My research question will focus on museums as spaces for informal and nonformal adult learning. Increasingly, museums are seen less as repositories for valuable objects, and more as spaces for dialogue, participation, and education. Many museums focus on a target audience of families with young children, while adult visitors present unique opportunities and challenges, and there has been less research dedicated to the adult visitor. Adult visitors have different needs and expectations, and they bring to the museum their own previous life experiences as well as a more established sense of personal identity. Unlike children who may be brought to the museum by parents or as part of school groups, adult participation in museums is typically voluntary, not mandatory. As part of my topic, I am interested in exploring successful examples of adult education and adult-centered programs in museums, potential barriers to adult participation in museums, and in investigating the needs of adult visitors so that museums may better expand their offerings to be more inclusive of a larger variety of visitors. I am particularly interested in the potential for adult programs in museums to address issues of inequity in their communities, such as the digital divide and the digital literacy gap.
Dudzinska-Przesmitzki, Dana, and Robin S. Grenier. “Nonformal and Informal Adult Learning in Museums.” Journal of Museum Education 33, no. 1 (2008): 9–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2008.11510583.
Gutwill, Joshua P. “Science Self-Efficacy and Lifelong Learning: Emerging Adults in Science Museums.” Visitor Studies 21, no. 1 (2018): 31–56. https://doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2018.1503875.
Kim, Junghwan, Jieun You, and Soo Yeon Park. “Adult Learning for Social Change in Museums: An Exploration of Sociocultural Learning Approaches to Community Engagement.” Journal of Adult and Continuing Education 22, no. 2 (2016): 184–98. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477971416672328.
Robinson, Cynthia. “Into the Future: Adult Professional Groups and the 21st Century Museum.” Journal of Museum Education 36, no. 1 (2011): 103–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2011.11510688.
Rachel, I love this topic. One idea for addressing the inequity/digital divide issue is to look at museums that function also as community centers and/or focus on local history of their communities. There are several examples for this, perhaps one of the more established being Anacostia.https://anacostia.si.edu/ Good luck!
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