Seeing Joy: Part 2

 

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning 

Photo credit: WonderTrek Children's Museum

Seeing Joy: Part 2 continues an exploration of what children’s joy looks and sounds like in our museums that I introduced in Seeing Joy: Part 1. Inspired by expressions of joy we see in museums and other settings, Seeing Joy is guided by a collaborative, iterative inquiry process developed with WonderTrek Children’s Museum in Brainerd, Minnesota. 

The process begins with a Question, leads to an Invitation to Explore that engages children and adults in exploring our question. Investigation involves setting up and observing children in a PlayLab space. We summarize, debrief, and synthesize our findings and, as part of Interpretation, we ask ourselves, “What are we seeing? Moving from Interpretation to Advancing the inquiry, we boil down our insights to a few take-aways and Re-frame the question. And we’re ready to roll again. 

Dedicated tools for each part of the process both guide and document our work. The first tool, Question Worksheet, documents the Working Question, the Invitation to Explore, Methods, Timeline, Take Aways, and Possible Ideas to Revisit. 

The Working Question and supporting questions about joy ask:

• How can WonderTrek invite and encourage children to experience and express joy?

     • What does children’s joy look and sound like?
     • What conditions appear to encourage and elicit joy?

Importance highlights social emotional learning’s critical role in human development; joy’s importance in children’s lives, fighting stress and pain. It is a form of resilience and feels good. 

Joyful Work Arounds
When we got to Invitation to Explore, we encountered a problem. Usually, we would find ways to engage children in exploring the setting, structures, and materials with other children in the PlayLab; observe them; and talk to them about their experiences. Given the spontaneous and ephemeral nature of joy; a lack of a unifying concept around joy; and limitations of the PlayLab space and sessions, that approach wasn’t feasible so early in the process. We also wondered whether asking a 3 or 4-year-old “What is joy?” would be meaningful. 

Photo credit: Tom Bedard

“Pre-research” was needed to grow our understanding of joy before we could proceed with Invitation to Explore. We chose to explore joy obliquely by investigating it in two familiar contexts: the lived experience of childhood and children’s experiences at other museums. We used four methods. 

• Childhood Joy Remembered drew on childhood memories of our team members
• Everyday Joy described moments of joy observed in museums
• Borrowed Set-ups used photos showing joy to study the presence of physical and social conditions related to joy
• Parent Question asked about their child’s joy on WonderTrek’s social media (This had no responses.)

Childhood Joy Remembered
We were all children once and experienced joy in our childhoods. Sometimes there was more joy and other times less. Bernard Berenson, a 20th century American Art Historian, recalls a moment in his childhood that tells us something about experiencing joy. 

“… In childhood and boyhood this ecstasy overtook me when I was happy out of doors. Was I five or six? Certainly not seven. It was a morning in early summer. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees. The air was laden with their fragrance. The temperature was like a caress. I remember—I need not recall—that I climbed up a tree stump and had no need for words. ‘It’ and I were one.” 

Members of the WonderTrek Project Team were asked to recall a memory of joy from their childhoods, a moment of joy when they were a child, any age up through 10 or 12 years; to explore that memory, plumb the feel and source of it. They shared what they’d been feeling and doing; where they were; who was with them. Memories that they, other colleagues and friends have shared about remembered childhood joy include being outdoors, in nature, a sense of freedom, sensory experience, immersion. 

• Crawling through and disappearing into the tall grass
• Going out horseback riding with my dad early in the morning in late summer
• Climbing on the bus and going to the library by myself to get books
• Riding my bike wearing a freshly ironed shirt my mother made. It was a perfect moment; I felt free
• Floating in the lake with my sisters
• Laying in the grass under trees with light coming through the leaves. All the flickering lights reminded me of a million candles 

The Everyday Joy We See 

Knowing that every day, joy comes into our museums, we wondered what those moments of a

Photo credit: Vergeront

child’s joy look like. Looking at photos including the one of the child kicking up their foot, we asked: what does this child’s joy look, feel, sound like? We observed and thought about:

• The child’s facial expressions: body language, tone, sensory qualities of objects and materials
• What might the child be feeling?
• What qualities of joy do we think are expressed?

