Although there is a growing practice of puppetry in education, there has been no academic research to date on the range of puppet theatre styles and techniques in the museum context. This interdisciplinary thesis seeks to investigate what I call ‘museum puppetry', e.g. puppetry used for pedagogical purposes in museum studies' with a focus on the exchanges, compromises and tensions among museum staff and puppet theatre practitioners. Although the research is conducted mainly from the puppeteers' perspective, the voice of museum experts is also present throughout. The thesis examines puppetry's theoretical and practical frames for creation and how these can be used to conceptualize the applied form of this marginalized medium in the contentious territory of museums today. It also investigates what benefits, challenges and limitations are faced by the two distinct communities of practice (puppeteers and museum staff) in the pre- and post-production of museum puppetry projects. This multiple case-study, qualitative research examines the current work of practitioners who present and perform in museums, mainly in the United Kingdom, United States, Greece and Israel. The data analysis, based on interviews and field work, also aims to investigate the projects' preproduction processes. Furthermore, it explores the negotiations between puppeteers and museum staff around the visual and performance aspects of museum puppetry projects from a technical and aesthetic point of view (construction, narrative, manipulation techniques). The research also suggests that although museum puppetry is currently a marginalized museum practice, its distinct sign system renders it rich in meaningful and soulfull associations, strongly visitor-oriented and remarkably flexible. Commissioning long term museum puppetry projects remains —with a few exceptions— a missed opportunity, due to prejudices and low expectations. Overall, the thesis reclaims the pedagogical, aesthetic value of puppets as ultimate metaphors. It advocates the holistic, eco-friendly aspect of the practice and favours the empathy and thought-provoking gaps it traces. Finally, it attempts to balance constructive, unpredictable learning with significance and fun.

The purpose of this study was to investigate museum learning by describing the experiences of selected museum visitors who viewed a specified exhibit. The research question is: How does a museum exhibit function as a literacy event for viewers? The responses to interview questions described what viewing was like for two subjects. The paradigm for this research is New Literacy Studies (NLS). NLS considers the cultural issues surrounding literacy experiences. NLS assumes that language arts reflect cultural differences and literacy involves the process of constructing meaning (Barton, Hamilton, & Ivanic, 2000; Gee, 2000; Street, 1995). This model of literacy considers three factors of literacy: the literacy practice, the literacy event and the text (Barton & Hamilton, 2000). The literacy practice for this dissertation was museum visiting. The literacy event was viewing one museum exhibit. Through research in multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000), objects and written discourse constituted the text. Two high school subjects spent 15 minutes viewing a specified exhibit on separate occasions. They were asked seven questions designed to aid their recall. The Contextual Model of Learning (Falk & Dierking, 2000) was used for describing the phenomenon and for the analyses of the data. The Contextual Model of Learning describes museum learning as the interaction of three spheres: the Physical Context, the Personal Context, and the Socio-cultural Context. The Physical Context was analyzed through narrative description, the Personal Context through micro-analysis (Corbin, 1998; Miles & Huberman, 1994), and the Socio-cultural Context through Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Meyer, 2001; van Dijk, 2001; Wodak, 2001). The results show the Physical Context of a museum exhibit facilitates viewers in accessing their Personal and Socio-cultural Contexts to make meaning. The data indicated the subjects of this study formed global concepts, supported main ideas with specific details, constructed cause and effect relationships, formed comparisons, and engaged in other types of cognitive behaviors as they interacted with the text. The results also indicated that the Contextual Model of Learning would best describe the literacy event if the model showed the dominance of the Personal and Socio-cultural Contexts over the Physical Contents.

