MUSEUM NOTES

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

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

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

At our first gathering, the MCM team asked the peer 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mud is quintessentially interdisciplinary

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

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

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

How Does Your Learning Framework Help Navigate Covid19?

Photo credit: Vergeront

Rebecca Shulman, Peoria PlayHouse Children’s Museum’s Director, shared their newly completed learning framework with me recently. She also mentioned how the museum has been able to reinvent what it does in a timeframe that would have previously been unimaginable. In reviewing their at-home offerings and aligning them with their framework, Rebecca wrote, the “Framework has been invaluable.”

 

In a time that is in great motion, museums of every size and type have had to be resourceful, courageous, and nimble. These qualities are being tested again and again, month after month as museums move from closing, to planning, re-opening, to rebuilding and recovery.  

 

Perhaps unaware at the time, museums have been preparing for times like this. They have developed foundational documents like strategic plans to guide long-term thinking; grown staff capacity, fostered relationships and goodwill with the community and partners, and deepened understanding of their potential to do well and to do good. In responding to new and unexpected opportunities and learning from successes and missteps, museums have been preparing for moments like this by investing in themselves.

 

Whether a museum is in a quiet phase, planning to re-open, thinking about rebuilding—or all of these at once—the challenge is not just getting through this time, but navigating well and coming through the pandemic crisis stronger and more essential than ever.

 

Learning Frameworks for a Time Like This

Those investments, the strategic plan, facility plan, marketing plan, staff development plan, and the learning framework are valuable resources for the process of uncovering the museum’s next and better version of itself.

 

A learning framework transforms a museum’s instincts about learners, learning, and its learning experiences into a set of shared understandings that can be acted on in a collaborative way and over time.

 

If a learning framework hasn’t seen much use, it’s time to get reacquainted. Why? Because here is a working tool grounded in a museum’s vision, mission, and values; focused on learning experiences; and intent on building learning value. As a kind of magnetic north for a museum’s learning interests, it is essential for staying true to the core purpose and pedagogy, serving audiences, and being agile in adapting to new situations, challenges, and opportunities.

 

Even if a framework has enjoyed active use, the context in which it is now being applied is in flux. These shifts are also openings for where the museum can be active, responsive, and innovative. Moreover, these frameworks by their nature have some attributes that make them especially helpful at times like this. They:

·       Distill what is most important about a museum’s learning experiences 

Photo credit: Capital Group

·       Are both firm and flexible

·       Keep the learner at the center

·       Connect

·       Help in reimagining what’s possible

·       Are tools for learning

Frameworks distill what is most important about a museum’s learning experiences; they serve as an anchor in times of change.

A learning framework articulates a museum’s foundational ideas about how children and adults engage and learn in the museum’s experiences within its spaces, online, and at other locations. By highlighting its view of learning* and connecting with theory and research in its learning principles*, a framework helps a museum stay true to what is core and where it believes it can be effective.

This is helpful because, when a museum closes temporarily, rethinks its experiential offerings, or serves new visitors in new ways, a firm connection to what’s core is critical. That connection also allows it to build on its strengths; use time, money, and staff expertise wisely; and be nimble.

 

If a museum is reaching its audience at home on social media, through distributed play packs, or at the re-opened museum; if learners are alone, in a camp, or in a family group, a framework can be helpful in exploring and thinking about what is central to the museum’s learning experiences. For instance:

-        The nature of the expectations that learners have for these new learning experience encounters

-        How the museum’s learning experiences are much more than just the activities it presents

-        What aspects of its view of learning are especially relevant to engaging learners in contexts such as the at-home museum or post-COVID museum environments

-        How it might promote social-emotional learning and contribute to a sense of well-being and security during an uncertain and difficult time

 

Frameworks are both firm and flexible; they provide focus, adapt to various contexts, and offer relevant choices.

A framework makes a museum’s critical elements of learning experiences, their functions, and the relationships among them clearer and visible. Shared and fairly stable over time, a framework allows a museum to revisit and thoughtfully explore these elements and the many possible ways they might come together in learning experiences for families, school groups, or toddlers. Yet, a framework is not prescriptive; it allows for interpretation and adapting to various conditions and groups.

