Objects, Spaces, and Engagement : Children’s Relational Experiences in the Museum Setting

Abstract

The focus of the research is to observe how children engage and interact with their surroundings while visiting the Kaleidoscope of Childhoods exhibit in The Finnish Labour Museum Werstas. As children’s experiences in the museum settings are more often considered, there is some debate as to how to best accommodate them in the spaces and enhance their learning experiences. The ways in which the children’s engagement and overall behavior is influenced by various agents found in the environment are interesting to view through various sociocultural theoretical lenses, which are examined herein. This is done in order to hopefully reveal ways in which their surroundings influence and mediate their engagement in the space. The myriad ways in which children’s engagement is mediated by people including adults and peers, objects, sounds, and space are viewed through Vygotsky’s theory of socio-cultural learning, social referencing theory, parents’ sociocultural experiences, and the vitality, holding, and interpersonal space effects. These lenses uncover ways in which we might enhance children’s future experiences in museum settings from the perspectives of educators, parents, and museum staff. Children’s learning in novel spaces does not happen in a vacuum, and no one learning theory can fully claim to understand every child’s learning in every situation. For these reasons, the children observed in this research and their behavior in the museum setting is viewed through multiple, entangled theories. When viewed this way, things around the children that affect their learning are more easily recognized and understood. We argue that this understanding of surroundings (including human, non-human, space, time, and sound) as a socio-cultural being/s will help in providing better learning opportunities and more instancing of engagement for children visiting museums exhibits.