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ABSTRACT
Botanic and public gardens attract a significant number of people throughout the world who visit these spaces for a wide variety of reasons. Notwithstanding, the study of visitor experiences in such spaces is a much under-researched foci in the fields of museum education and visitor studies. This exploratory study examined the reflective experiences of expatriates, who were foreign exchange students from Japan living in Canada, after a visit to a culturally familiar public space of a traditional Japanese garden. The study reveals the considerable power of such spaces and experiences in terms of these visitors’ reported mental restoration, self-reflection of their own identities, and identification of attributes of their own journeys as foreigners living abroad. These outcomes speak to the capacities of such spaces to be both emotionally transformative and learning experiences of the self for people groups who are uniquely contextually situated in time, place, and life-cycle.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the support of Ritsumeikan University, UBC-Ritsumeikan University Academic Exchange Program, and the UBC Botanic Gardens for their support of this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
About the authors
David Anderson, PhD, is Professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His academic work is situated in the fields of Museum Education and Science Education, and is he the Director of the Master of Museum Education (MMEd) degree program at UBC. He is a Japan Foundation, Ritsumeikan, and Unversitas 21 Research Fellow, and his research interests include educational reform, professional development, long-term memory, and emotional affect in informal settings.
Shuichi Yamashita, PhD, is Professor at the Faculty of Education, Chiba University, Japan. His academic work is in the field of Science Education and his research focus on Educational reform in learning in informal contexts.
Notes
1 Mounce, Smith, and Brockington, “Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Diversity.”
2 ICOM Statutes, “Museum Definition.”
3 Hartig et al., “Tracking Restoration in Natural and Urban Field.”
4 Fehr, “Finding Reflections of Myself”; Filene, “History Museums and Identity.”
5 Packer, “Visitors’ Restorative Experiences in Museum.”
6 Kaplan and Kaplan, The Experience of Nature; Ouellette et al., “The Monastery as a Restorative Environment.”
7 Cimprich, “Development of an Intervention to Restore Attention.”
8 Altbach and Knight, “Internationalization of Higher Education.”
9 Berry, “Acculturative Stress”; Osman and Murphy, “Challenges for International Exchange Students”; Wu Garza, and Guzman, “International Student’s Challenge and Adjustment.”
10 Russell, Rosenthal, and Thomson, “The International Student Experience.”
11 Tennessen and Cimprich, “Views to Nature: Effects on Attention.”
12 Sato and Hodge, “Japanese Exchange Students’ Academic and Social Struggles.”
13 Stake, Art of Case Study Research.
14 Xia, “Analysis of Impact of Culture Shock.”
15 Corbin and Strauss, Basics of Qualitative Research.
16 Formal studies of, or organized visits to, the garden were not part of the students’ academic studies at UBC, and the research team were independent of the academic exchange program itself.
17 UBC Botanic Gardens. “Nitobe Memorial Garden.”
18 van Tonder, “Recovery of Visual Structure.”
19 Dr. Inazō Nitobe is a well-known historic figure in Japan. Until recently he was depicted on the 5000 yen bank note. Accordingly, all the Japanese students in this study knew the basic history of this person upon which the garden is dedicated.
20 Falk, Identity and the Museum Experience; Christidou, “John Falk’s Notion of Visitors’ Identity-Related Visit Motivations.”
21 Anderson, Shimizu, and Campbell, “Insights on How Museum Objects Mediate Recall of Nostalgic Life Episodes.”
22 Sedikides et al., “Mixing Memory with Affect and Desire.”
23 Anderson, Shimizu, and Iwasaki, “Impact and Nostalgic Recollections of Visiting a Manga Museum.”
24 Henry, “Educator at the Crossroads of Institutional Change.”
25 Kreski, “Healing and Empowering Veterans.”