 

This is helpful because, when conditions change—as they have recently—when new needs become visible, and when priorities shift, a museum can have confidence in the tested elements and ideas it is working with while using them in new circumstances.

 

In developing on-line programs, a museum may adapt an existing program, develop a new one, import another museum’s activities, or do all three. For any of these, its framework helps maintain a focus on its primary interests, its learners, and areas of expertise considering the context of a new situation. A museum might find it’s helpful to reflect on and explore:

-        Where it has a solid track record related to particular audience or age groups; experiences in indoor or outdoor settings; facilitation strategies; or particular content or skills

-        How it can adapt and update past camps for a new format, settings, and expectations

-        How social media and digital learning fit into its framework and how it understands its learning experiences. Is digital learning a long-term learning experience platform* like exhibits and environments or community engagement? Is it a short-term, on-line programmatic strategy?

 

Frameworks keep the learner at the center; they focus on individuals engaged in the process of learning

How a museum views its learners—whether they are children, adults, parents, caregivers, educators, experts, or staff—influences how it shapes experiences for them. A view of the museum’s learners* gives priority to the characteristics of learners that a museum intends to engage and support through varied experiences on site, on line, or across the community. One museum may view its learners as active, inquisitive, and caring; another may view its learners as empathetic, thoughtful, and social.

 

The learner at the center of the framework is important because, what is at the center is valued. Placing the learner there places their capabilities, potentials, and interests at the heart of learning experience planning. And while a museum’s view of its learners is unlikely to change with a shifting context, those qualities might assume new meaning, be expressed differently, or be engaged differently.

 

Planning for program participants or virtual visitors as learners who are often reflective, curious, or social invites a museum to think about how to engage and support those qualities in at-home surroundings or in a re-designed post-COVID museum. In the context of its learning framework, a museum might explore:

-        How being curious is expressed in a familiar environment (home) rather than unfamiliar environment (the museum); how being active as a learner at home varies from being active as a learner at the museum; ways of supporting learners being social while maintaining social distancing at the museum

-        How it can support the learner’s agency when it is engaging them remotely in multiple at-home museum environments

-        Ways to engage communication skills, research skills, organizational skills, and critical thinking skills in real-world, real-life contexts

  

Frameworks connect. They connect ideas; help connect learners with ideas, with the museum, and to the world.

In effect, learning frameworks deconstruct and re-construct a museum’s learning experiences in order to create learning connections. They identify and clarify major elements about learning experiences at the museum and highlight how these elements relate and work together to create rich, layered experiences for a wide range of learners across varied settings. Working with connections articulated in the framework, helps in engaging the learner and their interests. It facilitates connections with previous experiences and lays the groundwork for future connections.

 

This is helpful, especially now, as museums seek ways to reach out, connect with, and support their learners. In a time of social distancing, museums search for ways to promote social interaction. At a time when people are limiting their community activities, museums are looking for ways for people to meet, connect, and enjoy positive interactions. And at a time when museums are engaging their learners remotely, they are looking for ways their learners can make meaningful connections with personal interests, content, materials, and other activities.

 

As a museum reaches out, connects with its learners virtually, and tries to strengthen relationships with them, it might think about:   

-        What it already knows about extending learner engagement in the museum setting that can inform at-home museum experiences; how making drawings, photos, or videos and uploading them helps support connections

-        How a family or siblings of multiple ages might get into the act and work together creatively and collaboratively

-        In what ways experiences can help learners feel closer to their neighborhood, community, and to the museum

Photo credit: Vergeront

Frameworks help reimagine what’s possible; they help speed up the process of reimagining.   

The physical environment is an essential dimension of the learning experiences museums create. The settings where exhibits, programs, co-created projects, and art installations take place allow museums to deliver learning value in ways distinct from other formal and informal learning settings. The pandemic’s wide-ranging impact on museum experiences has dramatically changed the museum’s primary place and engagement strategies*. The same, tried-and-true ways of developing and presenting learning experiences and spaces will not work as they have until only 

recently. But these shifts are also opportunities for the museum to expand its thinking about environments and experiences.

