I'm Joe Polman and I've been trying to think about this issue quite a
bit recently. I work with Jim Wertsch here in St. Louis, and we run a
couple of after school clubs and have been getting into museum
education as well (I deal with both in a course I developed on Informal
Learning Environments, the syllabus of which is available at the Museum
Learning Collaborative's web site at http://mlc.lrdc.pitt.edu/mlc/
They also have an extensive bibliography).
Our after school clubs were partially inspired by the 5thD clubs (the
Computer Clubhouse at Boston's Computer Museum is also a place with
similar goals, tied to MIT and their constructionism ideas). We call
our clubs here "HistoryWeb" clubs, and have admittedly more
"adult-imposed" goals than these others. The main goal is publishing a
web-based virtual museum exhibit about history. As Mark's and some of
the others' messages imply, this goal has the potential down side of
shutting down kids' voice and intentionality, but it has the upside of
galvanizing and organizing group activity around a concrete goal that
most of the kids find appealing. And with enough input from the kids,
the project can become their own.
Anyway, on to the issue of evidence of learning in informal settings: I
concur with others who have mentioned the dearth of work in this area.
Museum research is a promising area, but it seems that most of the
research in the field can be characterized more as evaluation of
specific exhibit designs, rather than research fitting into or
contributing to a general theory. The field has been very concerned
with attraction (walking up to an exhibit) and holding time (staying
there), with the assumption that this leads to more learning.
Nonetheless, two books that I thought made good contributions on
museums were:
<fontfamily><param>Geneva</param>Falk, J.H., & Dierking, L.D. (1992)
<underline>The museum experience</underline>. Washington, DC:
Whalesback Books.
-- this takes a largely Piagetian view of learning, and focuses on
explicit recall, but has the strength of putting a great deal together
Roberts, L. (1997). <underline>From knowledge to narrative: Educators
and the changing museum</underline>. Washington: Smithsonian
Institution Press.
-- this is a largely historical and philosophical overview, but is
excellent
Neither one of these </fontfamily>looks in detail at the issue of
evidence of learning, and both get to Vygotskian views of learning only
at the end in their "promising 'new' ideas" discussion.
Probably the best volume I have found on after school clubs and
community organizations doesn't speak directly to evidence of learning
either:
<fontfamily><param>Geneva</param>Heath, S. B., & McLaughlin, M.W.
(Eds.), <italic>Identity and inner-city youth</italic>. New York:
Teachers College Press.
--reports on a 5-year Spencer-funded study of community organizations.
I like chapter 3 by Ball & Heath in particular--it is about dance
groups.
As for further ideas on methods, we are trying to pursue a couple of
angles:
-- Using Jim's distinction between "mastery" and "appropriation", one
would expect less consistent levels of mastery in informal settings
than in formal ones. That's why traditional school measures of
learning, which focus on mastery of knowledge/skills specified in the
curriculum are so ill-suited to informal settings. In successful
informal settings, one might expect to see a lot more "appropriation
without mastery" than in formal settings. These are all motivation and
interest and identity-related issues. An example would be the kind of
thing where kids get really jazzed about something, and "make it their
own" in an important way, but haven't necessarily "mastered" it in a
complete or systematic way (e.g., the kid who gets obsessed with frogs
on a museum visit, but doesn't know much yet--but might several months
later). We are thinking of trying to measure how much people make ideas
their own by adapting some measures from "self-determination" theory
(Grolnick and others).
-- To the degree that we are dealing with history content (that
adult-imposed aspect mentioned above), we are planning on trying to
measure "mastery" of some aspects of thinking about historical accounts
(e.g., relationship of evidence to narrative construction). Frankly,
given limited amounts of time working on some of these issues, I would
not be surprised to see little change among most participants.
-- Analysis of videotapes and fieldnotes can be used to gather
naturalistic evidence of changes in participation level and
sophistication by specific participants. Developmental progression of
computer skills and possibly historical thinking might be demonstrable
through case studies.
None of this is published yet, but we have hopes. That's it for my long
note for now. There seems to be a growing interest in this area, both
among museum folks and those working in after school and community
organizations. I'm glad to see it discussed here.
-Joe
</fontfamily>
<fontfamily><param></param>****************************************************
* Joe Polman, PhD jlpolman who-is-at artsci.wustl.edu *
* Postdoctoral Fellow *
* The HistoryWeb St. Louis Project *
* http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~educ/historyweb/ *
****************************************************
* Department of Education *
* Old McMillan Hall, Room 310 *
* Washington University in St. Louis *
* Campus Box 1183 *
* St. Louis, MO 63130-4899 *
* (o) 314/935-5762 (h) 314/569-4295 *
****************************************************
"In order for me to be a true human being,
I can't forever dwell in darkness.
I can't forever dwell in the idea
of just identifying with people like me
and understanding me and mine."
- Twilight Bey, in Anna Deavere Smith's _Twilight: Los Angeles,
1992_</fontfamily>