Museographic Transposition: The Development of a Museum Exhibit on Animal Adaptations to Darkness

Abstract

Science museums define the objectives of their exhibitions in terms of visitor learning outcomes, yet exhibition engineering staff lack theoretical and empirical research findings on which to base the creation of these educational environments. Here, a first step towards providing such research is reported. Museographic transposition was used as an analytical framework to investigate the development of an existing museum exhibit on animal adaptations to darkness. The analysis yielded a descriptive model of exhibition engineering as a three-stage process in which simultaneous processes of epistemological development and museum-pedagogical development result in the curatorial brief which forms the basis of the subsequent museographic development of the physical exhibit. Examples are discussed which illustrate the use of the model in identifying exhibition inconsistencies, but also in generating new ideas for exhibition engineering. The potential for further developing the model is discussed.

Objects prompt authentic scientific activities among learners in a museum programme

“…Conversely, one could also imagine educational situations in which the process of didactic transposition has altered the knowledge and practices in question to such a great extent that they are barely recognisable from the viewpoint of science research (see e.g. Mortensen, 2010); in such cases, the reference model becomes all-important in understanding the significance of the resulting activities of science learners.…”

Analysis of the Educational Potential of a Science Museum Learning Environment: Visitors’ experience with and understanding of an immersion exhibit

“…The attention here is to a single immersive exhibit, 'Cave Expedition', within the cluster about darkness. The exhibit is described in detail in Mortensen (2009).…”

“…In Cave Expedition, the integral components of the Museographic Organization are the reconstruction of the cave beetle's habitat in the form of an artificial, scaled-up cave containing representations of key characteristics of the cave beetle's habitat; the bestowing of the role of the cave beetle to the visitor through interpretive signage; and finally, the interaction between the visitor in their role as a cave beetle and the reconstructed cave beetle habitat which potentially creates a discourse which dramatises aspects of the cave beetle's daily struggle for survival (Mortensen, 2009). These key components of the Museographic Organization together represent the Biological Organization, resulting in a multiply embodied learning ecology which functions as a whole rather than as a collection of activities or separate factors that operate in isolation from one another (Cobb et al, 2003;Sandoval, 2004).…”

“…The design process of Cave Expedition integrated a biological body of knowledge with a chosen exhibit style or strategy (Mortensen, 2009). Translated into praxeology terminology, the process deconstructed and reconstructed a biological body of knowledge (or Biological Organization) by means of an exhibit strategy (or Museographic Organization).…”

“…As a scale version of a cave beetle habitat, Cave Expedition relies on a combination of two logics of representation: an exogenous logic, where the characteristics of the existing reference world of the cave beetle's habitat give rise to the characteristics of the exhibit; and an endogenous logic, where this reference world is reconstituted on a human scale (Mortensen, 2009). Exhibits of this type run an increased risk of excluding those visitors who cannot decipher the form, as was indeed the case here with the respondents who rationalised Cave Expedition as a static display.…”