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The authors conducted a study at a history museum with the objective of examining changes in the knowledge of students aged 12 to 14 concerning the use of primary sources.

Students utilized self-led guides while exploring two museum spaces presenting different historical events. These guides encouraged students to scrutinize the exhibits, become acquainted with the methods employed in their research, and develop an awareness of the information derived from them. Students' responses to pre- and postquestionnaires were compared and analyzed using mixed methods.

The results revealed that students became familiar with various types of primary sources, recognized that only specific sources endure through time and gained an understanding of the research methods employed to study them. Additionally, most students comprehended that the same sources could lead to diverse historical accounts and the potential reasons for such variations.

Recommendations for practice are discussed.

This study contributed to the limited knowledge regarding learning during a single, self-led tour in a history museum. The findings illuminate the potential for learning and advancing historical thinking concepts even within such museum-visit contexts.

The objective of the current study was to examine the relationship between visitation patterns of museums at home when compared to museums visited on holidays taken. The data were collected from a sample of residents of Alta, a fjord town in northern Norway. A multiple discriminant analysis was first conducted to ascertain the factors that increased the probability of visiting a museum at home. The variables that correlated significantly with the discriminant function were collectively named “cultural consumption”. Subsequently, a bivariate correlation analysis was performed in order to examine the relationship between the significant discriminant function and the frequency of visits of the same sample to museums on their holidays. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.

With over 4.5 million objects and specimens from both the natural and human worlds, Manchester Museum, part of The University of Manchester, is the largest University Museum in the United Kingdom. By virtue of its position within The University of Manchester, learning and research are central to Manchester Museum’s work. The Museum has a track-record of educational work, from the ‘Children’s Museum Club’, a travelling school loans service set up in 1954, to the founding of a dedicated Education Department in 1981. Throughout its long history, the Museum has always held objects and collections at the heart of its popular learning offer. More recently, the growth of the learning team led to the creation of a set of learning principles to underpin its work. These principles – that learning should be object-centred, dialogic, imaginative, personalised, multi-sensory, collaborative and exploratory – are all based on inquiry-based learning and aim to foster a research-based disposition in learners.

As a University Museum with engagement at its heart, Manchester Museum is now looking to transform the third floor of its building into a space themed entirely around ‘research’. This redevelopment, due to open in March 2015, will see the creation of a new visitor research space – ‘The Study’. This unique development will extend the successful inquiry-based learning approach used with schools and colleges, into a public research space for all visitors, with collections at its heart.

This chapter focuses on growing professionally and encouraging peers' skills. The author opens by relating her experience in initiating and implementing museum-integrated instruction as a curricular program at all grade levels. She discusses the steps involved in creating one of the nation's first Museum Magnet Schools, from introducing the idea to her school and district to managing all the logistics needed to support it: funding, partnerships, professional development, curriculum writing, and partnerships. Strategically working with teachers, administrators, and organizations builds upon foundations in pedagogy and curriculum and reduces barriers to implementation. The chapter outlines effective strategies for building a dedicated team of faculty and administrators within your school, using professional development and encouragement to gain “buy-in” for projects such as school and student exhibitions. Such activities change the school culture in positive ways, with teachers becoming “ambassadors” to parents, professional learning communities, and other education stakeholders. Harnessing the power of connections to grow as a professional and growing communities of expertise cultivates performance pedagogy and brings history alive for students. By networking with experts from museums and historic sites, educators can tap into museum techniques such as exhibition design and object-based inquiry, which can be powerful tools for experiential learning. The chapter also contains outreach strategies for effectively presenting such initiatives at professional conferences and employing the power of social media through blogging and Twitter. As the author notes based on a decade of experience, the potential for student engagement from museum-related strategies is a persuasive argument for educators and administrators to collaborate in adapting them.

Purpose: In March 2020, due to the global emergency ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Italian government closed all national museums, institutes and places of culture heritage and landscape. The shutdown highlighted the need to develop and implement digital solutions, especially through ICTs, to enhance the cultural heritage worldwide by allowing people to go on admiring it, albeit remotely. Numerous initiatives were promoted, such as virtual experiential tours, online collections and ad hoc social and digital programs, all of which contributed to the rich dialogue between people and culture. Although digital initiatives for using and enjoying the cultural heritage have been successfully developed and implemented, in Italy the process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from being completed. This chapter investigates the development and implementation of digital technologies in the museums located in the Campania Region in Southern Italy throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to identify and analyse the experiential strategies and initiatives developed through information communication technologies (ICTs) to face the emergency.

Design/Methodology/Approach: By adopting a qualitative methodology, using primary and secondary data sources through a manual content analysis, experiential strategies and initiatives employed by the Campania regional museums when using digital solutions have been identified and categorised.

Findings: Despite the effectiveness of digital initiatives, and the experiences investigated appear both significant and interesting, there is still a need to develop and implement new experiential strategies in this field.

Research Limitations: This study presents several limitations, mostly related to its qualitative explorative nature, but also because its results cannot be generalised.

Practical Implications: These first results outline the need to further develop innovative strategies and initiatives within the museums. The process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from completion, potentially providing wide margins of further evolution by means of further investments in technology innovation, to rethink and redesign the traditional management models for enhancing the cultural heritage through digital technology.

Originality: This study provides a portrait of museum experiences supported by digital technologies in a country which plays a crucial role in the field of international cultural heritage. The analysis can also usefully contribute to the existing literature due to the qualitative technique employed for carrying out the multiple case study.

In 2019, the Kaurna Nation and traditional custodians of the Adelaide plains in South Australia, challenged the City of Holdfast Bay to walk alongside them to create an exhibition exploring the true history of South Australia’s colonisation. This collaboration ultimately became the award-winning exhibition ‘Tiati Wangkanthi Kumangka’ (Truth-Telling Together). This project was envisioned, led, and implemented by the Kaurna Nation at the Bay Discovery Centre in South Australia. Ultimately, ‘Tiati’ became more than just another exhibition. It became a pathway to healing and possibility for both the Kaurna Nation and the City of Holdfast Bay. When considering indigenisation of museum spaces, ‘Tiati’ demonstrates how smaller museums and/or local government can play a pivotal role in reshaping the traditional narrative of colonialism in Australia’s museums, with the voice of First Nations people at the forefront.

The Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli (MANN, National Archaeological Museum of Naples) is one of the most important archaeological museums in the world. In 2017, MANN launched several projects, such as Father and Son, the first video game made by an archaeological museum, and Ancient Present (Antico Presente), a series of five short films produced by the museum in five different languages and based on different artworks selected from the museum's permanent collections. The idea behind these projects was to ‘bring the museum outside the museum’, with the assumption that some tools may improve the museum's ability to speak and interact with its audiences, both in the spatial sense (outside its physical perimeter) and the temporal dimension (not only during the visit experience, but also before and after it). We have studied these two MANN projects, as this museum has explicitly targeted audience development as one of its main objectives (MANN, 2016, p. 72) and these projects are important examples of how to use new ‘languages’ (the digital and the cinematographic) to start a dialogue with new audiences and to address museum accessibility in a new way.

Adolescents undoubtedly represent the future generation of adults who will be responsible for the preservation and management of heritage at local and national levels. It is essential to understand how to motivate and satisfy adolescents when visiting museums in their communities and beyond. A self-administered survey was conducted in 2016 with 360 adolescents who visited the Abgineh Museum of Tehran, Iran. Using descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation analysis and multiple linear regression analysis were used to interpret the findings, offering new insights into the subject. The study results suggest that travel and tourism companions influence adolescents’ motivations and satisfaction to visit museums.