Teenagers' Multisensory Routes for Learning in the Museum

ABSTRACT

In this article I draw on a study of sensory aspects of teenagers' use of digital media, how these sensory aspects are incorporated in emerging learning strategies, and the implications of this for the same teenagers' engagement in museums. My focus is on how an ethnographic approach that attends to the senses may enable a critical review of prevailing pedagogical ideas in museums. Recent developments in museum education have led to large investments in state-of-the-art technology to produce interactive, multisensory exhibits. However, the question of how teenagers respond to these campaigns remains rather under-researched. This article shows how habitual use of digital media in teenage everyday practice incorporates learning to appropriate other people's experiences and ideas through a configuration of vision, touch, motion, and imagination, thereby enhancing non-representational learning qualities such as affect and sensation. The implications of this sensory approach open up routes to differentiate pedagogical settings in museums that on a superficial level apply the same educational technologies, but since they are based in different sensorial belief systems, different conditions for learning unfold in their use. In developing this analysis I argue that through ethnographic attention to the senses we might advance theories of learning within museum education.

KEYWORDS:

• museums
• teenagers
• digital photographing
• senses
• situated learning
• sensory ethnography