Are we nice or necessary? Framing important ideas, identifying salient traits, relating them to one another, and clarifying their importance also signals what is less important and why. Staff can channel their creativity and act with confidence following clear direction on where to invest energy and resources to benefit visitors and the museum.

Meaningful distinctions can be made in many ways and virtually all the time. A simple statement caught my eye on Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 recent blog: “Each of these activities invited contribution on a different level.” Rather than a single participation opportunity, each activity invited a particular kind of participation, for instance, at a point in the process, individual, collaborative, of varying duration, or personal investment, etc.

My strategic planning partner Andrea typically follows a statement like, “The museum’s region is a fast-growing mid-sized market” with, “This is important because…” This links a characteristic of the community relevant to the museum’s vision, mission, and audience grounded in back-up information. It assists the museum in viewing the future, addressing potential growth, and identifying benchmark museums.

Everyday museums have opportunities to make meaningful distinctions about anything that's meaningful at the museum: sustainability, adult engagement, access, inquiry, materials, collaboration, learning, risk/hazard, etc. 
For instance, championing open-ended materials in a studio space says some materials better support the museum’s vision of its visitor experience and learning opportunities. Open-ended materials that invite and extend exploration help clarify why a museum values them. Selecting particular open-ended materials because their properties invite manipulation, build knowledge of material properties, build on existing competence, and encourage representing ideas add important information. Considering how these qualities tend to extend exploration through more questions, experimenting with techniques, defining problems, or richer language connects the materials and their qualities with the broader experiences, and conveys more valuable distinctions. When staff across a museum make these choices consistently, everyday choices serve the museum’s long-term interests. 

Breaking Things into Smaller Parts

From an early age we are encouraged to break a problem apart to make it more manageable. Outside of school we forget until, years later, we fall into this practice again by accident. I did. Twenty years ago when I had the opportunity to work with the owners’ reps for Minnesota Children’s Museum’s expansion project on cost estimating for exhibits, I was reintroduced to this in another and relevant form.

The owner’s reps were bringing their method of estimating building costs to estimating exhibit costs for 15,000 square feet of exhibits we were building in house. Compared to present cost estimating for exhibits,  estimating then was a rudimentary, informal exercise with few or no specialists and no exhibit cost databases, at least that we knew of. I was a bit skeptical that the very same way to estimate costs for lobbies, lavatories, and loading docks would apply to estimating costs for a DIY thunderstorm, musical solar event, or the Harambee–a 2-story musical sculpture in our exhibits.

John and Jerry started with a simple example they explained clearly: making a table. On the one hand, they said, they could estimate the cost of making a table: one cost for one entire table unit with all its parts. On the other, they could split the table into its component parts, estimate the cost of making each, and tally the costs: make a tabletop of a certain size and material; build a skirt frame; make four legs; assemble all the parts. While both approaches would be estimates, totaling the cost estimate of each table part would be closer to the actual cost than one estimate for the table.  

Even as John and Jerry were describing the process of estimating the cost of making a table, I was imagining attacks on many types of problems and the benefit of getting a more accurate view of what I was dealing with: taking on a big project, tackling complexity, exploring something new, developing goals and objectives, or just getting unstuck. Whether solving a budget problem, developing a center for creativity, or building a table, Breaking Things into Smaller Parts manages the parts along with the whole. Without losing track of the bigger picture, this practice asks: what are the component parts? What is known about each? How do the parts relate to one another? What’s missing? What resources are needed?

Breaking Things into Smaller Parts works at virtually every scale, starting a museum or building a science park; developing a capital project budget or the annual budget; framing visitor experience goals or initiative goals.

Crossing Boundaries 
Crossing the cultural, geographic, physical, contextual, and intellectual boundaries that hold us back and limit our thinking opens new spaces for thought and action. In times of fast-paced change or easy continuity, whether a museum is navigating turbulence or sinking into complacency, stepping outside the familiar

Skirball Cultural Center photo

advances new perspectives, challenges thinking, reframes possibilities, and drives change. 

