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Understanding the Effects of ‘Behind‐the‐Scenes’ Tours on Visitor Understanding of Collections and Research
Author(s) -
Gallimore EmilyJane,
Wilkinson Clare
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/cura.12307
Subject(s) - visitor pattern , situated , exploratory research , value (mathematics) , visual arts , sociology , art , computer science , social science , artificial intelligence , machine learning , programming language
Collections can be a ‘mystery’ to many museum visitors, which makes investing in behind‐the‐scenes tours an opportunity for increasing awareness of the role museums play in scientific research. Drawing on the theories of contextual learning, situated learning, and legitimate peripheral participation, we offer insights from an exploratory study that investigated the potential effectiveness and practicalities of using behind‐the‐scenes tours to improve visitor understandings of museum research. This forum paper reports on emerging results from visitor questionnaires and staff interviews across six museums where we explored the experience offered by behind‐the‐scenes tours as an effective learning environment. These results suggest that behind the scenes tours remain under‐researched and highlight the need for further investigation into the value of this visitor experience.