Resilience: What Do We Mean?

Sculpture by Michal Trbak

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

Among the buzzwords brought to us by COVID-19–pivot, unprecedented, agile, and pandemic–is the near-ubiquitous word, resilience. Throughout the pandemic, resilience seems to have been everywhere, in headlines, blog topics, articles, and conference themes. 

When I asked two colleagues what they mean by resilience, one said, “keep going in spite of all sorts of things that have happened and continue to happen.” The other said, “optimism and hope that what you’re working towards is going to get you to a better place.” One website recommended museum workers develop resilience by taking a break and allowing time for self-care. Other views of resilience in a museum context are set in long-term, large-scale challenges such as Louisiana Children’s Museum’s resilience framework developed in response to Hurricane Katrina. 

And that’s resilience only in the museum context. 

My introduction to resilience was in the mid 1990’s by Ann S. Masten, then a Minnesota Children’s Museum board member, professor of Child Development at the University of Minnesota, and researcher on resilience in children. In that context, resilience refers to children’s ability to pull through or bounce back from challenges and stress with the help of a set of protective factors provided by positive experiences, individuals, the family, and the community. 

So, when someone refers to resilience, I can’t help but wonder what they mean. Are they referring to individuals—children, youth, museum staff, or leaders? Maybe they mean groups such as families, museums or schools. Or cities and communities. Might they be viewing resilience as mental health, child development, family strength, organizational health, or climate change? Are they thinking resilience is surviving, recovering, or thriving? While any, or even all, of these meanings are possible, they are not always clear or applicable. 

Resilience, also referred to as resiliency, is understandably of great interest to museums especially after our long pandemic year, economic slowdown, and social unrest. The pandemic, however, was not the first upheaval for some museums; nor will it be the last. In the wake of hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Sandy (2012), museums coped with environmental disruption, endured related trauma, and struggled to survive. Going forward, all museums will encounter change including large-scale disruption. External circumstances intersect with museum missions, community responsibility, resources, and long-term viability. They always have, but we are acutely aware of it now. 

An attractive, timely construct, resilience is much more than bouncing back which is precisely what makes it so valuable. 

Unpacking Resilience 

Over the last 40 years, multiple theories, frameworks, models, and studies on resilience have developed across disciplines, from human development to epidemiology to educational administration to social sciences. Although terms and definitions vary among disciplines, models, and researchers, resilience is applied at the level of the individual, family, organization, community, and environment. Frameworks and models are not interchangeable, but they do share some underlying elements related to good outcomes in the face of challenge, adversity, and misfortune. 

In general, resilience is an asset-based, not a deficit-based, construct. Rather than focusing on the negative consequences of exposure to adversity, resilience centers on the positive variables, or protective factors, that individuals and organizations possess to deal with stressors and to moderate exposure to risk and trauma. Not a single, static trait located in a particular place or person, resilience is more like a capacity distributed across people, organizations, places, and relationships dealing with personal loss, natural disaster, or a pandemic. Interconnections occur not only among individuals, organizations, and other systems, but also among multiple internal and external factors. Internal factors include skills, hardiness, support, and optimism while external and environmental factors include supportive resources, relationships, and robust systems. There appear to be parallel resilience factors such as close relationships, active coping, hope and optimism, and a positive view of self or community that work at multiple levels. 

Across various stages of adversity and challenge, individuals, organizations, and community respond by surviving, recovering, or even thriving. 

• Surviving involves continuing to function but at an impaired rate. 
• Recovering points to a return over time to where the individual or organization was previously in spite of stressful experiences. 
• Thriving is going beyond the original level of functioning as a result of experiencing setbacks as a growth opportunity. 

These shared features across models and scales, from individuals to groups like families and organizations, to cities and regions are a helpful context to museums thinking about and growing their capacity for resilience. 

Resiliency Frameworks 

Much more than reacting to events thrust upon us or our museums or those of our own doing, resilience is how families, museums, and communities prepare for, respond to, and adapt to change and challenge. Since every museum will at some time meet with upheaval as will its leaders, staff, community, and visitors, museums want–and need–to be prepared for the next disruptive event whether it is economic, social, ecological, or medical. 

As many museums have learned over the last 18 months, how they weathered the pandemic was a function of multiple factors, some within their control and others beyond their control. It was not only the nature of the pandemic itself, but how the museum was prepared and how it responded that made a difference in the pandemic's impact. 

