At 11:09 31/01/03 +0000, you wrote:
>I am working on a project focusing on the role of Explainers in a Science
>Centre, and am looking for ways to improve the two-way communication
>between them and the visitor. Does anyone know where I can find some
>literature on previous evaluations of Explainers?
I have radical and passionately-held views about "Explainers". After I held
forth recently in the ASTC-L email list a small Canadian journal asked
permission to publish what I'd written. So I guess it now qualifies as
"literature"...
Although this may not seem like a direct answer to your question, I hope it
helps to undermine preconceptions about the aims and objectives against
which science-centre effectiveness should be evaluated.
Forgive me for repeating myself here. I said:
Recruitment is an issue, isn't it?
Do you select "experts" who'll give correct explanations, but pitch too
high and bore visitors to death?
Do you select trainee teachers who'll give moderately correct explanations,
pitch at the correct level but still be nearly as boring as the experts.
Do you select drama specialists, entertainers and "performers" who'll want
people to look at them rather than the exhibit-phenomena, and get the
science hopelessly wrong, but interact wonderfully with their little
"audience".
Only those rare people with all three skill-sets are really qualified as
"explainers". I've always argued against using "explainer" as a job
description, because THAT is the problem. I have even tried forbidding
trainees to "explain" anything and this seemed a remarkable breakthrough.
Questions can be so much more powerful than explanations...
I reckon we need to learn from grandmothers. Grandmothers are awesomely
effective science centre learning-facilitators. They stand beside the
child, looking at the exhibit: supportively sharing the experience, not
facing the child. They don't act as if they know it all, or even as if they
OUGHT to know it all. Grandmothers are supremely humble about their own
knowledge, yet wonderfully, openly interested in what the child is doing.
They don't radiate anxiety that the child should be "learning" more, like
mothers do. They are not driven to conceal their own ignorance with
obsessive label-reading, like fathers are. Best all, Grandmothers know how
to ask Dopey Questions...
"What does this one do, dear?" "Does it? Really? Go on then." "OOH, that
was good! What if you do it again?" "I wonder what would happen if we
twisted that thing over there...?" "Oh, is THAT why it happens? Can you
tell me about it?"
It seems so hard to train people to ask genuinely open questions. They pay
lip-service to the idea, but always end up surfacing with a hidden agenda
of herding visitors, craftily, sheepdog-like, towards some explanatory
sheep-pen. How can sheep "explore" with a dog at their heels? Grandmothers
don't do that. They support and empower, relying on the exhibition's own
inbuilt explanations. The most skilfully formulated open questions sound
like Dopey Questions.
A SUCCESSFUL interactive exhibition provides
* a pleasurable, empowering, social experience
* while touching people's emotions,
* positively influencing their attitudes
* and improving their understanding.
* * * * * * * * * * * Ian Russell * * * * * * * * * * *
www.interactives.co.uk * [log in to unmask]
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