The potential of extended cultural residencies for young children

ABSTRACT

Although years of research efforts have investigated learning benefits from museum visits, relatively less attention has been paid to young children's experiences in these settings. Drawing on contextualist perspectives of learning, this paper seeks to address this gap, using two case studies to explore the experiences of children ages three to five who spent extended periods of time attending school in a museum setting. We draw on qualitative data from the evaluation of two museum-school partnerships, to investigate potential learning benefits of such experiences and elements that may have facilitated the outcomes observed. These two exploratory case studies indicate considerable potential for supporting language and communication skills in young children, as well as personal, social and emotional development. These outcomes appear to be linked to the rich nature of the experience, as well as its extended duration, which allowed it to be deeply child-centred, allowing for valuable learning from the museum environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Extended cultural residencies
• museums
• young children
• schools

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the King's Cultural Institute for supporting this work, as well as architect Wendy James, whose interest in the idea of co-locating schools in museums formed the genesis of this work. This project also could not have been possible without the support of the teachers, museum educators, parents and children involved.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jennifer DeWitt is a Senior Research Associate at the UCL Institute of Education with research and evaluation interests including learning and engagement in early years, families and school groups in informal science environments.

Heather King is a Research Fellow at King’s College London. She has a particular interest in researching educators’ practice and learners’ engagement in settings outside of the classroom.

Denise Wright is an artist educator for Tate Liverpool’s Early Years and Families learning team. She is currently artist in residence at East Prescot Road Nursery School and is an Associate Lecturer in Early Years education at Edge Hill University.

Kate Measures is a heritage learning and evaluation consultant and founder and director of Heritage Insider. She was the evaluator for the My Primary School is at the Museum project.

ORCID

Jennifer DeWitt http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8584-2888

Notes

1. Although Bronfenbrenner's theory primarily refers to ‘development’, it is equally applicable to ‘learning’ and we defer debates over what is ‘learning’ and what is ‘development’ to others outside of this paper.

2. Pre and post measures of learning were unfeasible in our small pilot projects. We therefore report on broad areas of learning and development which our evidence suggests resulted from the experience of the extended cultural residency.