Joy is hard to define. And while we wouldn’t want to squeeze the joy out of joy by defining it too narrowly, similar qualities of joy came through in the conversations, Berenson’s quote, and the literature.

• Joy is a positive emotion that can be experienced with other emotions, such as sorrow, at the same time
• Joy often brings a feeling of connection – to others, to ourselves, to nature, to something greater 
• There is contentment and satisfaction
• A feeling of joy ranges from a peaceful contentment to exuberance
• It is ineffable, brief, fleeting
• Joy happens in everyday moments

Borrowed Set-ups 

Photo Credit: Bruce Slicox. Courtesy 
of Minnesota Children's Museum

 Limited in settings we could easily create or access, we     “borrowed” set-ups of children experiencing joy in other settings. With photos like the one at left, we could study physical and social features of a set-up; the nature and quantity of materials, the ambience; the presence of other people. Looking at this photo we speculated on conditions that might be giving joy a nudge:
• Open space
• Natural light
• Objects that are soft, plentiful, accessible, unusual in this context
• Falling objects in mid-air … surprise and unpredictability in how they fall
• Visibility into what’s happening overhead
• Space for several children

Gathering a few clues from one Borrowed Set-up at a time, we glimpsed what invites joy. Asking ourselves, what we were seeing, we started building Play Conditions disposed towards joy. What are Play Conditions? They are features of the physical and social environment that support and encourage children’s exploration, play, and learning. These conditions emerge from what research, child development, play theory and children’s museum practices indicate encourage and support children’s engagement, and maybe their joy. This is not a causal relationship between Play Conditions and more joy. But we all carry assumptions, hunches, and mini-theories about what we think is likely to encourage some types of interactions more than others. In this inquiry, Play Conditions help us think about creating experiences and environments disposed towards joy.

Qualities associated with joy that surfaced in childhood memories and observations fall into WonderTrek’s 7 Play Conditions.
• Image of the Child, children’s strengths and capabilities: expressions of joy accompany a
strong sense of agency and sense of self
• Context or setting, the qualities of the physical and social space: the soft qualities of space: abundant light, natural light, moving air; sensory immersion; and space for moving freely.
• An Invitation to Explore encourages children’s engagement or piques their curiosity: with surprise, novelty, or enticing sensory patterns.
• Materials seed the set up with possibilities that are: explorable, unscripted; responsive to children’s actions
• Interactions and Relationships connect people: children feel recognized and connected to others; and adults are sensitive to children’s spark
• Content, or what is fascinating and meaningful to children: the wind, water, animals; movement, nature
• Time creates openings for joy: unstructured time, a sense of possibilities and freedom

What We’re Learning

Photo credit: Vergeront

Our learning is on 2 tracks: about children’s joy and about the WonderTrek Inquiry Process. We’re learning that joy is:
• A feeling and an experience often shared with others, that happens everyday
• Even very young children express joy
• Joy’s qualities and expressions take many forms: wonder, surprise, exuberance, a feeling of immensity and connection
• Joy and play are closely related
• Museums are places for joy
• Experiencing joy matters in children’s lives. It may not matter whether we remember childhood joy; it does matter that we have experienced joy as children

We’re learning from the WTI process itself.
• Bringing in a child’s perspective shows us what we might not otherwise notice
• Play-and activity-based methods allow children’s fuller participation
• The process is flexible, adaptable to various questions and contexts
• Questions matter
• We are making meaning a bit at a time

This collaborative effort has been made possible by a wonderful team. Thank you, Peter Olson, Cheryl Kessler, Mary Weiland, Jim Roe, Shannon Wheeler, Emilee Maillot.

