I agree with Doug's comments below and would also appreciate any
information out there. I have become very cynical about the 'educative
power of museum exhibitions' The one time I had the opportunity to do a
small research project - evaluating whether museum exhibitions on
human evolution were educating visitors-I got a rather depressing result
from three very different exhibitions-ie no impact on the visitor at all.
Since then I really have struggled to find any specific research on
whether exhibitions actually educate/effect the way people think about
certain subjects. Most of waht I've read/read about is the educative
power of the museum in general through museum outreach/classroom
based programmes. Do exhibitions themselves actually effect visitors?

Kathryn Mathers

PS. I have faith that they do but would love some pointers to some
evidence.


I've studied, it doesn't look like the museum was in control of cognitive
learning.
The cognitive and affective goals that were written down, or can be
inferred
from somewhat vague planning documents, are not met, or only to a
small degree.
The answer to this seems to be to invoke a mysterious 'museum learning'
that
we don't yet understand. I can send you some studies we've done.
I would be interested in any new approaches, methodology, data sets,
etc. that
people have tried to pin this issue down.

Doug