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

虽然博物馆努力对所有参观者尽可能包容和欢迎，但来自许多机构的数据显示，观众仍然不成比例地是白人，受过良好教育，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项目，以创造包容性，而不是将工作建立在博物馆体验的更广泛视野中。这个项目将使人们能够更深入地探索参观者，特别是那些参观频率较低的团体的参观者是如何体验博物馆参观的，以及他们的归属感在参观期间是如何得到支持或受到侵蚀的。该团队认为，这种感觉是通过特定的参与或疏离时刻建立或带走的，并将在工作中探索这些重要时刻。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，该项目将寻找能够帮助所有博物馆创造对所有观众都重要的更积极时刻的主题和见解。具体地说，该项目将导致a)博物馆在支持以游客为基础的归属感方面的洞察力，b)分享与游客合作的方法，其他研究人员可以应用这些方法来探索特定环境中的具体情况，以及c)为制定调查问题而开展的扎实工作，以便在整个领域使用。该奖项由高级非正式STEM学习计划资助，该计划旨在促进在非正式环境中设计和开发STEM学习的新方法和基于证据的理解。在日常科学学习中关于排斥和包容的现有工作的基础上，该项目旨在正式定义在科学和自然历史博物馆背景下的归属感意味着什么，作为理解包容性的一种构建。研究小组假设，整个博物馆参观过程中的大部分体验对参观者的归属感具有相对中性的影响；然而，有时参观者可能会经历积极或消极的时刻，而这些重要的时刻可能会影响参观者的STEM参与度、兴趣和/或认同感。这项探索性工作将有助于发展博物馆参观者体验中的归属感结构并奠定基础，使用公平的方法确定重要的参观者时刻，有意将参观者的体验集中在代表性不足的群体中，并为未来的研究奠定基础，以支持制定全领域的归属感衡量标准。研究性研究将侧重于界定归属感的结构，以便1)与研究文献保持一致，2)以科学/自然历史博物馆参观者的体验为基础。在参观科学/自然历史博物馆期间，将使用PhotoVoice数据收集方法和对6岁及以上的参观者进行采访，以确定对他们来说重要的时刻。该项目不仅将为科学/自然历史博物馆和更大的非正式科学教育(ISE)领域创造对这一结构的新理解，而且将填补整个文献中围绕归属感结构的空白。该项目还将为ISE领域提供新的学习，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。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.