Designs For. Learning. Vol. 5 / No. 1 2

Transcription

1 Designs For Learning Vol. 5 / No. 1 2 Designs for Learning Volume 5 / Number A SENSORY4 IM A SENSORY4 I

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3 Editorial: g u n t h e r kr e s s & s ta f f a n se l a n d e r 6 s o p h i a di a m a n t o p o u l o u, e v a in s u l a n d e r & f r e d r i k li n d s t r a n d : 11 Making meaning in an exhibition: technologies, agency and (re-)design f r e d r i k li n d s t r a n d & e v a in s u l a n d e r : 30 Setting the ground for engagement: Multimodal perspectives on exhibition design k e r s t i n sm e d s : 50 On the meaning of exhibitions c a r e y je w i t t : 74 Digital technologies in museums: New routes to engagement and participation p a m me e c h a m & e l e n a st y l i a n o u : 94 Interactive technologies in the art museum v a i k e fo r s : 130 The empty meeting-place Museum metaphors and their implication for learning 3

4 Rob Kirk

5 e d i to r i a l a n n o u n c e m e n t t h e n e w d e s i g n s f o r l e a r n i n g By this issue we present some changes of the journal. It will still have its profile on design and learning, and it will still be edited from Sweden and Denmark. However, its institutional basis has changed. In Sweden, LearningDesignLab has moved to the Dept. of Computer- and Systems Sciences (DSV) at Stockholm University in Kista, and in Denmark ILD Forskningslab I IT og Læringsdesign has moved to the Dept. of Learning and Philosophy at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. To celebrate these changes, we have decided to give the journal a bit of a new graphical profile. There have also been some changes in the Editorial Board, as well as in the Advisory board. And we have engaged Versita to help us with getting articles into all relevant data-basis. In this issue, we have invited Professor Gunther Kress at Institute of Education in London to be co-editor for a special issue on multimodality, design, and meaning making in museums. Staffan Selander & Birgitte Holm Sørensen 5

6 Introduction to the special issue on museum identities, exhibition designs and visitors meaning-making Gunther Kress, University of London, UK Staffan Selander, Stockholm University, Sweden Recently a group of scholars from Sweden and (a smaller group) from the UK, came together and worked on a project The Museum, the Exhibition and the Visitors: Meaning making in a new arena for learning and communication (funded by the Swedish Research Council - Vetenskapsrådet). As the title indicates, the frame set for the project was large and ambitious. At the largest it was an attempt to look at a the change which has affected museums over significant slice of history, and tracking in outline what that change had been about; at the smallest level, looking in great detail how one might document the processes of learning in an exhibition. In between these two poles, the project examined various aspects of two contemporary museums: the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, and the Museum of London, in London, UK. In that space between the meta-level historic sweep, and the micro-level of individual learning was the interaction of curators and visitors, seen through a lens not so much of communication than of learning or rather, in the light of our sense of the histories of this institution, learning seen as the fundamental instance and purpose of communication in this site. Clearly we needed to draw on the understandings brought by historians of the Museum, on ethnographers who were engaged with Museums; scholars whose background might be seen as Museology (as a hybrid/species of Sociology and Cultural Studies); of Sociology; and inevitably, given the focus on learning, scholars whose business it is to think and know about education. The project drew on researchers from Stockholm University, the University of Umeå, Halmstad University College, and from Institute of Education in London. Inevitably, given that the project happened while all around there 6

7 was profound social change, museums were urged by their paymasters (the various government agencies, local and national) to respond to these. At the same time profound changes in media technologies were taking place at an accelerating pace. Both were beginning to affect museums in far-reaching ways. In relation to the latter, the London Knowledge Lab (LKL), with its focus precisely on the effect of the new technologies in environments of learning, was a very good place to involve in the project. The profound changes in what museums are and what they are expected to achieve, led to a range of different kinds of questions: from why should we have museums? to for whom do they exist? to what should museums focus on and present? and how should museums construct their exhibitions as environments for learning? Contemporary political demands as well as new technologies raise the question of exhibition designs as much as the role of the object in a world that is both physical and digital. One large political and social question concerns the role in conditions of intense social diversity and fragmentation. How can the museum address an audience that brings with it into the museum an unknowable degree of difference? Do the new technologies offer any means of tackling such issues? So the question becomes one of communication conceived in its aspect as a process of learning. At that point the various disciplines which we had brought together needed some means of intellectual cohesion and coherence, some theoretical cement. Social organization founded on hierarchies did not face or need to deal with the problems that surround learning now. Transmission models of teaching met metaphors of learning as acquisition; the power of institutions saw to it that authority was not challenged: where it was not accepted, then its internalized rejection and refusal acted, just as much as its acceptance, to buttress the hierarchical models of learning. The agency of the visitor at least ostensibly exhausted itself in absorption ; and the multiple choice questionnaire which was offered to some visitors (to school-children, certainly) contained the truth of the exhibition disguised as a riddle. We realized that if this project was to achieve anything useful and plausible it needed more than the recruitment of fancy new gadgets (which we did recruit); it needed a plausible theory of communication. That theory would move away entirely from the early 20th century assumptions about communication, founded on power and hierarchy (epitomized in the middle 7

