Challenging Traditional Museum Facilitation Practices Through Practice-Based Facilitation Professional Development (Poster 7)

• In Event: Educational Partnerships as Collective Resistance: Perspectives From Emerging Scholars and Collaborators

Abstract

Objectives/Purpose
Science museums face a two-pronged challenge when considering how they equitably engage visitors as museums are rooted in Eurocentric ways of knowing that exclude diverse communities (Catlin-Legutko, 2019), and science education privileges the perspectives of dominant groups (Ash & Lombana, 2013; Garibay & Teasdale, 2019). Science museum facilitators play a large role in dismantling hegemonic structures of learning within museums that position the facilitator with power over knowledge. However, many museum facilitators assume their role is to help visitors develop specific knowledge that the visitors lack before entering the museum, a perspective consistent with assimilationist (Bell et al., 2009) and deficit (Feinstein & Meshoulam, 2014) views of learners. Practice-based Facilitation (Authors, 2019) was developed through a Research-Practice Partnership between a university and interactive science museum to focus on visitor-centered practices of museum facilitation through professional development.
Theoretical Framework
According to Emily Dawson’s (2014) equity and access framework, the museum community must accept those formerly excluded to move away from the historical marginalization of peoples from non-dominant cultures. Practice-based Facilitation (PBF; Authors, 2019) aims to shift facilitator mindset to value the expertise of visitors. The framework consists of a set of tools for engaging visitors in the practices of the STEM disciplines while supporting visitor-driven learning. This framework was informed by constructivist (Driver et al., 1994; Piaget, 1985; Vygostky, 1978) theories of learning which acknowledges that individuals learn through the lens of their past experiences and knowledge. In this poster, we explore how facilitators participating in Practice-based Facilitation training engage in discourse concerning visitors.
Methods and Data
We analyzed video recordings from a three-day PBF training in Spring 2023 at a local interactive science museum. Facilitators engaged in discussions around visitor engagement styles, open-ended exhibit design, and the PBF framework. Using the training activities as a unit of analysis, we used emergent coding (Saldaña, 2021) to analyze facilitator discourse to identify their perceptions of visitor roles within the museum space which led to an understanding of facilitator mindsets.
Results
Overall, facilitators positioned visitor expertise and lived experiences at the forefront of their understanding of facilitation indicating their perspective of the visitors’ active role in the learning process. For example, in a discussion about the affordances and limitations of exhibit designs, facilitators considered the cognitive and physical abilities of the visitor and highlighted how open-ended exhibits allow the visitor to drive play and learning. They also discussed how PBF allows for more collaborative sense-making where the facilitator and visitors are positioned as co-learners. However, they also mentioned they would default to traditional roles and power dynamics when the visitors’ expectations did not align with the PBF practices.
Scholarly Significance
With museums working to challenge traditional approaches to facilitation, professional development opportunities need to address the assimilationist and deficit mindset of museum facilitators (Bell et al., 2009; Feinstein & Meshoulam, 2014). This study highlights how PBF can contribute to a more asset-based view of visitors while also uncovering a struggle of changing the mindset of visitors on who holds the power in museum spaces.

Authors

• Alexandria Muller, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Ron Skinner, MOXI, The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation

• Danielle Boyd Harlow, University of California - Santa Barbara