The main purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse how museum visitors engage with and make meaning from what is being offered to them in terms of the various resources made available in two exhibitions. Yet another purpose is to describe and analyse the design of these exhibitions. The empirical data stems from observational studies at the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, and includes the investigation of two exhibitions: Prehistories I and II. Eight ‘visiting pairs’ were videotaped and the tapes were multimodally transcribed and analysed. Data also includes digital photos and maps produced by the visitors. In a comparative analysis, descriptions of the exhibitions and their analysis and the visitor study are discussed in relation to earlier research and to the issue of learning. A design-oriented and multimodal perspective on learning is used as a theoretical and methodological framework. The different visits are compared and the visitors’ responses are discussed as different forms of engagement. The results are interpreted within an institutional perspective connected to contemporary discourses within museum studies. The exhibitions are considered as an expression of the museums’ ambition to adjust to a pressure for change. Both exhibitions are, in a greater or less degree, considered as examples of ‘new’ exhibitions in that they rhetorically put forward visitors’ participation, cultural rights, post colonial perspectives and immaterial aspects of cultural heritage. The study presents learning as a social and sign-making activity. It stress how meaning-making and learning happens as a transformation in several steps. As visitors engage in different semiotic resources in the exhibitions’ design, they form new signs through their representations – as a ‘re-design’ of the exhibition – which in turn give them new possibilities for making meaning. / Museet, utställningen, besökaren. Meningsskapande på en ny arena för lärande och kommunikation

<p>The overall aim of this dissertation is to investigate how students engage with visual representations as a signifying practice in an educational context. This question is scrutinized through two young girls’ three video films and interviews with the producers. The study is guided by an interest in what these young students communicate with their films, how this is done and how they relate to the cultural and social world in their representation. The title, Ambiguous Images, alludes to the signifying work with film, images and words done by the two girls. The films raise topics such as sexuality, equality and gender which set their mark on the situation of young females, both in school and in their leisure time. The result shows that moving images fulfil the function of negotiating the significations as well as making it possible for the girls to create their own alternative representations. Each film contributes an alternative discourse, in contrast to dominant texts that apply to the constitution of the cultural and social context they address. The study demonstrates that learning is a process of selection, adaptation and transformation motivated by the interests of the pupils and the context of learning. Other important issues are also raised concerning the students’ possibilities to participate in and influence the school subject in question. This involves both the opportunity of engagement with a multiplicity of modes and the possibility to adopt their own voice and view of the world. Both the methodological and the theoretical approach in the dissertation have multimodal and social-semiotic perspectives, which are combined with a design approach. These combinations are united in a presentation of representation and communication as a social process of sign-making.</p>

The overall aim of this dissertation is to investigate how students engage with visual representations as a signifying practice in an educational context. This question is scrutinized through two young girls’ three video films and interviews with the producers. The study is guided by an interest in what these young students communicate with their films, how this is done and how they relate to the cultural and social world in their representation. The title, Ambiguous Images, alludes to the signifying work with film, images and words done by the two girls. The films raise topics such as sexuality, equality and gender which set their mark on the situation of young females, both in school and in their leisure time. The result shows that moving images fulfil the function of negotiating the significations as well as making it possible for the girls to create their own alternative representations. Each film contributes an alternative discourse, in contrast to dominant texts that apply to the constitution of the cultural and social context they address. The study demonstrates that learning is a process of selection, adaptation and transformation motivated by the interests of the pupils and the context of learning. Other important issues are also raised concerning the students’ possibilities to participate in and influence the school subject in question. This involves both the opportunity of engagement with a multiplicity of modes and the possibility to adopt their own voice and view of the world. Both the methodological and the theoretical approach in the dissertation have multimodal and social-semiotic perspectives, which are combined with a design approach. These combinations are united in a presentation of representation and communication as a social process of sign-making.