8 of the century by the Shannon and Weaver model of Sender-code-receiver model; though earlier also the foundational assumptions of the stimulusresponse models of behaviourist psychology). Those models conformed with the hierarchically ordered, structuralist nation state and its economy. The contemporarily plausible, apt model, would recognize that it is the interpreter who, in communication, guarantees the success or otherwise of the interaction. Communication happens when a participant in the interaction has interpreted what she or he has taken to be a prompt in communication and for interaction. In the classroom it means that it is learners who decide and define whether communication has taken place or not. It is their interpretation of the teacher s presentation as prompt which is central and crucial. In the museum, it is the visitor, whose interpretation of (elements of) the exhibition guarantees communication and thereby learning. This moves away entirely from the multiple choice questionnaire which had set the agenda and attempted to engage the visitor in some faux action-as-evaluation. In that context, our innovative move was to make the response of the visitor central. We devised a simple practice that would give us insight into what the visitor had taken as prompts and how she or he had interpreted those prompts. This corresponded at one stroke to the givens of the contemporary period in which the interest of the consumer decides engagement in the question: what? and shows interpretation in how an element of the exhibition is transformed/interpreted. We have used the term signs of learning for these elements. In several of the papers in this issue that notion is explained and developed. This notion arises out of the notion of agency used in the theoretical and methodological frame of social semiotics. Here the interest of the agent is central in the always motivated formation of the sign: and that interest can then legitimately be the subject of hypotheses about the interest giving rise to the interpretation, and its meaning. In the context of the classroom, this theoretical frame offers the possibility, at last, of a genuinely learner centred pedagogy. In the Museum, the approach places visitors and their interest at the centre, in the context of a plausible theoretical frame and replicable methodology. We think this presents a fundamental shift in direction. 8

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11 Editors Susanne Kjällander, Stockholm University, Sweden Robert Ramberg, PhD, Stockholm University, Sweden Staffan Selander, Stockholm University, Sweden Anna Åkerfeldt, Stockholm University, Sweden Birgitte Holm Sørensen, Aalborg University, Denmark Thorkild Hanghøj, Aalborg University, Denmark Karin Levinsen, Aalborg University, Denmark Rikke Ørngreen, Aalborg University, Denmark Editorial board Eva Insulander, Mälardalen university, Sweden Fredrik Lindstrand, University of Gävle, Sweden Eva Svärdemo-Åberg, Stockholm university, Sweden Copyrights No 1 2, 2012 Front cover: van Gogh Alive: The Exhibition. Grande Exhibitions p. 2 Staffan Selander p. 4 van Gogh Alive: The Exhibition. Grande Exhibitions p. 10 Staffan Selander p. 14 Sophia Diamantopoulou p. 19 Eva Insulander p. 21 Fredrik Lindstrand p. 23 Sophia Diamantopoulou p. 24 Sophia Diamantopoulou p. 36 Museum of National Antiquities p. 41 Fredrik Lindstrand p. 82 Flickr p. 124 van Gogh Alive: The Exhibition. Grande Exhibitions p. 125 Google s Art Project. National Museum of Denmark. Google p. 135 Vaike Fors Advisory board Bente Aamotsbakken, Tønsberg, Norway Mikael Alexandersson, Gothenburg university, Sweden Henrik Artman, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden Anders Björkvall, Stockholm university, Sweden Andrew Burn, London, Great Britain Kirsten Drotner, Odense, Denmark Love Ekenberg, Stockholm university, Sweden Ola Erstad, Oslo, Norway Chaechun Gim, Yeungnam University, South Korea Erica Halverson UW/Madison, USA Richard Halverson UW/Madison, USA Ria Heilä-Ylikallio, Åbo Akademi University, Finland Jana Holsanova, Lund University, Sweden Glynda Hull, Berkeley, USA Carey Jewitt, London, Great Britain Anna-Lena Kempe, Stockholm university, Sweden Susanne V Knudsen, Tønsberg, Norway Gunther Kress, London, Great Britain Per Ledin, Örebro university, Sweden Theo van Leeuwen, Sydney, Australia Teemu Leinonen, Aalto University, Finland Jonas Linderoth, Gothenburg university, Sweden Sten Ludvigsen, Oslo, Norway Jonas Löwgren, Malmö University, Sweden Åsa Mäkitalo, Gothenburg university, Sweden Teresa C. Pargman, Stockholm University, Sweden Palmyre Pierroux, Oslo, Norway Klas Roth, Stockholm university, Sweden Sven Sjöberg, Oslo, Norway Kurt Squire, UW/Madison, USA Constance Steinkuehler, UW/Madison, USA Daniel Spikol, Malmö University, Sweden Roger Säljö, Gothenburg university, Sweden Elise Seip Tønnesen, Agder, Norway Johan L. Tønnesson, Oslo, Norway Barbara Wasson, Bergen, Norway Tore West, Stockholm university, Sweden Christoph Wulf, Berlin, Germany ISSN E-journal: ISSN The authors, 2012 Designs for Learning, 2012 DidaktikDesign, Stockholm University, Aalborg University 146

