Objects of Learning, Objects of Talk: Changing Minds in Museums

Although the meaning of education for museum producers and consumers has changed

since the founding of America’s earliest museums (Roberts, 1997), informal learning

environments have taken an increasingly self-conscious place in the American

educational landscape.1 For the progressive era, this place was so important that Dewey

(1900) used the museum as both the physical and metaphorical heart of the ideal school.