What would happen if you invited young people to take the lead in your visitor learning experience?
New research focusing on youth facilitators, i.e., college-aged kids helping families explore natural history museum exhibits, has shown some very interesting results.
Talking to Strangers About Science: Youth Facilitators and Family Learning at the Natural History Museum, recently published in Curator: The Museum Journal, investigated how youth facilitators (from the Museum Education Experience Program, or MEEP) could support family engagement through on-the-floor interactions at the American Museum of Natural History:
Unlike more structured programming modes, which may be scheduled and tend to be designed to support larger group learning, on-the-floor facilitation can allow for the visitor’s own interests to drive the interaction because the visitor chooses where to slow down and look and has the agency to either engage with the facilitator or just walk away. Although a facilitator may initiate the conversation with a warm welcome or a “wanna see something cool” type of statement, the power to accept that invitation to engage lies with the visitor … Facilitation for us is about creating a space for conversation and dialogue with visitors.
We already know that, in general, a human presence is the best resource you can employ to engage visitors, as opposed to simply signage, models, or video displays.
What’s interesting about this particular approach is that the youth facilitators were not subject matter experts. The training brief was to resist any type of lecturing or monologuing and go for shorter interactions, ideally co-created with visitors. That seems to be what made it effective. The vibes created by young facilitators made the space feel more open, collaborative, and approachable (for kids and adults alike).
Training
Youth from diverse backgrounds were recruited for MEEP, regardless of their academic standing or STEM experience. Per the study, the MEEP program “positions diverse NYC youth as knowledgeable insiders at the museum, a strategy intended to welcome visitors with diverse racial and socio-economic backgrounds and explicitly signaling that this museum is a place for people like them.” The program intentionally encourages participation from kids who aren’t already interested in science or museum careers.
Over the course of a summer, MEEPers received 58 hours of training in:
- Content related to chosen exhibits
- Pedagogy rooted in reflective practices and inquiry strategies like open-ended questioning
- Improvisational techniques to support approaching strangers
The training emphasized dialogue over didactic delivery, with a focus on facilitators as enthusiastic co-learners rather than lecturers. For any educator, the authors acknowledge that “it can be difficult … to find the right way to create rapport and figure out how best to open a conversation with visitors, and it is difficult to balance a desire to showcase your knowledge about the objects with the need to support and follow the interests and direction of visitors.” It may have been the biggest obstacle for MEEPers, as well:
MEEP did continue to struggle with feeling confident in their abilities to interact with families and to ask good questions, suggesting that the social context of these conversations is just as or more challenging than learning the science content of the exhibits. It is crucial to spend ample time ensuring that floor facilitators know how to engage in conversations support sense making. Reflective practice was helpful in this aspect.
Find more info on the MEEP training here.
Key findings
Overall, families reported high levels of enjoyment and learning:
- Rated interaction enjoyment: 4.61/5
- Self-reported learning: 4.11/5
- Interest in learning more: 3.88/5
These metrics did not vary significantly by prior museum experience, science education, or demographic background. In fact, the authors were quite pleased to see that relatively brief training with young adults can sometimes produce powerful results.
Reflections on facilitation
The authors spoke to the complexity of spontaneous, personalized interactions in museum settings, especially with diverse, transient visitors. They note that it was hard for MEEPers to resist defaulting to lecture mode or quiz framing (e.g., “Do you know what this is?” vs. “What do you notice?”). Whenever quiz framing was employed, they saw reduced interaction across the board.
Broadly, the study underlines the importance of:
- Ongoing facilitator coaching and reflection
- Valuing visitor-centered interactions over purely transmitting content
- Creating space for families to bring their own knowledge into the dialogue
Despite the title of this article, youth facilitators may not be the answer for every museum, but the study shows that genuine, unscripted, responsive conversations can make your exhibits feel more alive. This kind of engagement takes time to learn, and it won’t happen in every interaction, but it could be a worthy visitor engagement avenue to pursue.
Note: Work on the study referenced in this article was supported by IMLS.
