His own museum, for example, toyed with the idea of using a pinball machine to teach about bird ecology. Staff members discarded it, however, after realizing that pinball players absorbed in their games would probably not stop to read the educational text on the display. It has to be minds-on. Cutting-edge exhibits now tend to do more than give visitors buttons to push. They encourage students to experiment and to ask questions, Mr. Bell says.
Studies show that children talk more about exhibits when they are with their parents.
To create those kinds of exhibits, many museum educators are borrowing from constructivist education theory, which holds that children learn more when they actively build their own knowledge and seeks to determine how to build from what children already know. The group interviewed hundreds of children, consulted national guidelines on children's science learning, and conducted their own studies. The research instead pointed toward promoting a few scientific concepts and linking them to children's everyday lives. Thus, the gallery designers built a pond habitat that allows children to observe live underwater creatures, a creek where they can do experiments on sinking and floating, a construction site filled with simple, child-sized machines, and a wall of Indiana limestone where children can climb at one end or dig in the dirt for fossils at the other. We know that children don't go around with boxes in their heads, thinking, 'This is physical science.