12 Submission of manuscripts Manuscripts, fully numbered and typed in double spacing throughout, should be sent both as a Wordcompatible file and as a PDF-file to: Susanne Kjällander Department of Didactic Sciences Stockholm University SE Stockholm Sweden [ susanne.kjallander@did.su.se] Covering letter Please attach to every submission a letter confirming that all authors have agreed to the submission and that the article is not currently being considered for publication by any other journal. Format of manuscripts Each manuscript should contain: (i) title page with full title and subtitle (if any), preferably not exceeding 60 signs. For the purpose of blind refereeing, full name of each author with current affiliation and full address/phone/fax/ details plus short biographical note should be supplied on a separate page. (ii) abstract of words. (iii) up to 10 key words. (iv) main text and word count - suggested target is not exceeding 5000 words (or 30,000 signs, including spaces) unless by prior agreement with the editors. Texts are expected to be clearly organized, with a clear hierarchy of headings and subheadings and quotations exceeding 40 words displayed, indented, in the text. (v) end notes, if necessary, should be signalled by superscript numbers in the main text and listed at the end of the text before the references. (vi) references in both the text and end notes should follow APA manual. Illustrations All line diagrams and photographs are termed Figures and should be referred to as such in the manuscript. They should be numbered consecutively. Line diagrams should be presented in a form suitable for immediate reproduction (i.e.not requiring redrawing). Photos and digitally generated images should be in 300 dpi resolution at 100% size. Images made for web publishing (normally 72 dpi) are not sufficient. They should be reproducible to a final printed text area of 205 mm x 142 mm. Illustrations on disk should be supplied as TIF or EPS files at high resolution. All figures should have short descriptive captions typed on a separate page. Authors are responsible for obtaining permissions from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. Permission letters must be supplied to Designs for Learning. Style Use a clear readable style, avoiding jargon. If technical terms or acronyms must be included, define them when first used. Use non-racist, non-sexist language and plurals rather than he/she. Spellings UK or US spellings may be used with -ize spellings as given in the Oxford English Dictionary (e.g. organize, recognize). Punctuation Use single quotation marks with double quotes inside single quotes. Present dates in the form 1 May Do not use points in abbreviations, contractions or acronyms (e.g. AD, USA, Dr, PhD). New files On acceptance of your manuscript for publication, you will be asked to supply the final version in a new Word-file and PDF-file. Proofs and offprints Authors will receive proofs of their articles and be asked to send corrections to Susanne Kjällander (see address above) within 2 weeks. They will receive a complimentary copy of the journal and electronic offprints of their article. Reviews In future issues Designs for Learning will include a section in which books and other significant contributions to the field are reviewed. This includes both essay length and shorter contributions. Books for review and manuscripts of reviews should be sent to Susanne Kjällander (see address above).

13 Editorial: g u n t h e r kr e s s & s ta f f a n se l a n d e r s o p h i a di a m a n t o p o u l o u, e v a in s u l a n d e r & f r e d r i k li n d s t r a n d : Making meaning in an exhibition: technologies, agency and (re-)design f r e d r i k li n d s t r a n d & e v a in s u l a n d e r : Setting the ground for engagement: Multimodal perspectives on exhibition design k e r s t i n sm e d s : On the meaning of exhibitions c a r e y je w i t t : Digital technologies in museums: New routes to engagement and participation p a m me e c h a m & e l e n a st y l i a n o u : Interactive technologies in the art museum v a i k e fo r s : The empty meeting-place Museum metaphors and their implication for learning