Motivation is an important aspect of learning in educational leisure settings because it affects the choices visitors make regarding what to attend to, the amount of effort they devote to learning, and the extent to which they enjoy the experience. Commonly, however, visitors seek entertainment, social or restorative experiences as well as, or in preference to, a learning experience. This research investigates the impact of motivational factors on the experience of learning in educational leisure settings. Motivational factors are considered in terms of four components - personal goals, capability beliefs, context beliefs and situational incentives. The experience of learning is considered in terms of visitors’ perceptions of the experience, rather than objective measures of learning outcomes, as the experience itself is seen as the desired outcome of the visit. Visitors to six different educational leisure settings in South East Queensland were invited to participate in the research, including a museum, an art gallery, a wildlife centre, an aquarium, and guided tours of natural and cultural heritage sites. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected using questionnaires (499 participants) and interviews (52 participants) in order to ascertain the importance to visitors of different types of learning experiences; identify the extent to which motivations for learning vary across sites and visitor groups; investigate the relationships between the educational, entertainment, social and restorative aspects of the visitors’ experience; and examine the impact of motivational factors on visitors’ experience of learning in leisure settings. The findings support the importance of learning to visitors in a range of educational leisure settings. Visitors seek an experience that combines elements of learning and discovery, and is perceived to be both effortless and fun. It is concluded that the characteristics of learning in educational leisure settings contribute to a synergy between the educational and entertainment aspects of the experience. Situational factors are more important than personal factors in motivating visitors to engage in and experience this type of learning. This is of great significance to educational leisure settings as it implies that sites have a reasonable degree of control over the motivational factors that influence visitor engagement in learning.

<p>    </p> <p>The first article presents a study that measured exhibit visitors' reported attitudes as measured by an early iteration of the attitudinal learning inventory (ALI) (Watson et al., 2018). The study, which was conducted at the Indiana State Fair and measured visitors’ self-reported attitude changes after visiting an exhibit about hellbender salamanders, found that 73% of survey respondents claimed they would change their behavior and 70% claimed they would tell others what they learned by visiting the exhibit. The second article presents a study that measured visitors' time spent at the exhibit to calculate holding power. Holding power was calculated by dividing the amount of time spent at the exhibit by the minimum amount of time it takes to read the text and interact with the exhibit. The holding power for the <em>What's Bugging Belva? </em>exhibit was favorable at .67 and is compared with exhibits with holding powers of .47 (Boisvert et al, 1995) and .69 (Peart, 1984). The third study gathered visitor data using the validated ALI and analyzed the data using the FREQ procedure (SAS 9.4). The study was conducted at the Indiana State Fair and Purdue Springfest and measured visitors’ responses to an exhibit about animal welfare. At both events, visitors had positive perceptions in the categories of cognitive and general learning, affective learning, behavioral learning, and social learning.  </p>

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The child–environment interaction type, which involves touching and handling part of collections and displays, is less common in art museums. In addition, art museums demand many behavioural rules from their visitors. The adult caregivers, therefore, prefer that their preschool children participate in child-friendly activity programmes. Children could nonetheless learn by interacting with network technology applications in art museums since the use of digital technologies and mobile devices has become widespread to assist visitors’ learning in museums in general. Therefore, this thesis can relate to Child-Computer Interaction (CCI). This thesis addresses the problem that children often have isolated or separate experiences rather than enjoy regular art exhibitions with accompanying adults. This problem could be tackled by exploring how the child–technology interaction type combined with the child–adults/peers interaction could be considered to better engage children in viewing art exhibitions together with adults. The main research question is ‘what needs adult caregivers have for their preschool children's experience at art museums, that may be met by mobile educational apps?’. The main question can be divided into three parts: what are adult caregivers’ views about 1) their preschool children’s use of mobile devices and 2) educational apps and 3) their experience at art museums? By investigating the research question, this thesis aims to explore the possibility of a mobile activity/guide app that could facilitate combined experiences and collaborative learning for preschool children and their adult caregivers together at art museums. For this thesis, a survey is adopted as a research strategy and a web-based questionnaire as a data collection method to explore the views of parents with preschool children between three and five years old. Non-probability sampling was chosen, and the questionnaire invitation was distributed physically to preschools, in playgrounds, and Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden and online to Korean parents. For quantitative data analysis, statistical tests were employed. According to the results, despite the considerable period that preschool children have used mobile devices and the frequency, parents answered that their children always or sometimes need help navigating mobile devices. Parents recognise many benefits of children’s mobile device use but would not encourage the usage. Nevertheless, parents acknowledge the importance of conversational interactions but are unlikely to engage in shared activities. Parents like child-friendly programmes for being entertaining, engaging, age-appropriate, and stimulating for children. To enjoy regular exhibitions with children, parents want touchable objects, a children-friendly atmosphere, and open-to-all or free drop-in activities. It is because parents often struggle to have their children understand and follow the behavioural rules and keep their children interested in and focused on the exhibition. Overall, parents acknowledge the inevitable trend of using mobile devices for their preschool children, even though they are yet hesitant to proactively encourage the usage. Many parents experience difficulties engaging their young children in seeing regular art exhibitions and would like to have interactive elements that attract children’s attention. This thesis is valuable since museum professionals and educational app designers could use this thesis as a knowledge base to develop the app.

