Chapter 2. Literature Review
2.5. Free Choice Learning
An educator’s aim, according to Dewey (1938/1998), is to select the appropriate
environment to guide each learner. In everyday life, however, “educators” are not often present and learners are guided more freely by their interests. They often choose the environments and media they wish to learn through. Falk (2005) argues that learners take part in a vast set of
“milieus” during the process of their education. Falk places schools and universities into the context of a much larger web of learning environments to which each citizen potentially has access.17 Falk (2005) claims that:
Given the proliferation of environmental information and its potential impact on virtually every facet of our lives, environmentalists concerned with creating and supporting a public environmental ethic need not only to accept, but also directly support, the expansion and improvement of these free-choice venues where such environmental information and understanding might be acquired. (p. 267)
Free-choice venues, such as those in Science World, allow learners to explore and understand environmental information at their own pace. This expands Dewey’s concept of learning
17 This represents “’the other 80%’ of time when children are awake and not in school” (Hassinger-Das et al. 2018, p.16).
environment to include science museums. And in this case, Dewey’s “educator” (creator of the conditions for the learning experience) seems to be subsumed into the responsibility of the exhibit designer. The designer as educator takes the notion of free-choice environment a step further, to allow for the possibility of environmental education without the presence of an educator. Interestingly, free-choice learning is also shown to support important neurological development in children and adults (Miller & Almon 2009; Slunjski & Ljubetic, 2013; Vasta et al., 1998 ).18
Thomas Humphrey, director of San Francisco’s Exploratorium Science Museum, extends the notion of learning environments into free-choice venues in his 2005 Active Prolonged Engagement. Here, a team of exhibit designers distinguished two fundamentally different kinds of free-choice learning exhibits: “Planned Discovery” (PD) and “Active
Prolonged Engagement” (APE). Planned Discovery exhibits are those which “focus discovery on specific ideas or concepts, the path to which has been orchestrated by the museum exhibits based off instruction” (p. 1). Active Prolonged Engagement exhibits support free-choice exploration with gentle guidance to promote “self-driven discovery by minimizing instruction and
explanation and by encouraging visitor-initiated observation, speculation, play and construction”
(p. 3). The shift from PD to APE, as they explain, leads to “a shift in the visitor’s role from that of a recipient of information to that of participant in the generation of activities, questions, and explanation related to phenomena” (Humphrey et al., 2005, p. 3). APE’s emphasis on prolonged exhibit engagement supports Gehl’s argument for the self-reinforcing quality of activities of longer duration.19
18 Free-choice learning has also been described as “informal education” where learning is accomplished through exploration and discovery, rather than explanation (CUREE, 2012). In their 2013 article “The Pedagogical Potential of Playing”, Slunjski and Ljubetic analyze the role of play in its transition into a higher stage of cognitive and social development (p. 128). Other studies by Hassinger-Das et al. (2018) describe play as a “laboratory of the possible”, stating further that “the flexible context of play allows children to encounter situations and enact behaviors that contribute to their scientific reasoning abilities” (p. 168).
19 The design of TDET exhibits such as Musical Chimes integrate the concept of exploration, play and free-choice learning in turn fostering a self-reinforcing process in public space.
The TDET is a type of outdoor public learning environment, rather than the fare-paying museum that typically house the APE exhibits: these have recently been recognized by
Philadelphia research and design group Urban Thinkscapes:
Incorporating playful elements into architecture and public space also promotes curiosity and a desire to learn. This is critical, because learning and development are significantly impacted by individuals’ and families’ environments. The physical environment can influence internally-driven curiosity, through the creation of a mise en place—a disposition and readiness to engage in and explore a learning activity — while also encouraging caregiver-child discourse and engagement in activities involving language, mathematics, and spatial topics. (Hassinger-Das et al., 2018, p. 3)
This description closely follows the concept of “learning environment” in its interrelation of physical and immaterial elements as a ‘mise-en-place’ (Hassinger-Das et al., 2018). The work of Hirsh-Pasek and her colleagues Hassinger-Das et al. (2018) is guided by the notion that “children only spend 20% of their waking hours in school. How can developmental scientists and
educators address this other 80% for the benefit of children’s development?” (p. 1). In the context of North America, examples of outdoor urban public learning environments such as those created by Urban Thinkscapes are given in Table 1.20
Table 1: Some examples of North Amercian public learning environments
The selection of examples in Table 1 is based on criteria set by Dewey (1938/1998) and expanded by Gislason (2007). First, the environments must include physical (3D
objects/interactive exhibits) and immaterial phenomena (information conveyed via interpretive
20 Urban Thinkscapes’s creation of public learning environments include “Puzzle Benches”, and “Jumping Feet”
targeting low and middle class neighbourhoods in Philadelphia, New York and other regions of eastern United States.
panels and posters). Second, each of these projects must be set within outdoor public spaces.
Amongst other projects in North America, the TDET meets these criteria.21 Such learning
environments in the public realm are now often incorporated into urban design projects as will be expanded in Appendix C.4.
In summary, the literature in Section 2.1 to 2.5 can be categorized into three research fields: education studies, museum studies, and urban studies.
Table 2: List of the literature presented above and its research field
Education studies brings us the notion of a learning environment and the ways in which it can be applied by educators in schools. Museum studies takes learning environments and
removes the need for an educator in free-choice learning experiences curated for interactive museum exhibits. Urban studies, finally, enfolds free-choice learning environments into the design of urban public spaces.
21 In Vancouver, the Trottier observatory on the SFU campus incorporates elements such as star maps and sundials.
The Shipyards Urban development project, using artifacts of its prior use of shipbuilding, brings an interpretative walkthrough to users of its public realm. Some in San Francisco take on an exhibit approach such as the Golden Gate Bridge Exhibits and Cienca Publica.