Snapshots of Children at Play

MUSEUM NOTES

Jeanne Vergeront

Vergeront Museum Planning

It’s a great day when I see children chalking the sidewalk, watch a toddler pushing chairs through the airport food court, or catch that exact moment a girl dunks her head in the museum water table. I love to watch children play and hear their conversations in these places. How they use, explore, and amuse themselves in spaces and with objects and materials fascinates me. Whether they are actively engaged in places planned for play, like museums, parks, playgrounds, and back yards; or in places not planned for play, like airports, stores, restaurants, and hotel lobbies is equally interesting to me.

Watching children use pancake turners to play a game of carpet tennis in the living room or straddle two chairs in the museum café to make a bridge grabs my attention. A flurry of questions zips through my mind: What is that child wondering about? What is she thinking? What is he trying to do? What does she make of what just happened? How did they ever think of that? Where between imagination and reality is she?

These are big questions and not easy to answer, but they are insistent. I have no doubt that, in moments of play and exploration of objects and spaces–whether or not adults have provided these objects, materials, and spaces for play–children are generously inviting us to glimpse their ideas, thinking, what intrigues them, and how they are experiencing their surroundings. So very rich, such moments of play, exploration, discovery and reinvention deserve more of our attention than we give.

Snapshots of children at play follow along with some thoughts, afterthoughts, and questions about what these children might be doing or thinking. New possibilities emerge about what might be going on as well as the call to more watching, listening, questioning, and discussion in order to better create experiences, places, and objects for children’s play.

Standing on the Bucket

Two girls are standing on plastic buckets in a sand play area at the Minnesota State Fair. Are they finding ways to be taller or get a better view? Practicing balance or pretending they are on stilts? Perhaps they are testing whether the plastic buckets will buckle under their weight. Thinking about this more, I wonder whether the older girl on the bucket has seen someone else do this and, curious about what it might feel like, follows that example much as the younger girl on her right might be doing. 

Fitting In Between Spaces

Gathering in this small space, these children show an interest in fitting into in between spaces. What is the environment suggesting? Are they understanding these spaces with their bodies, taking a measure of their size in these spaces? Curious about the feel of roundness or the squeeze of small spaces? Do small spaces give them boundaries they can be in charge of and where they can talk easily in a small group? Do their voices sound different to them in that narrow space? Do they find the feeling of being somewhat hidden pleasurable?

Moving Stools, Changing Space

Two boys were very absorbed in rearranging the stools in the Babe the Blue Ox Pavilion at the Minnesota History Museum. They pushed the cubes around, moved them together, lined them up, and stacked them. They walked on top of and between the cubes. Was their interest in moving and pushing the cubes or changing the space? Did they have a structure in mind? How did they imagine the small space that fit just one boy? Were they noticing the graphic image on the top of the cubes? I thought more about seeing this like the toddler pushing chairs in an airport food court.

 

Seeing, But Not Seen

In some big spaces, children crawl under a chair or a bench. Being underneath, they look out and see others, but are not easily seen themselves. How does it feel to these children to be enclosed in a very small, rather than a big, space? Does the brightly lit space beyond appear different from the relative darkness underneath? Might these children be thinking that they have found a space that fits them, but not adults? Do they imagine they can be seen by others? If I’d been able to listen in, what might they be saying about what they see?

  

Hats Off

Children stand before a giant fan at the Art Car Parade in Houston. They set their hats on their heads and step close to the fan. Crouching a bit, they hold still until the fan blows their hat off; they chase it and soon take their place before the fan once again. Is this more like a game of chance or an experiment with air? Or elements of both? Do they adjust their hats differently to make it harder or easier for the fan to blow off their hats? Or have they found a particular way to hold their heads? What do they imagine lifts and carries their hats? Are they interested in the feeling of the air blowing across their heads?   

Robot Face Mask

Gabe, who just turned 3 years old, held a pink bike helmet over his face and growled, “Robot.” Animating the helmet, Gabe careened back-and-forth across the front yard and repeated, “Robot, robot, robot, robot….” for about 5 minutes. In what ways did the bike helmet suggest a robot face to Gabe? What did Gabe imagine he looked like? Later, when I looked at the photo more carefully, I wondered when Gabe noticed that he could see through the holes in the helmet? Noting that for very young children, doing is thinking, how did running make Gabe feel more like a robot?

