I work for a museum that think's Tildens principles are God and they do have a lot going for them. If you follow the principles you will engage your auduence and hopefully teach them something. Where I personally run into problems with them is when the opportunity to "experience" overshadows the ability to learn. I work for a historical museum and we do first person interpretation but there are still hard facts that are neccessary to get out. I feel we short change our audience by just let them see, smell, touch, etc the buck skin but not share the wonderful thought of how this buckskin became soft by brain tanning and the inginuity of the Natives that created this tool just because it would be telling people facts and not interpreting. Just my 2 cents
Is anyone aware of any studies that assess the effectiveness of interpretation and using (specifically Tilden's) interpretive principles versus other delivery methods (i.e. reading from script) in education presentations?
background: I was recently at a zoo where I watched an animal training demo...there was a live interpreter, but she was reading directly from a script. Straight factual information. This made me wonder about the way we interpret exhibits and animal interactions. Maybe reading from a script IS just as good as putting a lot of effort into making a presentation more engaging and interactive?....
any thoughts?....any empirical data?...
Thanks,
Nick Visscher
virtual outreach specialist
Virtual Outreach Program
MSU Museum (room 205)
West Circle Drive
East Lansing, MI 48824
email:
[log in to unmask] phone: 517-353-3882
cell: 517-980-6244
fax: 517-432-2846
http://www.virtualoutreach.org =========================================================
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