Self-Esteem and the Museum (Crafting Valuable Experiences, Part 3)

In this episode, we pick up with the ideas presented in John Falk's book "The Value of Museums," and consider how museums and museum programming are uniquely positioned to tap into visitor's primal need for social interaction.

Key takeaways include: 

• How our need to be successful in social situations is directly proportional to our self-esteem

• How we perceive museum visits in relation to our social status

• The hugely significant finding from Dr. Falk's research that supports the work of children's programs in museums

For links to the resources mentioned, visit modernmuseumeducation.com/bookshelf. In particular, the book “Tours with Children and Teens,” is a helpful resource for encouraging social interaction among K-12 visitors.

Interested in working with Rachel directly? Find out more at modernmuseumeducation.com/services.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hi, I am Rachel, a resource expert and career coach for museum educators who are stretched thin, but long to fall in love with their world-changing work. After over 15 years with my own hands in the glitter, I know how it feels when your Board thinks your work is childish because you work with children.

I know how hard it is to lead a tour on a difficult subject, and I know the frustration of waiting on a school bus that is 20 minutes late or worse, 10 minutes early. As I'm heading towards the second half of my career. I find myself with a passion to help my fellow educators reverse the chronic state of being overworked and underappreciated so that they can reclaim their creativity and emotional energy.

Join me and my museum buddies as we share our best tips, tricks, and techniques for modern museum education.

Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Modern Museum Education Podcast. My name is Rachel and I am your host. So if you were with me for [00:01:00] episode four, then you know that this episode, episode five, is a continuation of that episode. There was just, there was so much that I wanted to share about both the physical and social context of a museum visit, and it felt like that episode was just getting a little bit

too crowded, and I wanted you to be able to really sink your teeth into what we're talking about. So I felt like it was better to just stop after the physical aspects in episode four and pick up with the social aspects of a museum's visit in this episode, episode five. 

So we're just gonna jump right back into it. Here it is, episode five, talking about the social context of a museum's visit.

Now we're gonna switch gears and talk about social. Now, I'll be honest, the chapters on social wellbeing in John Falk's book were for me, probably the most challenging. Just because they really, he really dives [00:02:00] deep into the evolutionary context of our social nature as humans. So I really had to, I really had to focus, I really had to read this one carefully.

, But once I, once I kind of wrapped my brain around what he was saying, once again, it made perfect sense. So let me give you the highlights of what he suggests, from an evolutionary perspective, social context has to do with our wellbeing. First of all, people who are social are healthier and happier.

This has been proven by millions of studies when people are around people, we are just happier beings. We are biologically wired to need other people in our lives. So because of that, because being social makes us healthier and happier then, [00:03:00] therefore, being social contributes to the success or survival of our species.

Therefore, being social is a desirable trait and it, it has an inherent status appeal to it, and this is the part where I, I kind of, it was a little hard for me to, to get there, but once I got there, it made perfect sense. Because it is vital to our survival as a species, we have developed a value system around being social and we understand social behavior to be valuable.

Therefore we desire it. And when we see people being successful in social situations, we think those are successful people: "I wanna be like that." So being social is inherently of a higher status. That makes sense. Again, if this is confusing to you, [00:04:00] listen, you should just read the book because he explains it so much better than I am explaining it now.

Okay, so if being social makes us healthier and happier, and therefore being social contributes to the success of our species and therefore being social is a desirable trait, therefore, humans want to copy people who are successful because we see that as being a rewarded trait. So we want to do the same thing, right?

So this is kind of where it all comes together. Therefore, our self-esteem is in direct proportion to how well we perceive ourselves to do in the area of being social. 

Let me say that again. Our self-esteem is in direct proportion to how well we perceive [00:05:00] ourselves to be successful in being social. Okay. And this makes sense.

Think about it for yourself. Have you ever experienced a social situation where you in , either in the moment or later on you thought, "man, I fumbled that one. I, I, I should have said it differently. I should have done something differently." And then you feel what? You feel bad about yourself. You think, oh, it's like cringey, right?

You just feel like, "ugh, just wish I could just forget that that happened. I wish I could go back in time and change that. I wish the ground would just open up and swallow me whole." You know that, you know that feeling. That is connected to a perception that you failed in a social setting. Right? Being successful in social settings is [00:06:00] important to us as humans, is that's, that's the point.