Territory beyond well-known boundaries is wide open. Venture outside the museum field, our cities and countries; explore libraries, retail, hospitals, and parks. Learn from other types of museums and from ones that are smaller, larger, or older. Crossing, not toeing, boundaries of theory, discipline, paradigm, media, department, and terminology allows us to explore what lies at the intersection of areas and to transform ideas in each area by combining them in new ways.

Increasingly the museum field looks beyond its borders, borrowing and adapting frameworks, methods, and approaches from social work, sustainability, and the for profit world to strengthen internal processes and operations. Interest in the Triple Bottom Line, the Hedgehog concept from Good To Great and Blue Ocean Strategy have migrated to museums. To manage these complex and diverse organizations, museums hire people from healthcare, education, business, customer service, anthropology, and theater. A colleague described how her museum director brought his extensive professional networks from previous jobs in other areas to strengthen a collaborative community effort around literacy. Having maintained past connections, he deliberately leveraged them on the museum’s, and the collaborative's, behalf.

By inhabiting another role, we inhabit perspectives that are otherwise unavailable. For years I volunteered in a second grade classroom, accompanying the class on field trips, riding bumpy busses filled with 60 second graders laughing, cheering, and talking to the symphony, book arts center, natural history museum and children’s theater. When we visited the children’s museum, however, I was most challenged in my chaperone role. In spite of knowing the museum, the exhibit, and my small group of children well, I struggled in accommodating their individual interests and different paces for exploring. In all the years we had planned field trips at the children’s museum, I realized, we had never actually stepped into the chaperone role to become chaperones and know the field trip experience from the teacher, parent, or volunteer perspective.

Crossing Boundaries is a daily and doable practice for individuals that introduces and invigorates with new types of diversity. Reading, visiting, training, or working outside our area can stretch us beyond even the best professional development opportunities. Another context, whether physical, cultural, or procedural, can challenge the limits of our thinking and test well-worn and worn-out patterns of thought. Introducing a new process like Design Thinking can energize a team. 

On returning from a journey through new territory, we view and value what we and others do differently, find new paths to follow, and discover new and powerful connections.

Experimental Mindset

Borealis Press

Increasingly my favorite practice is an Experimental Mindset. In many ways this practice energizes and feeds the three other supporting practices.
Museums enjoy a tradition of experimenting. Alfred Barr, first director of the Museum of Modern Art, commented 75 years ago that, “The Museum of Modern Art is a laboratory in its experiments the public is entitled to participate.” Every new exhibition or program, each interactive component or new acquisition, a revised membership incentive, or community collaborative can be a hypothesis about how the museum might invite participation, build loyalty, engage visitors more fully, extend engagement, or increase impact. With prototyping, evaluation, observation, documentation, and research of various types, museums have a wide range of methods to support experimental mindsets. 

Working at every organizational level an Experimental Mindset helps solve new problems as well as solve old problems differently. A suite of experiments projects can be activated in service of museum-wide change as the Columbus Museum of Art has been doing for the past 6+ years. Experiments can also navigate around interpretive challenges as the historic Hunter House experiment described in Pushing the Period Room Beyond the Period. They can be as small as a hand-written sign with a question, re-purposed materials, or QR codes and new technology to rethink the field trip. Regardless of the size, curiosity and an experimental stance fuel this practice. As with all of the five practices, however, museums and museum staff must avail themselves of the practices and their related opportunities. An Experimental Mindset may ask more of staff than other practices do, but challenge and opportunity also invigorate staff and entire organizations. Museums that value institutional vibrancy, groundbreaking ideas, and nimble responses to change and opportunity, can bring an experimental mindset to find innovative ways to encourage and support staff and trustees in being open to new approaches and ideas, taking risks, failing and then failing in new ways, and changing outcomes.

Related Museum Notes Posts 
Following the Thread of Practice 
Five Practices: Starting with Building a Shared Understanding 
2014 Resolution: More Shiny Questions 
Perspective on Professional Reading 
Connecting Contexts for Early Learning