Processes of imparting and acquisition in museums – Types of pedagogical communication in personal guided tours in different museum types

• Applicant: Dr. Inga Specht
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning ; Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398124321

Although the educational task of museums has been emphasized for over four decades, processes of (knowledge) imparting and acquisition/appropriation in personal guided museum tours are rarely explored. The planned research project will examine, how guided tours for adults are conceptually designed, which imparting operations can be observed in the guides, which learning processes are intended and enabled by these operations, and in which (cognitive, motivational, social) experiences they result for the visitors. In a first study, expert interviews with guides holding different types of qualifications will be conducted with the aim of identifying different concepts of personal guided museum tours. In a second study processes of (knowledge) imparting and acquisition/appropriation as well as visitor experiences will be analyzed through participatory observations and questionnaire surveys. Therefore a contrastive approach concerning the guides and their concepts will be used. The concept of “pedagogical communication”, a concept based on system theory, will provide the theoretical framework for the research. The project will result in a specification and differentiation of the constructs of (knowledge-)imparting and acquisition/appropriation in the context of personal guided museum tours. Aim of the project is to identify characteristic features of pedagogical communication and different pedagogical types of knowledge-impartation in the context of guided museum tours, as well as their (potential) educational impact on visitors.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Josef Schrader