ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Dear Bill,

Thanks for your very thoughtful musings, much more thoughtful than my 
off handed comments.

Your note reminds me of some early thoughts from years ago. When I first 
began working in science museums at the NY Hall of Science I was very 
excited to have this new opportunity. I went to design school you see 
and saw all these great opportunities to 'design' new exhibits using all 
the talents I had honed - the use of color, texture, form, function.... 
But that was never really me and I learned right away that designing 
exhibits was something different. I was very lucky then to be working 
with a great group of people, superstars of the field you might say, not 
to mention a whole crew of Exploratorium people who seemed to visit on a 
rotating basis every week.

The most influential person I met there was Michael Oppenheimer. He just 
had a different way of looking at the world and of what we do. Though he 
had almost literally grown up at the Exploratorium, his point of view 
was more of an artist than a scientist. We built some interesting stuff 
together but most of it was content driven and funded by grant money. We 
thought that there had to be another way. We came across so many other 
interesting things as we built the required set of exhibits and no real 
way to go off down these other paths.  We dreamed about one day starting 
our own 'museum' called something like "The International Center For 
Messing Around With Stuff."  Your 'messing around with soft science' 
phrase brought this to mind.

There is a real dichotomy in our field and I have a sense that we 
collectively don't really know what we are. We have multiple 
personalities and as many personality disorders.  We want to be about 
science, but we are not really about that. We are more about 
communication, which I would reckon to be more of an art form.  We try 
to make 'science fun' and science can be fun.  But it is much more often 
tedious and disciplined. We want to be about free inquiry, exploration 
and self discovery, but as you mention there is no adequate way to 
measure those outcomes and we just have to knuckle under to those 
requirements. We say we want to turn our visitors into scientists but we 
often don't respect their judgments enough to let them make their own 
choices.  We are more interested in showing how clever we are, instead 
of letting visitors explore their curiosity. I could go on and I but I 
think you get the gist.

We have painted ourselves into a corner, Bill. We say that people learn 
science when they visit us and we claim that we are an important part of 
the formal education collective. Funders have said, 'okay, prove it.'  I 
don't think art museums or opera companies have to prove their worth 
like this. 'Art for art's sake' is good enough. Science for science's 
sake. Wonder for the sake of wonder.

I'd  like to think that science centers are just a smaller collection of 
worldly experiences - experiences that you could have 'out there' if you 
knew how to look. So, in my mind science centers help you look. Maybe 
they focus your attention or isolate a phenomena just enough so you get 
get a clearer picture of it.  I don't think we want our science centers 
to just be collections of junk, stuff and random events - However, with 
a thoughtful, unobtrusive 'guide' maybe it could be. I am reminded of 
Socrates walking on a beach with his students. Questions are asked when 
they see or experience something and a whole conversation begins. That's 
what I would like to see science centers become.

We have mucked this so badly however that I fear there's no backing out. 
We have made ourselves slaves of standardized testing and the school 
system. "What can I do to help schools meet their goals?"  We forget 
that the school is there for the teacher and the teacher is there for 
the student and still one step removed is the child. "What can I do to 
help this child see the beauty and wonder in the world they live in" I 
am about to ramble on about the nature of our education system, what we 
do wrong in science museums and why.

I don't think there is a simple answer to your question about criteria. 
It seems to me to be a floating set of properties that make one exhibit 
good - or cool and another lame. Maybe it's because different kinds of 
exhibits affect different people in different ways at different times 
(the hectic, frenetic school visit versus the quite Sunday afternoon 
family visit.) We think way too much. We overly intellectualize. We 
overly design.  We try to make one exhibit do it all and that simply 
just can't be.  I think we have to follow our hearts more and our heads 
a little less. Then maybe we'll start going back to where we belong. But 
who will be the first to stand up and say 'I'm Spartacus!'

There's a lot more to this discussion Bill, and it is a long one. There 
are no simple answers.

Joe R.



Bill Schmitt wrote:

>ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
>Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
>*****************************************************************************
>
>Joe,
>
>An issue I see with teachers, exhibit developers, and scientists is that the
>kind of lessons and exhibits we build untimely reflect what we really
>believe (and value) about learning rather than what we say we should value.
>If we did an assessment of 50 randomly chosen exhibits in Science Centers,
>what percentage would be mostly about manipulating and making interesting
>observations,  and then pondering personal questions and manipulating some
>variables - and what percentage would be mostly about demonstrations to make
>a point or prove what science "knows" - i.e. transferring information so we
>can say the correct words (and call this learning)?  My personal experience
>has been that institutional decisions often reflect the second model because
>many really do not understand the bigger picture of learning and cannot
>really value opportunities to ponder the world and get excited about
>possibilities and ask questions that may not be answered for years to come.
>
>Also I personally find that, while I am very committed to developing
>possibilities for good personal inquiry by students, I often interfere with
>student's inquiry by talking or doing too much.
>Joe,
>
>Another problem is that many consider inquiry as just messing around with
>"soft" science because the results are difficult to measure and even harder
>to communicate.  And I would agree that, without some form of guidance,
>inquiry often can be of minimal value.   So back to my original question - I
>am still trying to get a better handle on what criteria makes an exhibit or
>program rank high in both exploratory behavior and in results that reflect
>interesting thinking on the part of the visitor (and just how do we define
>interesting thinking?).  Some of the responses to date are very helpful and
>I will try to summarize them next week.
>
>Thus I do believe that we on the list mostly agree on the science - BUT I
>would suspect that we do not agree as much on the science learning and our
>beliefs and research behind the learning.  Certainly it is not as important
>that we all agree, but as a profession we do have a long way to go and we
>need to be asking and researching interesting questions that can help us
>advance.
>
>Bill Schmitt, Executive Director & Science Partner
>The Science Center of Inquiry (480) 816-6094
>[log in to unmask]
>
>"Creating opportunities for discovery and understanding."
>
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>More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
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>

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