Looking at What’s Going On

Full of playful energy (and slightly risky) these snapshots invite us to wonder whether there is imagination or mischief in these children’s use of materials and objects. Is it creative play? Is it a moment of practice or creation? Is this child testing a theory about the piece of the world he is exploring at that moment?

We might also ask exhibit and program planners, educators and parents whether stepping on buckets or wearing a bike helmet as a robot face leads them to think more deliberately about the features of objects and what they afford a child in play? Can these and other snapshots be inspirations for experience design that supports and encourages children's exploration, working their experience base and imaginations more fully? Are these invitations for adults to play? Can they be a call from our own memories of play?

Watching children play is a way to follow them, look and listen intently, and think about what's happening. What do you see in children's play? How do you share it? How do you use your observations to reinvent places and objects that encourage, support, and extend children’s thinking, imagination, and energy in play?

Adult-Child Connections: First Person

Last weekend my husband and I visited the Providence Children’s Museum with our almost six year 6 year-old great niece and just 4 year-old great nephew. It was a rainy Sunday morning; the Museum was full and lively. We explored all the areas of the Museum, inside and out including places you can only get to by climbing up or crawling down on all fours. The children showed us around their Museum, what they liked best, what was new, and what fascinated them. At the end of our visit we spent a long time at the Cardboard Challenge, constructing a colossal castle structure with cardboard and tape. We had a wonderful time, staying until the absolute last possible minute before getting home for a birthday party.

Since then, I have reflected on the visit–one of the highlights of our vacation–and on my role as adult, caregiver, and lucky aunt of these children. I visit a lot of museums as a museum planner, as a member and a tourist, and, less often but fortunately, also as a caregiver. I enjoy the varied perspectives on the museum experience this affords, in this case on the adult role in the children’s museum experience, the questions and possibilities it poses.

Like many museum educators, exhibit developers and designers, and museum planners, I view the adult role as facilitating practical aspects of the visit, extending play experiences, scaffolding children’s learning, and being learners themselves. Some of this is reflected in a research-based tool Adult-Child Interaction Inventory (ACII) developed by Lorrie Beaumont. ACII describes what a set of likely adult-child interaction roles might look like and some supportive design strategies related, in particular, to STEM.

On another front, parent insights into their expectations and interactions with their children at the museums were one focus of an exploratory research project I conducted for 3 Washington children’s museums with Lorrie Beaumont, some of which I wrote about here. In interviewing parents, I was very impressed with how clearly and thoughtfully they were able to frame a children’s museum visit as an opportunity to support specific aspects of their child’s development or to facilitate their interests. 

Finally, I recognized that I also had ideas about what was important to me in our visit, although it took awhile to gather and see them with any clarity. I hoped to get to know my niece and nephew better, observe them as they explored and navigated a different setting, watch them interact with other children, and glimpse what excites and delights them.

Delight and Challenge on the Museum Floor

In spite of, or because of, my experience as a museum planner and museum-goer, I look somewhat critically at my caregiver role and interactions with the children during our visit. I would characterize it as “so-so with a few bloopers.” What did I do and not do? I talked to other adults while Cyrus and Harper played and surely missed a few remarkable moments that I was keenly interested in. I took lots of photos and, even though I knew better, I checked my email once, or actually twice. I asked many simple and yes-no questions and not so many rich open-ended questions. I asked the floor staff whether the almost 6 year old could go into the toddler area and play with her brother even though we were standing in front of the sign that said “4 years and under only.” I sometimes hovered. Rather than stand back while Cyrus explored how to tear the painters’ tape during the Cardboard Challenge, I showed him how to peel the tape and cut it. I surreptitiously added duct tape to the cardboard castle they were building so the structure would hold together.

I didn’t feel pressured or constrained in my choices to behave in a particular way; I just felt very busy. Virtually every moment offered an abundance of options to focus on and consider: watch the children building an arch or climbing into the boat; observe a child; think about the choice he or she made and why; be quick enough to frame an open-ended question about what’s happening; decide whether to step in or stay out as kids crowd together; and soften the landing when the arch caves in under the weight of a 4 year old. The pace of a visit is quick and doesn’t easily allow stepping back or pausing for reflection.