Because a Good Question is Hard to Find

MUSEUM NOTES 

          Jeanne Vergeront 

       Vergeront Museum Planning 

        Originally posted April 2018

I love a really good question: chewy, shiny, juicy, provocative. Like a brilliant cup of coffee or morning pastry it makes my day.

A good question can be strategic or tactical; pedagogical, experiential, or operational; evaluative or reflective. Really good questions are like an itch. When we have been bitten by a good question, we simply have to come back to it again and again.

But really good questions are hard to find and have at the right moment. Gradually, however, I have realized that appreciating good questions has also helped me find more good questions. I notice questions in reading and interviews and I collect them. I write them down on scraps of paper and in notebook margins. I borrow and up-cycle promising questions. Sometimes I search stacks of sticky notes to get unstuck myself; frame a blog post, prepare for a workshop, or push my thinking. I occasionally suggest a question when someone’s process is off track and needs a reset. Framing questions has become my tool for thinking, learning, and working.

As our questions go, so goes our thinking, noticing, choosing, experimenting, and acting. Consequently thinking hard about what makes a really good question is thinking well spent. Yes, good questions are open-ended, but they are far more than that. They help us focus and get at more complex or inaccessible aspects of the world. They generate more questions. Asking, Who owns this place? easily prompts another one like, What can we do to increase a sense of ownership in our museum?

The questions that follow come from various sources: questions I have heard and read; borrowed and modified; constructed and revised. My appreciation goes to many, especially Lani, who forms many, good, strong, useful questions that reveal other questions. The questions I have selected are not only roomy, but help get at what we frequently miss until it's too late. They also help illustrate qualities of robust, productive questions. Perhaps they will invigorate your thinking about questions, offer a just-in-time question to hone, or start your list of really good questions.

Really good questions serve different functions. Some are openers, inviting exploration and opening dialogue. By asking, How can we develop an identity together as a group, or as a community? a question can initiate changes in how we see others, ourselves, or situations and create greater change. A question like, Whose agenda is it, any way? can challenge our thinking. Questions to invite analysis are different than ones to invite reflection. A question for sustained study will not help in deciding how to begin an experiment. Some questions, like, What makes a good stick? provoke thinking with their simplicity.

Seemingly small differences among questions matter. Questions get better when we take a close look, push on what is being said and not said, and compare. For instance, the question, What partners can we collaborate with to create a better version of our ideas and learn from? offers meaningful distinctions compared to, Who should we partner with on this project?

Frequently, questions nestle inside of other questions and we must look for those questions. Examining them uncovers assumptions and reveals lacking relevant or foundational knowledge. When we wonder, how can we serve families in our community, we might want to start by asking, What ideas do we have about families in this neighborhood?

So it’s not surprising that a really good question does not emerge full-blown but is developed by peering into it, pushing on its assumptions, honing it, and finding the right language for it. This circling around and through a question is explored in A Shiny Question. An initial question moves through four versions.

• What do children learn in a neighborhood-based learning environment?

• How do children become connected to the neighborhood?

• How do children of different ages experience their community?

• Finally:  How are children of different ages and cultural groups building connections to their neighborhood through our community program?

Staying with a really good question is important because often we don’t know the answer to it. In fact, a really good question often is one that can’t be answered. What does your museum make possible? tugs at our thinking, encouraging us to back up and reexamine beliefs and aspirations. While challenging us to be compassionate, generous, and bold, (and imagine what that looks and feels like) we are not likely to come up with a crisp to-do list or measurable goals but we may have a stronger sense of what creates meaningful change.

We can end up with the same old answers unless we find new starting points. What does this mean? is a familiar question when we look at information gathered from observations and surveys. How much more thinking, discussion, and insight could emerge from asking, What is the deeper structure of these ideas? This may surface more thoughts about what lies beyond the obvious words, numbers, drawing, shapes, or activity that produced them.

