ABSTRACT
This study is one of several that have been designed under the auspices of the Museum Learning Collaborative (MLC) to inform a model of how learning occurs in museums (Leinhardt & Crowley, 1998). The MLC takes a sociocultural perspective on learning, one in which the conversations people have as members of a cohesive conversational group during a museum visit are seen as places where ideas are brought forth for public sharing in a way that allows group members to build on each other’s knowledge and understanding. Studying conversations provides a window into this joint meaning-making activity (see Silverman, 1990; Wertsch, Hagstrom, & Kikas, 1995). The MLC takes conversational elaboration as a measure of learning and presumes there are three interconnecting elements that contribute to conversational elaboration: the nature of visitors’ identity, the structure of the learning environment, and the degree of explanatory engagement (Leinhardt, 1996; Leinhardt & Crowley, 1998; Schauble, Leinhardt, & Martin, 1998). In this study we focus on one part of the model: the connection between a cluster of background characteristics and interests that visitors bring to a museum-what we call visitor identityand the nature of visitor conversation during a museum tour-what we call explanatory engagement. We suggest that the conversations visitors have with friends or family members as they tour a specific exhibition both reflect certain aspects of the identity of those visitors and mediate visitors’ engagement and understanding. In turn, various levels of explanatory engagement are indicative of, and related to, learning. The main purpose for conducting this study was to trace and understand the connections between visitors’ identities and the structure and content of their conversations in a museum.