The rewards, however, were great. I saw Cyrus deeply engrossed in filling a small wooden cart with rubber rocks, pushing it across the arched bridge about as wide as the cart, carefully arranging the rocks in the painted stream on the other side; climbing into the rocking boat; and scooping up the rocks. Harper casually explored many areas but focused intently on the soft Soma cube puzzle and how the pieces fit together. She was particularly intent on creating a rambling structure where several children could lounge; and they did.

In the Cardboard Challenge, Cyrus discovered painters’ tape. Peeling, cutting, and wrapping tape became the focus of activity with cardboard and construction a distant second. Harper’s face beamed with triumph each time she returned from forays throughout the room bearing another cardboard shape to add to the castle project. Thank you Harper and Cyrus!

Stepping Back and Looking Out

A week later, I am still thinking about my visit and my role. For starters, I am surprised, amused, and a bit dismayed at how off the mark I was in meeting my own expectations about the adult role and interactions with my niece and nephew in spite of years in museums. It brings to the forefront questions about understanding and negotiating this territory. On the one hand, we don’t want parents hijacking their child’s activities and doing things for them. On the other hand, we don’t want adults ignoring a child. At the same time, museums shouldn’t be scripting parent-child interactions. I have been considering what this suggests about expectations of adults, at least in children’s museums, currently and going forward.

Initially overlooked and long-under valued except as drivers and pocket books that bring children to the museum, adults (caregivers and parents) are now seen and valued, although somewhat abstractly as playing roles and interacting with children. Of course they do play roles that are critical to easy, manageable, and meaningful visits. Through their interactions–verbal and non-verbal–adults supervise for safety; encourage, guide, and model. They scaffold and make connections with experiences the child has had previously. They add and appreciate humor and revisit shared experiences over time. While definitely important, I wonder whether this view is limiting and whether it adequately recognizes other significant and on-going factors at play in shaping, impacting, and enhancing a valuable museum experience for children and the important adults in their lives.

If we believe in museums’ capacity to engage children’s potential and contribute to their positive development, we need to place the adult role and interactions in the larger context of an on-going, powerful, relationship between children and parents and caregivers. In rethinking the adult presence, children’s museums could serve the long-term relationship between the adult and the child, one that begins long before and extends well beyond the museum visit.

Until well into children’s tweens, the parent/caregiver-and-child relationship is central in a child’s life, even as it changes with age. A prized and enduring connection for both the child and the adult, it is a dynamic to which each contributes, changing with time through exchanges, collaboration, the child’s development, and a growing set of shared activities, experiences, and memories. Museums are very much a part of this.

Let us pay more attention to the pleasure and possibilities of adults and children in being together in the lively and alive setting of a children’s museum. To what we already know about adult roles and interactions, let us consider and build on the on-going relationship. Let us invite the adults’ view of what they hope to get from the visit, including their hopes for what to learn from and about their child.

Museum Notes Rewind: Building on Strengths

A strong, fundamental connection links children, families, and communities–including museums–that works in multiple, on-going, and sometimes surprising ways and directions. Frequently we assume this relationship flows in a single direction. We are certain that children need to see the community. We say, children should visit the fire station on a field trip, take public transportation, or go to the library. Equally important is that the city sees its children. Bus drivers, fire fighters, parents, librarians, pedestrians, neighbors, and shopkeepers also need to listen to children, hear their questions, engage with them, take notice of their curiosity, and take seriously the ideas and thinking that excite them.

This earlier post explores the relationship between children and the community and considers the community’s and museum’s long-term interest in engaging children’s potential.

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-level change. 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 who feel connected. Museums have a role in contributing to both.

Seeing Children

Children are inherently capable with great resourcefulness and great 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,…”. I do this as well, in spite of myself. 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.

Children don't need our permission to be curious, but they do deserve recognition and support for their fascination with the world, their remarkable abilities, and great resourcefulness. 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. While I think building towers, structures, and designs; exploring rich and varied environments; and playing with loose parts are really important, these are 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 areas.

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 country.

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 and believing in a positive future 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, 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 strengthen themselves is 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 considered 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. 