An uncomfortably open question like, What is worth discovering? pushes us to consider new starting points as does, What is fascinating to children? We might ask, What are we not seeing in this situation or opportunity? when familiarity with a situation clouds our vision. On the other hand, asking What questions have I not asked that I should be asking? can help in navigating unfamiliar territory or exposing biases that hinder us.

Because we often confuse intention with achievement we need more productive questions. We want visitors to set challenges and take risks. We want them to care about climate change. Goals that insist this will happen because we plan for it are highly unlikely to be realized. However, a question that asks more of us and our thinking, like, How can we encourage and support visitors in setting their own challenges? may push us to imagine new ways of thinking about agency and engagement.

When we want to bring others’ perspectives into our thinking and planning, for instance in visitor experience planning, we might ask, What relevant competencies and questions do visitors bring with them to the museum that we are not thinking about? 

Often our thinking stops short of where we hope it will take us. Our team, department or partners may enjoy a deeply satisfying exploration about shared values or practices. Will it continue? To create new space we may need to ask, How can we keep our shared understandings open and moving, experimental, improvising?

Sometimes a rich and complex question emerges from dropping a single word. Consider, What are the rules? compared with What are rules? The latter opens a whole new line of exploration about who makes the rules and where they come from.

While asking a lot of questions is important, being alert to really good ones is critical. The more attuned we are to finding good questions, the more likely we’ll come across one that someone has thoughtfully honed and asked. Then it is ours to write down, revise, and polish. Ultimately, being inclined to refine a promising question to suit our purposes is the best way to answer the question: What makes a good question?

Because a Good Question is Hard to Find

I love a really good question: chewy, shiny, juicy, provocative. Like a brilliant cup of coffee or morning pastry it makes my day.

A good question can be strategic or tactical; pedagogical, experiential, or operational; evaluative or reflective. Really good questions are like an itch. When we have been bitten by a good question, we simply have to come back to it again and again.

But really good questions are hard to find and have at the right moment. Gradually, however, I have realized that appreciating good questions has also helped me find more good questions. I notice questions in reading and interviews and I collect them. I write them down on scraps of paper and in notebook margins. I borrow and up-cycle promising questions. Sometimes I search stacks of sticky notes to get unstuck myself; frame a blog post, prepare for a workshop, or push my thinking. I occasionally suggest a question when someone’s process is off track and needs a reset. Framing questions has become my tool for thinking, learning, and working.

As our questions go, so goes our thinking, noticing, choosing, experimenting, and acting. Consequently thinking hard about what makes a really good question is thinking well spent. Yes, good questions are open-ended, but they are far more than that. They help us focus and get at more complex or inaccessible aspects of the world. They generate more questions. Asking, Who owns this place? easily prompts another one like, What can we do to increase a sense of ownership in our museum?

The questions that follow come from various sources: questions I have heard and read; borrowed and modified; constructed and revised. My appreciation goes to many, especially Lani, who forms many, good, strong, useful questions that reveal other questions. The questions I have selected are not only roomy, but help get at what we frequently miss until it's too late. They also help illustrate qualities of robust, productive questions. Perhaps they will invigorate your thinking about questions, offer a just-in-time question to hone, or start your list of really good questions.

Really good questions serve different functions. Some are openers, inviting exploration and opening dialogue. By asking, How can we develop an identity together as a group, or as a community? a question can initiate changes in how we see others, ourselves, or situations and create greater change. A question like, Whose agenda is it, any way? can challenge our thinking. Questions to invite analysis are different than ones to invite reflection. A question for sustained study will not help in deciding how to begin an experiment. Some questions, like, What makes a good stick? provoke thinking with their simplicity.

Seemingly small differences among questions matter. Questions get better when we take a close look, push on what is being said and not said, and compare. For instance, the question, What partners can we collaborate with to create a better version of our ideas and learn from? offers meaningful distinctions compared to, Who should we partner with on this project?

