Young children developing meaning-making practices in a museum: the role of boundary objects

Abstract

A kindergarten, housed in a museum building in the centre of the capital city of New Zealand, has provided a unique opportunity for young children, teachers and university researchers to explore opportunities to learn with, and from, a museum's artefacts and exhibitions. The authors have researched the ways in which the children constructed meaning from the displays and the knowledge offered by the museum. This article explores the children's learning when they visited one of the special exhibitions during the first year of an action research project. We highlight their developing boundary-crossing competence and meaning-making practices and explore the role of ‘boundary objects’ in this learning. This article focuses on some of these objects and considers the way in which (associated with dialogue) they contributed to highlighting and strengthening the learning opportunities in the museum.

Keywords:

• museum education
• early childhood education
• meaning-making practices
• boundary objects
• boundary-crossing
• dialogue

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding and support from the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative, a research programme for practitioner research supported by university researchers. This research is funded by the Ministry of Education and managed by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. We also acknowledge the support from the Wellington Region Free Kindergarten Association. Thanks, also, to the teachers, families and children at Tai Tamariki Kindergarten for their work and commentary. Finally, we are grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this article who made helpful recommendations for change.

Notes

1. In New Zealand, a Kindergarten Association is an ‘umbrella’ organisation that oversees and manages a number of state-funded early childhood centres in a particular region. In this case, the ‘kindergarten’ is an education and care centre for children from babies until they go to school (usually at age five).

2. Tukutuku patterns: painted patterns, in this case on the rafters in the ceiling of a wharenui (literally a ‘big house’; meeting house).