**** Please excuse cross postings! ****

Dear Listers--

The Austin Children's Museum has received an NSF grant to
help fund a traveling 1,500 sq.ft. exhibition on child
development. The exhibition's working title is "Sixteen
Candles," and it will cover the most significant aspects of
physical, cognitive, emotional, and social development from
prenatal to early teen years. The primary audience is
elementary-school-aged kids, with adults (parents, care
givers, teachers, etc.) secondary, and toddlers and
teenagers coming in third. (The project includes a separate
mini-exhibit on teenage developmental issues that is
targeted specifically for teens.)

The Institute for Learning Innovation (Annapolis, MD) has
contracted to do front-end, formative, and summative
evaluation (the latter both at our museum and at one or two
host sites). Part of the front-end research design involves
interviewing from 5 to 10 museum professionals who have been
involved in interactive exhibitions (especially those
targeted at children) that addressed similar science themes.
For example, an exhibition on physical developmental stages
throughout life (not just childhood) would be appropriate.
Other possible examples include exhibitions that addressed
play, language, families, learning styles, nutrition,
storytelling, fears and fantasies, social psychology,
developmental psychology, etc.

This message is an invitation to those of you who either 1)
have been involved in such an exhibit and are willing to be
interviewed, or 2) know of someone else who fits our profile
whom we could contact. We already have access to Gretchen
Jennings, manager of the APA traveling exhibition
"Psychology: Understanding Ourselves, Understanding Each
Other." However, we're sure there must be many other, less
well-known exhibitions whose developers, designers, project
managers, or evaluators could share valuable lessons-learned
with us. We will use findings from these interviews to help
us evaluate both the content we include and the design of
exhibit components.

Please contact me off-list at darrs.austinkids.org. Thanks
in advance for helping out!

Sheila Darr
Exhibit Coordinator
Austin Children's Museum
www.austinkids.org