To minimize setbacks and adapt successfully to disturbances, museums need to anticipate and prepare for both incremental change and major disruptions before the next crisis. One step in preparing is developing a resiliency framework that identifies risks, develops protective factors, and increases readiness to adapt. 

Each museum’s resiliency framework will be, and should be, different. The specific steps taken, questions explored, and participants involved will also vary by museum. The following sets of questions are intended to help launch discussions and reflections on how the museum has fared over the pandemic, consolidate lessons learned, clarify local resilience challenges, and identify protective factors and opportunities. 

Build a deeper, shared understanding of resilience. Think about: 

• How does the museum view resilience in its context? 
• Where is the museum’s greatest interest, or need, in growing resilience? Is it in its staff, leadership, the organization, its audience? 

Ground the framework in the current situation and its particular resiliency challenge. Think about: 

• In what areas–health and well-being; equity; cohesive and connected communities; resources; environmental–is the museum most likely to face challenges? 
• What might the nature of these challenges, or disruptions, be? 
• What are alternative ways to view the greatest challenges, or view a challenge as an asset? 
• Over which external factors does it have greater and lesser control over? 

Examine the museum’s internal capacity and challenges. Think about: 

• What protective factors does the museum, leadership, staff, children and youth in the community or the city currently enjoy? 
• How can the museum intentionally build on this capacity to better meet disruptions? 
• In what areas could additional capabilities enhance the museum’s resilience? 
• What does the museum have control over that can promote resilience? 

Look ahead, prepare for what’s next. Think about: 

• What does surviving, recovering, and thriving look like in the face of disruptions? 
• Where is the museum under-investing in its capacity? 
• What additional strategies must it develop? 
• Where does the museum start in growing and organizing resources for resilience? 
• What will keep the museum flexible and nimble? 

Developing a resilience framework won't stop a pandemic or natural disaster in its tracks, but it will help soften the blow, assist the museum in adapting, help it bounce back, and, ultimately, flourish in the face of change. 

Resilience Across Contexts and Scales

• Resilient Cities Work being supported by the Rockefeller Foundation 
• The Resilience Playbook, Ann W. Ackerson, Gail Anderson, and Dina Bailey 
• Resilience Theory and Research on Children and Families: Past, Present, and Promise by Ann S. Masten 
• Multisystem Resilience for Children and Youth in Disaster: Reflections in the Context of COVID-19 by Ann S. Masten and Frosso Motti-Stefanidi 
• Conceptual Frameworks and Research Models on Resilience in Leadership by Janet Ledesma

Foundational Experiences in Museums

Museums want to matter. They want to matter to the families, children, learners, friends, and communities they serve in large and small ways, now and for the future. Their hopes and aspirations about the positive changes they believe are possible are expressed in their visions, missions, and values. Everyday, the good intentions and good works of museums are shared as museum experiences through programs, exhibits, collections, publications, events, and interactions with staff and volunteers; at the museum, in neighborhoods, schools, community settings, and on-line. These experiences which might be a once-in-a-lifetime event, an annual or monthly visit, brief or extended are, nevertheless, core to how museums matter. This is true particularly for children. 

Early life experiences, whether beneficial or harmful, have tremendous effects on human development, behavior, long-term health, and opportunities through life. Child development theory and research indicate that, in addition to children having basic needs such as food and shelter met, there are experiences that are essential to their becoming strong, caring, and responsible adults. These are experiences that children should be able to enjoy throughout their childhood and in settings across their lives—home, school, recreation, faith, and community, including museums, zoos, art spaces, and gardens. 

For all children, regardless of age, ability, or background, these experiences provide a solid foundation for a good start in life. For some children, these experiences are important as protective factors against the challenges and risks they face in life. These are children who may grow up exposed to a limited range of experiences or face adverse childhood experiences. 

The term adverse childhood experiences (ACES) refers to neglect, abuse, and potentially traumatic events that occur before age 18. These experiences can interfere with health, learning, and opportunities over a lifetime. Not as uncommon as they might seem to be, more than 60% of adults report having had one or more ACE. Research also suggests that social support, building healthy families early in the life of the child, and stress reduction strategies can help mitigate the damaging effects of ACES and build resilience. 

Where Museums Can Matter 

Among the many and varied museum offerings for children in family, school, and community groups—which many if not most museums offer—are foundational experiences.* When museums create experiences that emphasize relationships, socializing, rich environments, agency and choice, and varied interactions with families, friends, and peers, they are helping to build assets that help children get a firmer foot-hold in life. 

