Reading the Packer and Ballantyne piece, I wonder what distortion effects the self-reporting produces. It would be nice to triangulate the self-reported data with some observations. Especially in thinking about how people engage, I would think it would be important to look at what the pairs are actually doing. Perhaps you can't "see" much objectively when looking at individuals, but I would think in observing pairs you could see which of Silverman's learning activities were taking place. I know that when I observed our classmates "interacting" with Rodin, the social aspect seemed to help in a few of these areas-- especially in helping another to notice some salient feature ("look how big this is", "check this out"). People also helped to refine each other's ideas-- there was a correcting mechanism as people could jigsaw their impressions and prior knowledge. One student had no idea what a burgher was, but the group helped steer away from ideas of fast food.
Back to "Solitary vs Shared Learning", I think that after the observations, some more structured questions would help. Or at least I'd want to get people in pairs to reflect more deeply on what moves them through an exhibit. If they're spending less time on displays, why? Is there a least-common denominator of interest that moves pairs along from display to display? Do people try to guess and gauge the other's interest in the piece?
The Crowley et al piece was really interesting. Really interesting that the best chance for a girl to get an explanation is to go with both parents together. It would be really interesting to think about how to address the challenge of this mis-match. The study says that girls took as active a role in choosing and using the exhibits. Were there any triggers that caused the parents to begin an explanation? Might be nice to do some interviews and say, how do you know when to suggest an explanation to your child? Knowing more about why parents volunteer explanations might help suggest some remedies.
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