Strategic Planning Notes

Recently I responded to a query on ChildMus about strategic planning and suggested a link or two from past Museum Notes posts. Scrolling through the list of posts a dozen seemed relevant and I forwarded them. A few days later I thought this same set of posts might also be helpful to other museums setting out on strategic planning. Below are those posts, grouped into typical strategic planning steps.

Preparation: Preplanning gives a solid boost to the process; it helps right-size the scope, gets the necessary players in place, and removes some of the bumps that are inevitable in planning. Start with:

• Planning to Plan

Community Context All planning takes place in a larger context. In strategic planning, awareness of the community context is critical for understanding relevant environmental forces, how the museum might respond, and the role it might play in the community.

• Unpacking Nice + Necessary

• Public Value

Vision Statements: My approach to vision statements is decidedly externally oriented rather than internally oriented. The promise of this approach just keeps getting stronger as I see how it works with more museums, including ones of differing sizes and at various stages of development.

• Revisioning Vision Statements

• Vision and Impact

Mission and Values: Museums are guided by a shared sense of a deeper purpose that is made explicit in mission statements and expressed in the beliefs that guide behavior and work of the organization. If a museum is able to capture its distinctive value in its mission, other parts of strategic planning–and its work–will be easier.

• Mission Check 

• Missions That Matter

• Values as Commitments

Stakeholders: Internal and external stakeholders are the people likely to affect or be affected by the museum, its plans, and projects. Audience is a key stakeholder groups, central to a museum’s aspirations and its reason for being.  A sound and shared understanding of stakeholders and audience will assist stratgeic planning.

• Stakeholder Mapping

• Audience, an Area of Enduring Focus

For Good Measure: At its best, strategic planning invites solid strategic thinking. But not everything that seems to be strategic actually is and not every strategic planning tool supports strategic thinking. Become familiar with the various meanings of strategic that your team might be bringing to the process and look critically at how to get better thinking out of a familiar planning exercise.

• Strategic, Not Strategic

• The Trouble With SWOTs 

                                       

Growing a Field-wide Research Agenda for Children's Museums

With support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Association of Children’s Museum (ACM) and the University of Washington’s Museology Graduate Program (UW Museology) convened The Learning Value of Children’s Museums Research Agenda Symposium September 10-11 in Washington, DC.

Emerging areas of study

Children’s museum executive directors, trustees, and education directors; museum, university, and independent researchers and evaluators; and representatives from allied agencies and associations from the US and international organizations brought varied perspectives to what a field-wide, evidence-based research agenda might include. Working with a review of research and evaluation efforts related to learning value in children’s museums and referring to research agendas from other museum segments, practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers engaged in a collaborative, emergent process to identify and prioritize areas of study needed to articulate and demonstrate distinct learning impacts of children’s museums.

Research activity in children’s museums has grown more slowly than in other parts of the museum field. Research was not part of the originating mindset for this newer museum segment, one not based in collections or grounded in a studied discipline. Children’s museums’ grass-roots and significant growth in the last 30 years along with concentration on establishing an identity within their communities and the museum field have, perhaps, redirected some of the energy that otherwise might have advanced research on audience, learning, impact, and value as well as made room for more evaluation of exhibits and programs.

Anticipating the Symposium prompted me to reflect on changes in research and evaluation in children’s museums that I have seen in the last 3 decades.

Treasured ancient scanned photo

I can’t account for the nature or extent of research that occurred before 1980. In fact, I wasn’t really aware that what we were doing to start Madison Children’s Museum (MCM) in 1980 could possibly be considered research. From about 1980 and through the following decade, research took the form of visiting and closely observing what other children’s museums were doing in exhibits, programs, and kits. Like others starting a children’s museum in those years, MCM’s board visited the few-and-far between children’s museums. We took photos and kept notes; we also begged for photos of exhibits from people we knew had visited the few museums we were aware of. I still have treasured photos from Boston Children’s Museum, the Children’s Museum of Denver, Los Angeles Children’s Museum, and The Children’s Museum of History, Science, and Technology in Utica (NY). This collegial approach of learning from (and copying) other museums has continued and evolved. Thirty years later, children’s museums use ACM’s Benchmark Calculator and Metrics Reports with data on facilities, square footage, exhibits, programs, attendance, membership, staff training, etc. for a range of purposes, planning and improving experiences.