A child builds a gizmo that spins and whirrs; climbs to the top of a 4-story climber; takes part in a biological survey; or figures out how to build a zipline with other children. In those experiences they feel included, successful at navigating physical challenges; they problem solve and work together with other children. They are exploring their world, growing their confidence and competence, and developing a robust sense of self and belonging. These are building-block experiences that support physical, affective, and cognitive developmental processes, tap into children’s capabilities and strengths, connect children with others, and shine a light on each child's spark. 

While there is no set list of such experiences for museums, direction and starting points for a museum’s foundational experiences are in plain sight. 

• A museum’s vision, mission, and values highlight the positive changes it believes are possible for its community. Those statements often include greater social cohesion, strong families, supportive relationships, engaged and caring citizens, and equipping children for the future. 

• How a museum views its audience and its shared understanding of children in its age range reflect the qualities it values and hopes to encourage such as curiosity, feeling valued, and confident in exploring the world. 

• The promises and challenges facing the city or region a museum serves highlight where a museum can be helpful, related to, for instance, collective well-being, a more connected community, or valuing youth. 

• The hallmarks of a museum’s most powerful experiences are frequently starting points for foundational experiences: play as a way of learning, shared experiences, a time and a place to be children, or coming together as a family. 

• In addition to these museum-based sources for foundational experiences is what research, theory, and community wisdom say about what contributes to children’s thriving and what concerns us now about children during the pandemic. 

Shaping Foundational Experiences 

Shaping a set of foundational experiences is an iterative process that engages staff from across the museum to pare down, clarify, and organize a preliminary list culled from the museum’s core documents, best practices, and museum research. Lively discussions grow a shared understanding around these experiences in the context of a museum and help arrive at 5 to 7 clusters of essential experiences. Through this process, a team will discover some characteristics that foundational experiences share that are described below. (Examples below in italics.) 

• Building blocks of experience 

• Naming experiences 

• Both goals and outcomes 

• Inclusive 

• Not just for children 

• Part of a community effort 

• Integral to museum planning, processes, and efforts 

Building-blocks of experience. A foundational experience such as A sense of connection, acceptance and belonging is the accumulation of many varied and positive moments, interactions, and opportunities that a child enjoys. Those are building-block experiences that occur over time and in multiple settings. Being valued for who they are, having supportive relationships with peers and caring adults, and making memories with their family work together might be among 6 or 7 building-block experiences that contribute to one of a museum’s set of 5 to 7 foundational experiences. 

Naming experiences. By naming its foundational (and building-block) experiences, a museum develops a shared language for understanding and working with them intentionally. Naming helps clarify what children need for healthy development and gets at the roots of these assets of great interest including what these assets might look like in younger and older children. This process also helps place children’s developmental needs such as A Sense of Well-being in the context of a museum and the experiences it creates. 

Both goals and outcomes. A foundational experience such as, Children enjoy growing capabilities, confidence, and independence expresses a hope and aspiration for them. It serves as a goal. At the same time, when a museum describes what positive developmental change in a specific area looks like, it frames possible outcomes of these experiences. These outcomes point to additional ways a museum might support them and how it might track them. 

Inclusive. Foundational experiences are concerned with nurturing a child’s developmental foundation. They value and span all domains—sensory-motor, cognitive, social and emotional—and accommodate the constantly unfolding development of children and their growing capabilities. Foundational experiences recognize and respect children’s age, gender, race and ethnicity, ability, and family income. While not exhaustive, the range and variety among the 5 to 7 sets of foundational experiences and their building-block experiences nurture strengths and develop assets in many ways. 

Not just for children. Foundational experiences relate readily to children’s growth and development. Many experiences that are essential for children’s optimal development, however, are also critical to adults’ on-going health and wellbeing. At what age do we stop needing to feel accepted and included? A sense of joy, wonder, and awe? Foundational experiences also help museums in shaping and supporting the roles of adults—parents, caregivers, teachers, museum facilitators, and volunteers—in contributing to foundational experiences. 

Part of a community effort. Museums make critical contributions to creating and providing foundational experiences. They are committed to being safe, accessible spaces that offer children rich varied encounters, environments, and materials that open an expanding world full of possibilities. Equally important, museums are part of a larger eco-system of families, schools, and other community and cultural organizations with shared interests, complementary roles, and special resources. All of this is essential to building strong, resilient children and positive futures. 

