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

• Final Report Year: 2022

Final Report Abstract

The aim of the research project was to examine whether museum tours for adults can be interpreted as pedagogical communication as processes of appropriation-related knowledge transfer. Based on two qualitative, sequential studies, the aim was to determine whether constitutive elements of pedagogical communication could be found in guided tours, i.e., a pedagogical intention on the part of the guides, the imparting of knowledge, a correspondingly mostly deficient construction of addressees, and a form of verification of knowledge. The first study collected 40 guideline-based interviews with guides from four different types of museums. Conducting the second study, which focused on field observations, was significantly impacted by the onset of the Corona pandemic in the winter of 2019. From the data material of the first study, it can be deduced that imparting knowledge is only one possible, pedagogical goal of guides. Other primarily non-cognitive, but also pedagogical goals are, for example, raising awareness of a topic, promoting creative and independent access to museum content, enabling opinion formation, empowerment in dealing with art, and/or promoting haptic experiences. The underlying understanding of guides tours and guides’ roles also indicates that guides interpret their role in a genuinely pedagogical way. This corresponds with the expectations of the visitors anticipated by the guides, in which traces of a deficient construction of addressees can be found, especially with regard to statements about expectations concerning the transfer, expansion and/or deepening of knowledge. Also from the participant's perspective, according to the preliminary findings of the second study, guided tours in museums are at least (in part) a knowledge transfer process based on an imbalance of information/knowledge. Overall, the findings so far show that further interesting results can be expected from both studies, which will benefit the adult pedagogical discussion of informal learning settings, practically point to possible training needs, and theoretically enrich museum pedagogical practice as well as theories of adult education. This is also indicated by the results of the scoping review, which was produced as part of the project.

Publications

• (2021). A few research results in a nutshell from Germany. Presentation in the session “The new normal of guided tours”. ECSITE Online Conference (9.-11. Juni 2021)
  Specht, I.
  
• (2021). Empirical knowledge about the guiding profession and person-led guided tours in museums: a scoping review. Journal of Interpretation Research. 26(2), 96–130
  Specht, I. & Loreit, F.
  
• (2021). The madness of analysing guided tours. Presentation at the Lightening Talks of the Visitor Studies Group Event Series “Methods in the Madness: looking back to move Visitor Studies forward”. Online (19. Mai 2021)
  Specht, I. & Loreit, F.