Frequently, questions nestle inside of other questions and we must look for those questions. Examining them uncovers assumptions and reveals lacking relevant or foundational knowledge. When we wonder, how can we serve families in our community, we might want to start by asking, What ideas do we have about families in this neighborhood?

So it’s not surprising that a really good question does not emerge full-blown but is developed by peering into it, pushing on its assumptions, honing it, and finding the right language for it. This circling around and through a question is explored in A Shiny Question. An initial question moves through four versions.

• What do children learn in a neighborhood-based learning environment?

• How do children become connected to the neighborhood?

• How do children of different ages experience their community?

• Finally:  How are children of different ages and cultural groups building connections to their neighborhood through our community program?

Staying with a really good question is important because often we don’t know the answer to it. In fact, a really good question often is one that can’t be answered. What does your museum make possible? tugs at our thinking, encouraging us to back up and reexamine beliefs and aspirations. While challenging us to be compassionate, generous, and bold, (and imagine what that looks and feels like) we are not likely to come up with a crisp to-do list or measurable goals but we may have a stronger sense of what creates meaningful change.

We can end up with the same old answers unless we find new starting points. What does this mean? is a familiar question when we look at information gathered from observations and surveys. How much more thinking, discussion, and insight could emerge from asking, What is the deeper structure of these ideas? This may surface more thoughts about what lies beyond the obvious words, numbers, drawing, shapes, or activity that produced them.

An uncomfortably open question like, What is worth discovering? pushes us to consider new starting points as does, What is fascinating to children? We might ask, What are we not seeing in this situation or opportunity? when familiarity with a situation clouds our vision. On the other hand, asking What questions have I not asked that I should be asking? can help in navigating unfamiliar territory or exposing biases that hinder us.

Because we often confuse intention with achievement we need more productive questions. We want visitors to set challenges and take risks. We want them to care about climate change. Goals that insist this will happen because we plan for it are highly unlikely to be realized. However, a question that asks more of us and our thinking, like, How can we encourage and support visitors in setting their own challenges? may push us to imagine new ways of thinking about agency and engagement.

When we want to bring others’ perspectives into our thinking and planning, for instance in visitor experience planning, we might ask, What relevant competencies and questions do visitors bring with them to the museum that we are not thinking about? 

Often our thinking stops short of where we hope it will take us. Our team, department or partners may enjoy a deeply satisfying exploration about shared values or practices. Will it continue? To create new space we may need to ask, How can we keep our shared understandings open and moving, experimental, improvising?

Sometimes a rich and complex question emerges from dropping a single word. Consider, What are the rules? compared with What are rules? The latter opens a whole new line of exploration about who makes the rules and where they come from.

While asking a lot of questions is important, being alert to really good ones is critical. The more attuned we are to finding good questions, the more likely we’ll come across one that someone has thoughtfully honed and asked. Then it is ours to write down, revise, and polish. Ultimately, being inclined to refine a promising question to suit our purposes is the best way to answer the question: What makes a good question?

Observation: Seeing, Un-seeing, Re-seeing

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

James Hillman, City and Soul

                                       

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What We Don’t Already See

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

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

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

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

Seeing Differently

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

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

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

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

See, Un-see, Re-see

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

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

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

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

• Being curious, open, and eager to be surprised

• Wholeheartedly pursuing the opportunity of the moment

• Revisiting the experience and its possible meanings  

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

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

-        Accepting uncertainty and the complexity of what we are noticing

-        Comfortable with not knowing what we are seeing

-        Exposing ourselves to other thinkers and knowledgeable guides

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

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

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

-        Observe until we are surprised

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

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

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

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

-        Share, and invite others to contribute what they see

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

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

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

Related Museum Notes Posts

• Making Learning Visible. What Does It Mean? 

• In Between Research, Theory and Practice

• Documentation: From Reggio Schools to US Museums

Thank you, Lani and Tom

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

­Loris Malaguzzi