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Peer-reviewed article

How Families Use Questions at Dioramas: Ideas for Exhibit Design

January 1, 2004 | Exhibitions
This paper explores the role of questioning in scientific meaning-making as families talk, look and gesture in front of realistic and artful dioramas at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The focus is on the ways questioning can either enable movement towards scientific understanding or hinder such progress. The socio-cultural framework of this research emphasizes Vygotsky's interpretation of the zone of proximal development (zpd). Questions are viewed as tools for mediation in the zpd. This paper examines three families' dialogues, excerpted from a larger study of collaborative sense-making among family groups in a natural history museum. It seeks to understand how collaborative dialogue meshes everyday understandings with canonical science, in this case through the use of questions.

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    Author
    University of California, Santa-Cruz
  • Citation

    DOI : 10.1111/j.2151-6952.2004.tb00367.x
    Publication Name: Curator: The Museum Journal
    Volume: 47
    Number: 1
    Page Number: 84
    Resource Type: Research Products
    Discipline: Education and learning science | History/policy/law | Life science | Social science and psychology
    Audience: Museum/ISE Professionals
    Environment Type: Exhibitions | Museum and Science Center Exhibits

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