Okay. So what does that have to do with museum work? Let's go back to Maslow's hierarchy here. Now we're up a little higher on the pyramid. We are not at the bottom, which is all about our physical needs. We're kind of like in the middle here. Our self-esteem, feeling that we are successful, feeling that we have accomplished something, and that feeling of success is dependent upon, upon our social needs being met.

So this is where museums can come into play. People visit, for the most part, people visit museums in social groups. They come with families, they come with friend groups. They come um, on [00:07:00] bus tours. They come with school groups. They come with scout groups. By and large people visit museums in groups. It's very rare, it happens,

but it's very rare, that a person visits visits a museum alone. Right? Think about your own experience in a museum. How many times have you seen someone come in by themselves? Versus how many times do you see people come in, in groups, at least with one other person? We typically visit museums in social groups.

So museums are a setting in our culture that allow us to exhibit our success as social beings. Let me say that again. Museums are a setting in our culture that allow us to [00:08:00] exhibit our success as social beings. This is so important, and let me tell you what John Falk says about this concept in terms of family groups.

If you are a museum educator, pay attention. If you work with children, pay attention. Because as you know, if you've been around here even a little bit, you know that I say it over and over and over and over again. Our work is not childish just because we work with children. Listen to this quote from John Falk's book.

When I read this, I wanted to jump up and just throw a party. Listen to this quote. " Parents perceive museums as a setting that allows them to positively fulfill their social role as parents. In fact, they perceive museums enable [00:09:00] them to excel at this role." I'll say it again because I think it's so important that as educators we hear this. "Parents perceive museums

as a setting that allows them to positively fulfill their social role as parents. In fact, they perceive museums enable them to excel at this role." John Falk's research points again and again, and again, and again to the fact that museums create opportunities for parents to feel good about their parenting in our American society, which means,

parents will want to go to your museum to engage in programming that makes them feel better about their role as parents. It doesn't matter really what you're doing. It doesn't really matter what your topic is. It doesn't really matter what your [00:10:00] program is about. I mean it does, and that gets into personal and intellectual areas, and that gets into the transformation economy.

We're gonna talk about that in the next episode. But just the fact that you have programming at your site that parents can take their children to, it doesn't matter what else. It literally doesn't matter what else happens. Just that fact alone means parents already feel better about themselves because they have engaged in your programming with their children.

They feel like museums allow them to demonstrate their success as parents. So again, I say it: if you aren't offering programming for children and families, you are missing a huge opportunity. And if you're an educator and you feel like you cannot seem to get traction in getting funding for [00:11:00] your programming, you should get this book and you highlight this and you take it to your board and you take it to your fundraisers and you tell them.

Programming for families, it's where it's at. If you want people in your community to feel good about themselves. And therefore come back to your museum and spend money at your museum and support your museum, you have to have programming that allows them to exhibit their social success. They have to have a space where they can feel like social, successfully, social . , And as if that we're not enough, there is a

bonus benefit to going to museums in the social context. Okay. When we are feeling good about ourselves, and in this context, we feel we're talking about feeling good about ourself in community with other people, we [00:12:00] experience elevated oxytocin levels, right? This is a fact of our biology when we are in social settings where we feel good about ourselves, we feel like we're doing it well, we're doing a good job,

um, and remember, of course that this, our ability to feel good about ourselves in a social context is dependent on our first and foremost feeling, physically safe and secure. So we feel physically safe and secure. We go to these places where we feel physically safe and secure. We're experiencing physical wellbeing in a social context.

This makes us feel good about ourselves. We're feeling happy. We have happy hormones, right? So our bodies are producing these happy hormones. We have elevated oxytocin levels. Here's the coolest part about I, I think that this is just, so, so, so cool. Did you know [00:13:00] that the benefits of elevated oxytocin levels are not just short term.

They don't just make us feel good in the moment. They have been shown to facilitate memory function, which means that you are more likely to have a memory of an event when you are happy there, when you're feeling good, you're gonna remember what you're doing. Essentially what's happening in that context is not just that I'm having a memory of a good experience, what's really happening there is that I would be learning.

