Museum Visitors and the Development of Understanding

In setting out to say what I think is important for museum educators to have in mind about developmental theory, I want to use Jean Piaget's work on the development of understanding in infancy, where the roots of children's thinking lieand our own as well. I hope this perspective will offer some useful insights into ways all of us can help learners approach new material. The single most important aspect of Piaget's thought for museum educators is his emphasis on the centrality of actions to ways of knowing. Piaget traces all human knowledge to its roots in the activities of infants.1 Transforming the knowledge gained through actions in infancy into conceptual, representational knowledge is a lifelong human endeavor. Childhood is an interesting middle ground. For the most part, we believe we understand children's experiences, and yet sometimes their perspectives can stun us. When this happens, it is usually because of the centrality of action as a means of understanding. It is worthwhile to sketch out what Piaget means when he speaks of an infant's actions as the root of knowledge by looking at his presentation of the development of the notion of permanent objects during the first year of life. The general finding of his classic study Construction of Reality in the Child (1950) is well known. In their first few months, infants act as if an object has no continuing existence of its own. If an interesting plaything the infant is reaching for is covered with a cloth, he or she stops reaching for it. Or, even more significant, the infant will go back to look for it in a place he or she has found it before. To the infant the object does not seem to have an integrity, a location in space. What is less well known is Piaget's interpretation of the infant's experience before he or she develops the notion of object permanence. To begin with, what we would call an object is for the child indissociable from his or her own action. Here are Piaget's words, describing a sixto nine-