Like many who started out as an ‘assistant curator’, I came to work in museums after years of academic study. Evolving some and swapping other habits formed whilst at university has mostly suited my aptitudes and appetites. But a puzzle emerged: how might I hang on to the invigorating, indeed intoxicating practices of research? After a quarter century of being involved with projects that attempted working solutions to this museological conundrum, the following speculations outline a more considered response. On taking over as its director, Ian Blatchford bravely criticised previous decades of
This essay is an account of the making of England and her Soldiers (1859) by Harriet Martineau and Florence Nightingale. The book is a literary account of the Crimean War, written by Martineau and based on Nightingale’s statistical studies of mortality during the conflict. Nightingale was passionate about statistics and healthcare. Whilst working as a nurse in the Crimea, she witnessed thousands of soldiers die of infectious diseases that might have been prevented with proper sanitation. After the war, she launched a campaign to convince the British government to make permanent reforms to
Medical photography collections often remind us of the inescapable reality of human suffering and pain, and at the same time they oblige us to deal with questions of ownership and privacy. Medical photography collections are thus considered ‘sensitive’ collections within the museum context. This essay investigates privacy issues involved in the curating of historical photographic collections in museum spaces. When medical photography entered into non-medical domains privacy issues emerged. It is these privacy issues that cast a shadow of sensitivity on the medical material. But the
In this essay, I will approach museums both via their glass display cases and via the particular capacities offered by the term ‘co-production’. In doing this I will draw on two genealogies of co-production. The first is focussed on the political question of how public institutions and their publics might better collaborate. It is this ‘public policy’ variant of the term which has most explicitly influenced the use of the term ‘co-production’ in museums. The second comes from Science and Technology Studies (STS). ‘Co-production’, according to Shelia Jasanoff (2004, p 43), was first used in STS
Research on mathematical reasoning and learning has long been a central part of the classroom and formal education literature (e.g., National Research Council, 2001, 2005). However, much less attention has been paid to how children and adults engage with and learn about math outside of school, including everyday settings and designed informal learning environments, such as interactive math exhibits in science centers. With the growing recognition of the importance of informal STEM education (National Research Council, 2009, 2015), researchers, educators, and policymakers are paying more
Rodriguez documents how one teacher navigated challenges as he incorporated transformative science teaching, that is, instruction that gives students opportunities to engage with science that reflects their lives and how they learn. This brief will benefit informal science educators who support teachers in engaging in transformative science teaching practices.
Interest in the possible role for comedy as a medium for communicating and engaging the public in science is growing. However, current research has so far been restricted to exploring whether the content of scientific knowledge is accurate and precise within comedy, and whether the public might be said to understand science better for having watched it. In this commentary, I suggest that this approach neglects the diversity with which scientific ideas and images are used in comedy, particularly when comedy is written without the explicit goal of communicating science. I present my current
Wallace and Brooks examined the culture of an elementary science education methods course conducted in a summer science camp, along with the professional identity development of the preservice teachers during their participation in the course.
This Learning Research Agenda was collaboratively developed by the Museum, King's College London, the University of Bristol, and other UK and overseas contributors. It provides a conceptual map of learning in natural history institutions while considering the the complexity of practice.
Earlier studies using psychometric tests have documented declines in creativity over the past several decades. Our study investigated whether and how this apparent trend would replicate through a qualitative investigation using an authentic nontest measure of creativity. Three-hundred and fifty-four visual artworks and 50 creative writing works produced by adolescents between 1990–1995 and 2006–2011 were assessed. Products were analyzed using a structured assessment method based on technical criteria and content elements. Criteria included in the current investigation (e.g., genre, medium
This commentary forms the conclusion of a special Virtual Issue of Science Education focusing on the intersection of informal STEM education and the learning sciences.