by PINO MONACO AND THEANO MOUSSOURI

Recently, the Smithsonian Institution addressed the challenge of coordinating the articulation of intended learning outcomes for educational programs. Pino Monaco, and Theano Moussouri, got together to discuss the Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs), and a similar framework proposed by the National Science Foundation in the U.S., as concrete guidelines to provide tangible and assessable shapes to learning outcomes.

Issues discussed and still open for elaboration rotated around the concept of intentionality – why is the informal education community still discussing whether we should or should not have intended outcomes in mind when we facilitate a learning experience?

Furthermore, after presenting examples of how outcome-based evaluations could be integrated within our current practices, the authors recognized the need for further pondering, especially concerning the issue of “measuring learning outcomes.”

• Isn’t a measurement in contrast with a free-choice learning experience?
• How do we measure fun and enjoyment?
• Instead of measuring, could we gather and describe?

Feel free to join the conversation in the Forum by adding your comments below.

by AMANDA KRANTZ, RANDI KORN, AND MARGARET MENNINGER

Understanding visitors is a necessary and complex undertaking. In this article, we present K-means cluster analysis as one strategy that is particularly useful in unpacking the complex nature of museum visitors.

Three questions organize the article and are as follows:

1. What is K-means cluster analysis?
2. How is K-means cluster analysis conducted?
3. Most importantly: What are the applications of K-means cluster analysis for museum practitioners?

To answer these questions, we present five steps that are vital to conducting a K-means cluster analysis.

We also present three cases studies to demonstrate differences among the results of three K-means cluster analyses and provide practical applications of the findings.

by JOHN FRASER

This study asked why parents value zoo experiences for themselves and their children. It proposes a new theory regarding the psychological value of such experiences for the development of identity. The study used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore parenting perspectives on the value of zoo visits undertaken by eight families from three adjacent inner-city neighborhoods in a major American city. The results suggest that parents use zoo visits as tools for promoting family values. These parents felt that experiences with live animals were necessary to encourage holistic empathy, to extend children’s sense of justice to include natural systems, and to model the importance of family relationships. The author concludes that parents find zoos useful as a tool for helping their children to develop skills with altruism, to transfer environmental values, to elevate children’s self-esteem, and to inculcate social norms that they believe will aid in their children’s social success in the future.

Photograph by Julie Larsen Maher, staff photographer of the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx, NY, courtesy of the WCS.

by KEN YELLIS

Our relationships with our audiences have proved parlous. But if history is destined to be contested, where should museums be in that contest and how do we get there?

Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum has turned out to be a path not taken; Enola Gay was a cautionary tale. But we should have these fights in museums, where the national narrative is blocked out and staged, because of how museums teach us, opening hidden windows on cloaked realities.

Museums can start by becoming clearer about what they think they are doing when they make an exhibition. Exhibitions can have a profound effect on visitors at many levels but it doesn’t happen very often. Is that because visitors seek another kind of experience from what we typically offer?