 

This is helpful because a museum’s framework and repertoire of learning experiences are sources of creative thinking especially when old ways don’t work and nimbleness is needed. A wider range of learning experiences surfaces new insights, makes them more accessible and capable of being added to a fresh mix.

 

With a shift to virtual, low-contact or no contact spaces, appearing in living rooms across a city or region, the museum environment is experiencing dramatic change. More than ever, museums need to think about spaces, their features and affordances and explore questions as basic as, what is an on-line learning environment? And think about:

-        Aspects of at-home learning settings that serve museum learners well: over which conditions in these settings a museum has, or doesn’t have, control; how various conditions support or interfere with exploration; how at-home museum activities can work together and build on one another to extend interest and build impact

-        Whether virtual experiences are a new learning experience platform like exhibits or programs and should be developed as such or are an on-line format of museum programs

-        Repurposing outdoor spaces to serve as learning experience platforms: the park next door or the big, relatively empty parking lot

-        Putting the neighborhood in play or the city itself as a platform for a series of choreographed learning experiences

Frameworks are tools for learning; they are friendly to thinking, learning, and an experimental mindset.

Learning frameworks are multi-purpose tools that help in making choices, planning experiences, enhancing activities, setting goals, and evaluating impacts*. They help a museum understand where it is, where it can go, and what it is learning along the way. Regardless of how long a museum is closed, goes virtual, or re-opens with COVID adaptations, the learning experiences from this time period are now a part of who a museum is and is becoming.

This is important because, not only do frameworks support learning for visitors, they also support learning for the museum. Lessons and insights from these times emerge from what it has learned from its learners and what it has learned about itself; from insights and lessons it is aware of and from those that are not yet visible.

A museum that can ask itself new questions generates new inputs into its thinking and expands its understanding of possible new ways to support learning. Questions might not be resolved in short-order, nor ever be addressed fully. Discussions and related practice, however, can create movement and set the museum’s sights ahead. Questions, big and small, near and far may include:

-        What is the museum talking about with and learning from its visitors now? What can it learn from learners’ perceptions of this time and its meaning for them?

-        How is the museum bringing an equity, diversity, and inclusion lens to its new work?

-        How can it benchmark programs and learning experiences for this period or phase? How does it intend to evaluate these new programs? Determine what a full schedule of virtual offerings looks like; and count participation/participants?  

-        How is the museum preparing now to look back and understand this time from the future? What traces or documentation is it collecting to be able to look back and reflect?

-        What must the museum need to know to plan for what’s next?

Even if a museum is without a formal learning framework, it can explore these questions and situations in developing and designing, or redeveloping and redesigning, learning experiences. And, while it may not seem to be the optimal time to develop a learning framework, it could be if a team of staff is not actively engaged during shutdown. Museum Notes learning framework resources follow.

• Learning Frameworks:

• Question-powered Learning Frameworks

• Ten Lessons from Learning Frameworks

• Driving for Learning Frameworks 

• Updating Learning Frameworks

 

* Denotes some of the typical elements of learning frameworks

 

Important, Overdue, and Challenging: AAM’s Ed Core Documents

Do Museums Agree on the Need for an Ed Core Document? That was the question in the In Brief section of the American Alliance of Museums AVISO on September 25^th.

To explore this question, AAM has created a task force chaired by Tony Pennay, Chief Learning Officer at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute and comprised of 15 professionals from the museum field. The Task Force will explore whether there is general agreement across the field in support of all museums having an education-related core document. More information about the Task Force and its membership can be found here.  

An Education Core document is intended to encourage museums to state their educational philosophies and principles that will also guide decisions about the development and delivery of their educational role. If adopted, it would join 5 other Core Documents: Mission Statement, Institutional Code of Ethics, Strategic Institutional Plan, Disaster Preparedness/Emergency Response Plan, and Collections Management Policy. Core documents are fundamental for basic professional museum operations and embody core museum values.