Integral to museum planning, processes, and efforts. Integral to its work, foundational experiences can be incorporated into museums at any stage of development or planning whether it is a new museum, renovation or expansion, strategic planning, learning experience framework, or a pivot during the pandemic. They are embedded in a museum’s processes, planning, and practices; communicated to staff, trustees, partners, and supporters. 

In the Museum Context 

Foundational experiences fill a child’s experience bank and self-confidence with successes and small triumphs that will serve them well when they encounter setbacks, have to make difficult choices; they will cheer them in the moment and last into a hopefully brighter future. While these experiences alone are not guaranteed to change life outcomes, planning with them in mind represents a commitment to adding positive factors to the lives of young members of our communities and building on children’s potential. Museums are fortunate to be in a position to contribute to those foundational experiences and the building-block experiences that can make a difference into the future. In fact, as museums step forward, adapt, and respond to the pandemic, health concerns, and educational disparities, they have an even greater opportunity to be more deliberate about delivering foundational experiences. 

The next Museum Notes post will continue to explore foundational experiences and look more closely at a set of foundational experiences I am developing from my work on learning frameworks.

*I have been exploring the idea of foundational experiences over the past decade and have written about them here as essential experiences. I have used essential experiences in dozens of learning frameworks with museums. But, this is only one way of looking at look at nurturing strengths and changing futures for children—and in the context of museums. Check of The Search Institute and its Assets for Healthy Development and the GAR Foundation's Essential Experiences.

--- Jeanne Vergeront

     Museum Notes

     November 17, 2020

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

 

Building on Strengths

Display from 2005 Jane Addams School of Democracy Freedom Festival (St Paul, MN)

Some weeks I want to write about children building with blocks or exploring with loose parts. Other weeks I am thinking hard about how museums build public value or community impact. Both interest me. They interest me intensely. They may seem unrelated or perhaps even opposite. For me they are inextricably related. Strong children need strong communities; resilient communities rely on capable children. Museums have a role in contributing to both.

Seeing Children

Children are inherently capable with a great many resources and potential. Before even entering school where we expect they will start to learn, children have learned to communicate, to walk and talk. They get themselves dressed, help here-and-there around the house, show compassion, and even make jokes. All in just about 4 years.

Yet, we tend not to recognize children’s competence. Rather we describe them as being deficient in some way. Often this is due to their not being older or bigger than we know they are. Have you heard someone say to a 3 or 4 year old, “when you can read…” or “when you can ride a bike…” or “when you are big…”? Our preoccupation with what children can’t do interferes with our appreciation of their remarkable abilities and capabilities at every age. I would love to hear a 3 or 4 year-old pipe up and say, “I am just fine as a 3 year old, thank you!”

No sooner are we pushing children to be older, but we are saying, “when they were young…” or, “oh, when you were little, you were so cuddly.” First we overlook how remarkable they are; then we regret they are no longer that way. In between we have missed their wondering, investigating, and discovering.

So often we remark that children look at things in really interesting ways. Actually, I think we’re surprised by how fully children look at things. A child notices how a bird walks or wonders whether she will see her face in this mirror too. Children are excited to tell us what they see and what they think about it. Their language is fresh, inventive, and expressive. It tells us, if we are listening, of their ideas, understanding of relationships, and theories about the nature of things.

When I work with museums, I frequently hear language such as, “we’ll make the children try…” or “this will let children,…”. In spite of my best intentions, I do this as well. We often speak and act as if children are passive learners, rather than the natural, active learners they are. They hardly need our permission to be curious, touch something, ask a question, or make sense of what is going on around them.

While they don't need our permission to be curious, children do deserve recognition and support for their remarkable abilities and resources. They also need adults to pay attention, listen to their words, observe their response to materials, see their excitement, notice their learning strategies, and think about their interactions with others. They benefit from the experiences and encounters that engage their creativity, knowledge building, and individual action. Building towers, structures, and designs; exploring rich and varied environments; and playing with loose parts are really important. These are, however, only a few of the kinds of activities children should be able to experience, enjoy and draw from. 

Networks of Relationships

The same qualities children bring to accomplishing their greatest learning feats are those that make a difference in school, the workforce, families, neighborhoods and civic life. Taking initiative, being resourceful, asking questions, listening, acting on ideas, and communicating with others prepare children and youth to have relationships within their community and to become contributors and thoughtful critics in their communities as adults. Developing these qualities happens in the context of strong relationships with caring adults in many roles from infancy through young adulthood.

