Museum Education Research: Future Directions

Six museum education and learning researchers discuss the need to study how people learn and behave in museums and what kind of current research studies should be undertaken. Mary Ellen Munley, in "Back to the Future: A Call for Coordinated Research Programs in Museums," describes the differences between the terms "evaluation,""audience research," and "education research" and recommends establishing major systematic programs of museum-based research that are similar to ones initiated in the 1920s and 1930s. In "Educational Exhibitions: Some Areas for Controlled Research," C. G. Screven believes that priority should be placed on more and better empirical studies undertaken in museum settings, while John and Mary Lou Koran propose the development of a model based on cognitive philosophy and tested through studies and simulations of museum learning in "A Proposed Framework for Exploring Museum Education Research." Robert Wolf, in "The Missing Link: A Look at the Role of Orientation in Enriching the Museum Experience," suggests that new information about museum learning is not likely to be discovered and believes efforts should be directed toward issues such as the mechanics of visitor orientation. In "Computers Everywhere: But What Has Happened to the Research?" Patricia McNamara discusses the need to discover new ways to use computers for learning and uses research about visitor utilization of museum computers as an example of what can be accomplished and what is not currently being done with museum research.