I think this study is important, overdue, and, not surprisingly, challenging. Museums hold far too much learning value they could make available to their visitors and communities to casually take that value for granted. Their collections, facilities, exhibits, programs, expertise, publications, partnerships, and goodwill are rich tangible and intangible learning assets. Museums have a special responsibility to convert these enormous assets into accessible experiences with learning value for children, youth, adults—people of all ages. This is, perhaps, especially important in these times when too many schools are failing too many children and youth; when more and more learning happens outside of school and across the entire lifespan; and when knowledge is dynamic, expanding, and constantly changing.   

I have been perplexed why our field, a field that in 1992 established education as central to its public service , has been slow to demonstrate greater interest in museums articulating their learning interests and value in learning frameworks, education plans, or interpretive plans. For 25 years I’ve been developing, facilitating, and writing about learning frameworks and education plans. I am pleased to see them receive serious interest and play an increasingly greater role in their institutions. Recently, a Special Interest Group in the Children’s Museum Research Network analyzed their learning frameworks. Many of those museums are now revisiting their frameworks.

This is also a challenging question to explore as a field, which may be one reason addressing it has been slow in coming. Framing an expectation and characterizing an outcome in ways that balance accountability and flexibility is very difficult. This is especially true across a field of diverse museums ranging in size, type, age and location, demographic and geography. Inviting a meaningful stretch for both a small and a large museum can be elusive. Thinking about some of the pitfalls and possibilities of navigating this interesting but challenging territory might be helpful.

First, producing an education document is not enough. Fielding a museum-wide exploration of learning must be an active, deliberate, inclusive process. “It’s the process, not the product,” a well-worn cliché, couldn’t be more appropriate for this situation. This is a process that insists on asking questions, thinking together, and developing a shared vocabulary around learning and interpretation. While the focus stays fixed on understanding a museum’s learning interests, learning value for its audiences, community and itself, and identifying effective ways to deliver it, developing a framework about learning necessarily involves learning together.

Second, encouraging clarity around expectations can unwittingly limit thinking and encourage standardization of practice. Sometimes meeting a requirement leads to checking boxes or taking short cuts like replicating what another museum has submitted. A helpful gesture of providing examples as guides might inadvertently promote templates used repeatedly with too little regard for fit. This is quite the opposite of what ed documents are presumably intended to encourage.

Finally, perhaps the ed docs should be completely different from the other core documents AAM requires. Perhaps they should focus on the process more than on the product. For instance, the expectation for the ed doc could be development of a process that consolidates a museum’s most important ideas about learning in that setting for those audience groups. The process would be documented and the resulting learning framework or education plan summarized. And the conditions which would trigger revisiting the document—major audience, operational, or financial changes the museum experiences—would be identified.  

You or your museum might be contacted as part of this study. Perhaps you’ll be asked to share your museum’s current learning documents. What will you share? You might be asked to comment on the proposal circulated in the filed. What will your response be? 

Prelude to a Learning Framework

Conducting the Effektorium at the Mendelssohn-Bartholdy Museum   

Recently I was asked a question that I often hear, “How do we start developing a learning framework?” While the question is basically the same from one query to another, the context supplied by the following sentence varies.

• In the past we’ve had educational philosophies that we talked about, but that deep focus on what learning is and how the museum supports both has been missing.

• Our learning framework was developed as part of planning our new museum (or during a growth spurt); so much has changed since then and we know so much more about what happens here.

• We opened recently and our exhibit master plan which guided us through the expansion isn’t relevant in going forward.

• We developed a learning framework awhile ago. Its advocates have moved on and we have new staff who don’t feel a sense of ownership in that framework.

• We do have a learning framework that we have used heavily. It’s no longer current and we need to update it.

• We recently completed a strategic plan; it calls for our becoming a leader in learning in our community.

• We have a new Executive Director who had a learning framework at the previous museum and thinks we need one too.

• We’re gearing up for a major project (i.e. expansion, renovation, move). Our internal team will grow and we’ll be working with advisors and consultants. We need something that can guide all of us.

• Our community has changed and we’re not as relevant as we should be.

• We have grown a lot recently in attendance and staff; now our internal culture needs work around shared ideas about what learning is at our museum.