For the first 3 years I was at Minnesota Children’s Museum, I couldn’t imagine how we could possibly conduct research when merely planning exhibits and programs consumed us. Fortunately a research opportunity came our way. The late Herb Pick Herb, a professor at the Institute for Child Development at the University of Minnesota (U of MN) was a regular at our monthly Behavior-Environment Lunch group of architects, landscape architects, museum developers, designers, and university faculty where we shared projects and research. Herb introduced us to his colleague, the late Dr. Allen W. Burton, a professor in the School of Kinesiology. In 1990, Dr. Burton conducted research on toddler’s motor development in Habitot, the Museum’s infant-toddler environment. Other children’s museums have also served as a context for research conducted by others and have been recognized as a source of valuable information of high interest to allied fields of psychology, child development, cognitive development, etc.

In 1992, Minnesota Children’s Museum kicked off planning for construction of a new 65,000 s.f. facility by conducting 10 focus groups with educators, parents, cultural leaders, and representatives from diverse communities. In addition, each of the gallery teams was expected to field several focus groups or conversations with children. This front-end evaluation (although we didn’t call it that then) felt new at the time and offered a rich source of first-hand information from visitors, community members, and children that became touchstones for shaping the Museum's 5 galleries.

Two issues of Hand To Hand expanded our world and our thinking about learning in museums and the role of research and the more prevalent evaluation. (Thank you, editor, Mary Maher!) The Winter 1989 Hand To Hand issue focused on research and evaluation with articles on the nature of research and evaluation in children’s museums, who should do evaluation, and learning about learning, along with several case studies. The Summer 1996 issue of Hand To Hand included a research review on museum-based learning in early childhood. Looking back, I can glimpse a culture of research in children’s museums, while small and scattered, beginning to emerge with some of these efforts focusing on areas in the children’s museums.  

In 1997 I began working as an independent museum planner (and sometimes evaluator and researcher) with many museums. Working with science centers and museums across the country afforded me a broader view of research and evaluation activity at a time of growing expectations for museum research, increasing activity, and expanding capacity. This role also exposed me to emerging areas of study, networks including university partnerships, independent research and evaluation practitioners, and museum-friendly research methods. I was often able to gather and share research and evaluation activity from one museum with another.

Increasing research in museums, science centers, zoos, and aquarium, was gradually finding its way into children’s museum. A children’s museum study in 1997, Project Explore, conducted at Please Touch Museum with Harvard University’s Project Zero, researched how children 4 and 5 years old engaging with exhibits might lead to learning. An increasing awareness of the potential of research to deepen understanding of the value of museums also prompted inclusion of developing a research and evaluation agenda as an objective in Minnesota Children’s Museum’s 2000 Education Plan. In 2005 Chicago Children’s Museum developed a set of research-based Standards of Excellence in Early Learning: A Model for Chicago Children’s Museum, a synthesis of best practices that supported the Museum in reaching its goals.

  

Symposium participants, including Dr. Wood

Reflections on early threads of the emerging research agenda for children’s museums also played out in a reunion and conversation I had at the Symposium with Elee Wood. Now Public Scholar of Museums, Families, and Learning at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis  and Associate Professor at IUPUI, Elee was fresh from Macalester College when she became  Program Manager at Minnesota Children's Museum. From recent college grad in 1994 to Dr. Wood today, conducting research on the learning value of children's museums, Elee's path parallels that of the children's museum field and suggests that, along with doing research, children's museums are growing researchers.

Early Learners Becoming Lifelong Learners: New IMLS Report

Portland Children's Museum (OR)

I very much hope you have seen the latest policy report from the Institute for Museums and Library Services Growing Young Minds: How Museums and Libraries Create Lifelong Learners.

Developed and published in partnership with the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the project involved representatives from libraries and museums along with policy makers, practitioners, experts, civic leaders and public and private funders who have made early learning a priority. The report brings into focus the capacity of museums and libraries to reach and serve young children and highlights where they are filling gaps and expanding early learning opportunities in their communities.

From A Call To Action at the beginning to Recommendations for Action at the end, the report looks at young children’s potential, museums’ and libraries' capacities, and community priorities through research, policy, and strategic filters. In building a case for a greater role that libraries and museums can play in early learning, the report:

• Explores museums and libraries as community anchors, connectors, innovative learning specialists, stewards, and digital hubs.

