Museums and Inclusion: Understanding Visitors' Sense of Belonging in Science and Natural History Museums

博物馆与包容性：了解游客对科学和自然历史博物馆的归属感

• 批准号: 2005773
• 负责人: Marjorie Bequette
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: Science Museum of Minnesota
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2005773&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Museums; Inclusion; Understanding; Visitors; Sense

While museums strive to be as inclusive and welcoming as possible to all visitors, data from many institutions shows that audiences are still disproportionately white, well-educated, and more affluent than the average local population. One contributing factor to the lack of progress is that staff often create programs that work to create inclusivity from their own perspective, rather than grounding the work in a broader vision of the museum experience. This project will allow for a deeper exploration of how visitors, particularly those from groups that visit less frequently, experience a museum visit, and how their sense of belonging is supported or eroded during their visit. The team believes this sense is built up or taken away through specific moments of engagement or alienation and will explore these moments that matter through the work. Through intensive work at one museum, and additional work at three other museums, the project will look for themes and insights that can help all museums to create more positive moments that matter for all audiences. Specifically, the project will result in a) insights for museums in supporting a visitor-based sense of belonging, b) shared methods for working with visitors that could be applied by other researchers to explore specifics in a particular setting, and c) grounding work to develop survey questions for use across the field. This award is funded by the Advanced Informal STEM Learning program which seeks to advance new approaches to, and evidence-based understanding of, the design and development of STEM learning in informal environments. Building on existing work around exclusion and inclusion in everyday science learning, this project aims to formally define what a sense of belonging means in the science and natural history museum context as a construct for understanding inclusivity. The research team hypothesizes that the majority of experiences in an entire museum visit have a relatively neutral effect on visitor sense of belonging; however, at times, visitors may experience positive or negative moments, and these moments that matter may influence a visitor’s STEM engagement, interest, and/or identity. This exploratory work will help to develop and ground the construct of sense of belonging within the museum visitor’s experiences, to identify visitor moments that matter using an equity approach that intentionally centers the experiences of visitors from underrepresented groups, and to form the basis for future research that would support the development of a fieldwide measure of sense of belonging. The research study will focus on defining the construct of sense of belonging so it 1) aligns with the research literature and 2) is grounded in the experiences of science/natural history museum visitors. Photovoice data collection method and interviews will be used with visitors ages six and above to identify moments that matter for them during a visit to a science/natural history museum. This project will create new understanding of this construct for not only science/natural history museums and the larger informal science education (ISE) field, but fill a gap in the overall literature around the construct of sense of belonging. The project will also provide new learnings for the ISE field on how to adapt and use the photovoice method to study complex constructs, such as sense of belonging, in science/natural history museums.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尽管博物馆努力尽可能地包容和欢迎所有游客，但许多机构的数据显示，观众仍然不成比例地是受过良好教育的白色，比当地平均人口更富裕。缺乏进展的一个因素是，工作人员经常从自己的角度创建包容性的项目，而不是将工作建立在博物馆体验的更广泛视野中。该项目将允许更深入地探索参观者，特别是那些来自参观频率较低的群体的参观者，如何体验博物馆参观，以及他们的归属感如何在参观期间得到支持或削弱。该团队认为，这种感觉是通过参与或疏远的特定时刻建立或带走的，并将通过工作探索这些重要的时刻。通过在一个博物馆的密集工作，以及在其他三个博物馆的额外工作，该项目将寻找主题和见解，可以帮助所有博物馆创造对所有观众都重要的更积极的时刻。具体而言，该项目将导致a）对博物馆的见解，以支持基于游客的归属感，B）与游客合作的共享方法，可供其他研究人员应用，以探索特定环境中的具体情况，以及c）基础工作，以开发调查问题，供整个领域使用。该奖项由高级非正式STEM学习计划资助，该计划旨在推进非正式环境中STEM学习的设计和开发的新方法和基于证据的理解。在现有的工作基础上，围绕排斥和包容在日常科学学习，该项目旨在正式定义什么是科学和自然历史博物馆背景下的归属感意味着理解包容性的构造。研究团队假设，整个博物馆参观中的大多数体验对游客的归属感有相对中性的影响;然而，有时，游客可能会经历积极或消极的时刻，这些重要的时刻可能会影响游客的STEM参与，兴趣和/或身份。这项探索性的工作将有助于开发和地面的归属感的博物馆游客的经验内的建设，以确定游客的时刻，使用公平的方法，有意集中游客的经验，从代表性不足的群体，并形成未来的研究，将支持发展的归属感的一个领域的措施的基础。本研究将侧重于定义归属感的结构，以便1）与研究文献保持一致，2）以科学/自然历史博物馆游客的经验为基础。Photovoice数据收集方法和访谈将用于六岁及以上的游客，以确定他们在参观科学/自然历史博物馆期间的重要时刻。这个项目将创造新的理解，这不仅是科学/自然历史博物馆和更大的非正式科学教育（伊势）领域的建设，但填补了空白，在整体文献的归属感的建设。该项目还将为伊势领域提供关于如何适应和使用photovoice方法来研究科学/自然历史博物馆中的复杂结构（如归属感）的新知识。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。