Interactions of School Audience in Two Different Types of Science Museums

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the school visitors at two different types of natural sciences museums. We observed interactions of the students between themselves, with their teachers, with the mediators, and with the exhibitions in these institutions. The theoretical review encompassed classical works and recent studies on the specific theme. The methodological approach had a qualitative nature, with an exploratory feature, using naturalist, non-participant observations in three sciences museums from a municipality in the southern region of Brazil: a Sciences and Technology Museum, traditional of the interactive type, and two traditional orthodox. We performed a content analysis, creating categories of interaction. In the interactive traditional museum, people-object interactions were observed more frequently, and there were few visitor-visitor interactions, mainly between the visitors and the mediators. In the orthodox traditional museums, person-person interactions were more remarkable, especially interactions of visitors and mediators. Interactions of visitors with teachers were more commonly observed in one of the orthodox museums. In this one, we also observed the accomplishment of tasks and the expression of relationships between the exhibitions with previous knowledge, neither of which were noticed in the interactive museum. Reading of the explicative texts about the objects and experiments exposed was rarely observed in any of the three museums, even though it has been more common in the interactive museum. The empirical study has demonstrated that the characteristics of the museums and the action of mediators affect the public, whose interests and baggage of knowledge influence the way the collection is explored.

Keywords

• estudos de público
• interações sociais
• museu de ciências e de tecnologia
• museu tradicional interativo
• museu tradicional ortodoxo