• Grounds the urgency for young children, particularly those living in poverty, to access the resources of museums and libraries in time-sensitive early cognitive as well as social-emotional development that is critical for later academic performance, mental health, and sound relationships.

PlayWorks at CMOM

• Plays out the implications of a changing learning landscape that increasingly requires learners to be self-directed and engaged. Critical to becoming engaged and self-directed learners are foundational skills that children develop before ever entering school. Without these skills and dispositions, children continue to fall behind and the opportunity gap between poor children and affluent children widens.

• Locates the challenge for realizing positive outcomes for children and families in broad-based, community-wide cross-sector efforts that include museums and libraries as essential community partners.

• Lists ten ways museums and libraries support community efforts, addressing the multiple reinforcing factors that are critical to effective early learning efforts: supporting development of executive function and “deeper learning” skills; engaging and supporting families as children’s first teacher; and creating seamless links across early learning and the early grades.

• Draws on and profiles museums and libraries across the country to illustrate the roles they play, how they support community efforts, and their contributions as key partners in community early learning efforts.

• The report concludes with More To Be Done and Recommendations for Action that focus on the roles that need to be filled at every level: federal, state, and local; and across stakeholder groups: schools, districts, and early learning programs; museums and libraries; parents and grandparents; and funders.

 Being Essential, Becoming Visible

A great fan of both museums and libraries in my personal and professional life, I have looked forward to this report since I heard about it from Marsha Semmel, until recently Director of IMLS Office of Strategic Partnerships and Julia Bland, former IMLS board member and Executive Director at Louisiana Children’s Museum. When I saw the announcement on AAM’s weekly update and Museum magazine, I was very pleased. To be completely honest, I felt appreciation tinged with frustration about what took so long? Young children are, again, the last audience group to be considered.

Little, if any, new content is presented in the report, which is not problematic. I see Growing Young Minds as less about content and more about a larger platform from a new voice to a broader audience. Coming from the Institute for Museum and Library Services and Campaign for Grade Level Reading, the report is a call to action beyond a circle of committed early childhood specialists and dedicated museum and library professionals. The report highlights key elements: young children, the role of families, the capacities and track records of museums and libraries, and the need for cross-sector collaborative efforts.

In particular, the report emphasizes vulnerable children who experience multiple risk factors. The disparity of access to learning resources for children from low-income and more affluent families is a reminder that poverty is also a poverty of experience. These disparities in access and varied experience are a source of the readiness gap that becomes a knowledge gap and an opportunity gap.

Museums, libraries, zoos, aquaria, and botanical gardens do create an extensive, diverse infrastructure of informal learning. To realize community level change for young children and families, however, this network must also be connected and aligned with collaborative, cross-sector efforts with a common agenda, mutually reinforcing activities, and shared outcomes. Moreover, museums and libraries, their local, state, and national associations, alliances, and agencies must be bold in acting on their implicit and explicit commitments to young children and families. They must be prepared to lead as they shape their strategic and research agendas and be creative in recognizing, leveraging, and optimizing existing and new resources.

Minneapolis Central Library

To the factors the report rightly highlights, I would add or emphasize, a few others. 

• Meaningful change unequivocally relies on sustained effort. Long-term, committed vision must be paired with on-going support capable of producing lasting results. 

• Our very best efforts are limited when we view children (and their parents) through a lens of deficiencies: what they can’t do, should be doing, or will hopefully do in the future. On the contrary, there is enormous benefit to children in our seeing them as capable, competent, active agents in their own learning. 

• Finally, very little will change without radically new ways of engaging parents; support is not enough. Serving the family as a robust, on-going learning group must also be integrated into these strategies.

If we value young children and a vibrant future for them–as we so often say we do–then we must go well beyond compelling rhetoric and good intentions and do whatever it takes to create dramatically different early experiences and life outcomes for significantly more children.

IMLS Director Susan Hildreth’s introduction to the report ends with, “With this report IMLS is deepening and expanding its commitment to the youngest and most at-risk children in the United States.” I applaud that and look forward to seeing it play out. 

Go Figure! Library Exhibit on Tour