Strong children mean strong communities. This may sound like a cliché, but it’s not. Evidence of this connection comes from several directions.

The Search Institute’s research-based work for 50 years has focused on strengthening how citizens and communities raise children and adolescents. The Institute has identified 40 Developmental Assets for healthy development. Assets are positive experiences and qualities that help influence choices children and youth make and help them become caring, responsible adults. The more assets young people have, the more likely they are to thrive and the less likely they are to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors.

The Search Institute’s work and their Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth initiative recognize that raising strong and successful children takes more than just one single family or a school. An entire community must be engaged. This requires many people—educators, faith community leaders, parents, aunts and uncles, governmental figures, and others—to come together and nurture strong, active relationships with children and youth.

An interest in children and youth brings members of a community together. Examples readily come to mind of informal “mom’s groups” that meet and connect around childbirth, the playground, or other parenting interests. Parents and neighbors working together have made preschool coops, scouts, and children’s sports run. They have been vital to starting children’s museums all across the world.

A landmark study of civic engagement, Working Together: Community Involvement in America, sponsored by the League of Women Voters reinforced this when it concluded that, “A focus on children and youth is key to engaging Americans… children and youth registered among people’s top concerns and [the subjects] most likely to motivate community involvement.”

The Habits of a Community Develop the Habits of Children

Several years ago the Kettering Foundation produced a report on why some communities work. Research presented in Communities at Work pointed to many factors. One, in particular, stood out: “One of the characteristics common to communities that are able to manage, if not solve, their problems is that citizens take responsibility for their future.”

Neighbors, parents, or citizens who come together to solve a problem, address a concern, or realize a hope initiate a cycle of reciprocity. First they change or improve conditions by sharing ownership and taking action. Then they create a lasting example of community engagement for their children. Children grow into the lives of the people around them; they will renew the community in the future.

One city’s remarkable educational and civic project has been evolving in the infant and toddler schools in Reggio Emilia (IT) over the last 60 years. Based on an image of the child as strong and capable and of relationships among children, teachers, parents, and citizens at the heart of learning, the schools have become known worldwide for integrating theory and practice to work at the intersection of strong children and a vibrant community.

A sense of co-responsibility for children’s education and their futures is deep and wide spread. In fact, in June 2010, Pedagogista Tiziana Filippini was honored by Louisiana Children’s Museum with one of its Great Friends to Children Award. In acknowledging the award, Tiziana also made a polite yet important clarification when she said, “My city is the great friend to children.”

In St. Paul (MN), a group of neighbors and organizations has been involved since 2004 in creating the West Side Neighborhood Learning Community. Their vision for All Around the Neighborhood is “a community alive with learning where youth develop their potential and become productive, contributing adults.” Children and youth are involved in planning and co-creating learning experiences as they learn in and about their West Side neighborhood. Parents, neighbors, and businesses are actively involved as planners, teachers, learning sites, and in documenting learning activities.  One result of these activities is that West Siders have been engaged in rethinking and designing new public play spaces.

Strong Children, Strong Museums, Strong Communities

Where do museums fit in? Along with libraries and schools, museums are part of a civic infrastructure that is critical to vibrant, resilient communities and to the well-being of their citizens including, of course, children. While schools have a particular civic function–to provide basic education–museums and libraries do not. They do, however, have a responsibility to use their resources to contribute to a rich, shared, inclusive, public life.

Museums also have a tremendous opportunity to leverage their knowledge, assets, and relationships to deepen connections with the community and to enrich and expand their understanding of its children. Contributing to strong children and strong communities as museums also strengthens themselves in a decidedly rich, complex, and long-term process. A few dimensions and the interactions among them interest me, in particular.

• Take the wealth of children’s potential seriously. Involve people from across the museum in actively pursuing ways to make children’s thinking visible. Develop, adapt, and practice documentation. Develop museum-based practices for observing, noticing, responding to, scaffolding, extending, recording, and revisiting evidence of children’s learning.
• Use the museum’s growing knowledge of learning and learners in informal settings along with its expertise in creating learning experiences with objects and materials to design encounters for children to follow their interests, pursue their explorations and extend their thinking.
• Pursue the thoughtful and deliberate thinking required to develop public value and explore the authentic give-and-take dialogue to define what a stronger community means to a particular community that Nan Kari encouraged in her comment on that blog. 

My thanks to the friends and colleagues who have helped my thinking on this: Nan Kari, Tiziana Filippini, and Lani Shapiro.