Chapter 19 – Museums and Free-Choice Learning

John H. Falk, Lynn D. Dierking and Marianna Adams of the Institute of Learning Innovation

Western societies are changing from a goods-based economy to a knowledge-based economy and these changes have affected museums of all types. Knowledge and information, which is fueled by learning, is rapidly becoming a major economic product of society.

In order to develop new ideas in this knowledge economy, Western societies must evolve into a ‘learned society’. The 21^st century has produced many outlets which give people free-choice to learn whatever they want. This ‘free-choice learning’, which includes watching the news, reading magazines, surfing the net or visiting a museum, is motivated by the need to expand knowledge and augment information. This shift in educational theory can be perceived in the changing conception of the role of museums. Before, museums were mainly seen as a source of authoritative knowledge. Now this new knowledge economy is reflected in how museums take on the role of institutions that are able to provide opportunity for individuals to engage in ‘free-choice’ learning.

People have always learned, but what has been altered with this new knowledge-based economy is what they are learning and how and why they are doing it. The original behaviorist approach in which the museum visitor is believed to arrive with a blank slate of knowledge and whose previous experiences, interests and motivations are irrelevant in their visit seems to be flawed. The new constructivist approach seems to better understand that learning is a highly contextual process. This approach is based on perspectives that emphasize the input of the learner in the meaning-making process and recognizes the variable ways in which this learning takes place. It considers that a learner’s prior knowledge, experiences and interests all encompass a personal context that will affect the visitor’s experience.

Next, the authors propose the contextual model of learning that portrays the process and product of the interactions between the visitor’s personal, socio-economic and physical contexts. Personal context is the sum of the personal history that an individual has. Their learning will be influenced by the individual’s past knowledge, experiences and beliefs. Since humans are products of their socialized relationships, a visitor’s socio-cultural context is influenced by their upbringing and interactions. These interactions will clearly influence their museum experience. Learning always arises within the physical environment and one would expect the visitor’s reactions to be influenced by a multitude of architectural and design factors such as lighting, crowding, presentation, context and quality of the information presented.

It is very hard to incorporate the above factors into an analytical approach to public learning in museums. The Institute for Learning Innovation has focused on investigating free-choice learning. They discuss a five step approach that one should incorporate in order to yield more significant evidence of the complexity of free-choice learning experiences. The five steps are as follows:

1. Allow for the individuals own unique learning agenda to emerge.
2. Address the effect of time on learning.
3. Respect that learning is always situated and contextualized.
4. Be open to a broad range of learning outcomes.
5. (in research-speak) Emphasize validity over reliability

Because of the five criteria above, Falk developed the approach of ‘personal meaning mapping’ (PMM). It is designed to measure how specific learning experiences will influence the visitor’s interpretation or meaning-making process. This is based on the assumption that not all visitors will arrive with comparable knowledge and it does not require that the visitor emit a ‘right’ answer in order to exhibit that they learned something.

Another challenge that researchers face is recognizing the rapidly changing world that is observed through three interconnected social-economic trends. These trends are the change in the nature of goods and services, the rise of free-choice learning and the need for accountability. In order to accommodate these various trends, museums must adopt a new business model and redefine what comprises success. They need to maximize the quality of the learning experience available. Free-choice learning will help to transform individuals and maximize this quality. In this new learning society, the greatest experience an individual can have is one that supports knowledge that they decide to learn, and not just at the moment, but across their entire life-time. Museum’s focuses needs to be directed in bolstering the individual’s ability to control what they want to learn, instead of providing knowledge to the masses.