'Museum Communication: Learning, Interaction and Experience' is a study of how museums have evolved and handled their communication approaches at both theoretical and practical levels. It discusses questions like; how has museum communication developed? What influences do these developments have on museology and its related disciplines? How will museum communication develop in the future? These are questions closely connected with essential concepts of learning, interaction, participation and experience, which will be discussed throughout the thesis. Learning and exhibition theories will be considered alongside discussions of epistemological and philosophical approaches, interpretation, and social development of museological research. The research forms a discourse analysis of museums' own views and opinions of these issues through replies of a questionnaire. It also focuses on specific case studies and examples in order to combine theoretical definitions and empirical approaches with museological developments. To form a deeper understanding of how museological communication is developing, the research includes interviews with professionals of philosophy and storytelling as well. Finally, the approaches are summarised in a new museum model developed from future studies. This model, called 'The Transformative Museum', identifies essential points in which museums have developed their communication practices and theories, and discusses how these may develop in the future. As the responsibilities of museum curators develop, museums have to embrace the concepts of transformation and flexibility too. Inquiries, research, learning and participation have to be transformed into all kinds of experiences in order to respond to changing needs and flexible structures of communities and societies. The transformative museum will have to acknowledge past traditions, current trends and future opportunities simultaneously in order to become a museum of both present and future relevance for all kinds of visitors and users.

This thesis reports a qualitative study of the use of multimodal technologies in museums— specifically, it examines the relationship between visitor engagement and learning, focusing on the use of multimodal technologies during school trips. The study was conducted in the Natural History Museum and the Churchill Museum, both in London, with participants from several secondary schools. These sites were chosen due to their concern for the added value of learning and public engagement, including their education-orientated investments in technology, museum activities, and architecture. In the course of data collection, visits were made to six schools and both museum sites; the participants included 117 students, 18 teachers, three museum educators, and eight museum curators and media designers. The study used a combination of video data analysis, stimulated recall interviews, document analysis, and engaging students in talk and reflection about their visit both at the museum and afterwards. The qualitative approach and multimodal analysis identify how the students’ social interactions help them construct learning through decontextualised bodily movements, which trigger contextualised discussion. The study demonstrates how multimodal analysis can be used in research to capture a wide scope of information, while maintaining a micro-level of analysis and understanding—here, capturing the detail of students’ interactions and perceptions. The findings suggest that the learning experience in museums is produced through multiple layers of interaction and through the exchange of physical and psychological behaviour among people, resources, and space. Here, the multimodal technologies with which the students engaged essentially acted as initial platforms for sensory stimuli and social interaction, supporting their peer communication and motivating them to further explore both the given topic and their own understanding of their learning methods. It was the students’ further conversation, observation, and participation, however, that created a more meaningful and entertaining learning experience in the museums.

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