We're gonna talk about this more when we talk about the learning context in the next episode. This is sort of like a preview, but learning and memory hold hands. You can't learn something if you aren't remembering it. Learning is just essentially the word that we use to describe [00:14:00] a series of connected memories.

So if we need elevated oxytocin levels to improve our ability to remember something, and we can get those elevated levels by being successful and having a happy experience in a social setting where we feel comfortable, then of course it makes sense. If we want visitors to learn something and have a transformation, we cannot do that without creating a setting where they feel physically safe, comfortable,

and able to experience happy, successful social interaction. So what can we do now as educators to create settings where families, children, and um, student groups can feel successful in a social context? So let's get [00:15:00] real specific again here. One of the big things that, and we talk a lot about this with student programming, we talk about asking questions and the value of inquiry.

If you provide opportunity in your programming, whether it's a tour, a guided tour, a self-guided gallery tour, activities in a children's gallery or a classroom of some kind. Any time that you can provide an opportunity for a family group to interact among themselves, then you are creating an opportunity for those parents or for the adults in the group to perceive themselves as

being good grownups in that situation, like this is an example of parents feeling like, "man, they're really nailing this parenting thing" because they are engaging in some kind of activity with their children in this museum setting. So the more that you can [00:16:00] provide opportunities for family groups to interact amongst themselves without your direct participation, you're gonna improve their experience.

Other ways that you can improve social interactions in your museum is by engaging in conversation with them. So lots of questions, lots of answers. So if you are looking for a resource that will help you craft better questions and better conversation, that allows for an improved social experience for children and family groups,

then you should absolutely check out the book called "Tours for Children and Teens," which is published by the National Docent Symposium Council, um, in, I think it was 2022. It's not, yeah, I'm almost positive it was 2022. Um, that book is filled with examples and of questions that you can ask if. If you're an art [00:17:00] museum, by the way, buy this book,

it is, you, you could literally just copy and paste the questions from this book into your tours. It's, it's very, it's skews towards art museums. I'll be honest, as a history person, I really love this book, but it would take a little bit more critical thought on your part to take the principles that they have listed in this book and apply them to history settings, even more so for science museums.

But if you're an art museum, you can just copy and paste these conversations right into your tour. It would be amazing for you if you were looking for a resource that will help you craft better conversations. This is the book for you.

So just to quickly recap what we talked about today, we discussed the physical and social aspects of a museum visit and why getting those experiences right for our visitors allows them to then take [00:18:00] intellectual risks, personal risks, and have transformative experiences, which as we talked about in the last episode, is what visitors really want.

After all, they want to be transformed. They actually want to learn when they come to our site. But they can't do that if we miss the mark on their physical and social experiences. So we gotta get those right first before we can move on to what we want them to actually learn and be personally transformed by.

So as I wrap up, I just want to remind you that you can find all of the show notes for this episode, the transcript, and all of the links to the books that I mentioned on my website. If you go to ModernMuseumEducation.com/podcast you will find the episode show notes and you'll also find a link to that new section of my website

 the bookshelf, where you can get all, all of the books that I talk about are reviewed on there, and then you can find the links to them [00:19:00] and, and you can, you know, get those for yourself if those are helpful to you.

I also wanna remind you, that if you are interested in this topic and you would like to have a targeted conversation with your staff about how these concepts directly relate to what you do, particularly in your institution, then we can, we can do that. So go to my website, ModernMuseumEducation.com/services and look for professional development.

I can come to your site and we can have this workshop in person, or we can do it online via Zoom, if that works better for you and your staff. We can talk with your particular educators, interpreters, guides, and docents about what they are doing and how they are interacting with your visitors and how what they do can improve their guests wellbeing and therefore, improve their experience and therefore make it easier for [00:20:00] them to learn and be transformed by your institution.

So if you want more information about that workshop or any of my other services, just visit modern museum education.com/services.

Thank you so much for joining us. If this episode has been helpful to you or interesting, please take a minute to like subscribe and leave a review, which will help other museum educators find this resource. As always, if you would like to work with me more directly, have any questions or would like to be a guest on the podcast, you can find links to all that and more on my website, modern museum education.com. 

I'll see you back here next time. And in the meantime, please remember that your work is not childish, just because you work with children.