Presentation description

This project studies learning at an innovative museum exhibit about climate change: A Climate of Hope at the Natural History Museum of Utah. By studying learning at A Climate of Hope-which offers a counter narrative to educational experiences that scare, polarize, and/or exclude-we work towards dismantling the current "spiral of silence" around climate change. For this mixed-methods study, we were specifically interested in relationships among visitors' memory, learning, and incoming views of climate change. We analyzed survey data collected before, during, and 4-6 weeks following visitors' engagement with the exhibit. Survey items included demographics, views on climate change, measures intended to assess participants' uptake of learning goals, and open-ended text responses eliciting participants' memory of the exhibit. Results demonstrated a connection between memory and learning within the climate exhibit. Specifically, it suggested that two areas of the exhibit-one that focused on impacts and one that focused on solutions-were particularly linked with visitors' learning, while other sections of the exhibit appeared to be less influential. We will be discussing our inferences about why these sections appear to be especially important, attending to the strategic frames underlying their design. We'll also be exploring several connections found between participants' incoming views of climate change, age, memory of the exhibit, and changes in engagement around climate change.