In spite of the noticeable differences among the museums described above–new museums, established museums, museums embarking on change, museums consolidating recent gains–these museums have something important in common. They are navigating the changing realities in which they operate: shifting societal issues and concerns, changing population, growing expectations of the museum, and an evolving learning landscape. Changes occur internally as well in organizational priorities, culture, and practices.

Whether planned or unplanned, external or internal, these dynamics impact a museum’s long-term learning value to its community. As the comments above indicate, such changes require action including new advances around a museum’s long-term learning interests. The need for a learning framework may be readily apparent or may take time to come into focus. Once a museum decides it needs a framework around learning, how it proceeds will vary according to its mission, audience, and perspective on learning. It will also be informed by how it works internally and engages its community in its work.

Many, if not most, museums are likely to take some preliminary steps as they decide on their approach to consolidating their most important ideas about learning and increasing their value as a learning resource. An informal prelude to a more formal process is a prime opportunity to prepare, to start slowly and build momentum towards a full effort when the time is right.

• Build internal interest and support. A learning framework that will serve a museum’s long-term learning interests will have meaning for the entire organization. Developing it will actively engage some and will require the support of virtually all. Make time to talk informally with staff and trustees. What do they think a learning framework could accomplish for the museum? How would it help advance other priorities?  What do they think it should cover? What are their concerns about the process and the framework itself? Growing the circle of interest and support will be helpful during development of the framework and its implementation.

• Take stock of how the museum’s learning interests are currently expressed. Whether a museum’s long-term learning interests are clearly articulated or not, they are present in some way. Assess what these interests are, how and where they are expressed, and how aware others are of them. Gather and read over grant proposals that describe the museum’s approach to learning and its impact. What do they say (and not say) that a learning framework might address? Gather articles, books, white papers, blogs, and research reports referenced within your museum or recommended by staff. Who are the theorists referred to most often? Ask staff about whose ideas around learning informs their thinking.

• Learn from colleagues. Because more museums increasingly have developed and are updating learning frameworks, they are great sources of information. Contact colleagues at other museums about their learning frameworks; the various processes and approaches they have used; sections they have added and deleted; and different formats they have used. Ask about how they use the framework–and how much. Find out what they would do differently next time to strengthen their framework and make it more user friendly. Check out the work of Children’s Museum Research Network and the Spring 2016 issue of Hand To Hand.

• Leverage strengths: Every museum has learning assets that relate to areas of expertise where it invests resources and intends to have visible impact. For one museum it might be strong community partnerships, for another a large and well-prepared docent cohort; it could be making as a learning strategy or a commitment to interdisciplinary learning. Look into how those areas might be incorporated into the process of developing the framework. For instance, could the museum hold conversations with partners and community leaders about how they view learning and the museum's role? Which of the museum’s strengths are most relevant to the community’s challenges and promise? Where are the best opportunities for advancing the museum’s learning interests?

• Think outside the framework. The most important thing for a learning framework to accomplish is to develop a cohesive outlook across the organization on how the museum matters as a learning resource to its visitors and community. Arriving at this shared understanding should come from an engaging, productive process with lively discussion and deepening understanding. Prepare chewy questions: what is informal learning in our museum's context? What kind of learning is important here? Consider different ways to explore, capture, and communicate ideas and the relationships among them. Is a mind map of learning processes more helpful than a list? How does visually representing the relationship between learning processes, activities, and impacts help convey learning’s complexity? Perhaps the final framework is actually a giant illustrated poster rather than a thick, or even a thin, report.

Do any of the museum situations described at the top of this post resonate with the situation your museum is in? If so, you may be poised to develop a learning framework with and for your museum. Taking time early on to prepare will make a helpful difference along the way and in the framework you create. Additional resources below might be of help.

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Learning Frameworks

• Question-powered Learning Frameworks 

• What Do We Do With This Learning Framework?

• Driving for Learning Frameworks

• Updating Learning Frameworks

• 10 Lessons from Learning Frameworks

• Tackling Persistent Questions about Learning Frameworks