Research on Science and Culture Communication Strategy of Science and Technology Museum’s Based on Visitor Needs

Liu Yuhua, Ma Yugang

Scientific Research Management Department, China Science and Technology Museum, Beijing, China

Abstract: As a public scientific and cultural service facility, the STM should not only disseminate scientific knowledge, ideas, methods and spirits, but also improve the public’s ability to understand science, innovate and apply technology, and enhance the integration of science and culture. In view of the different scientific and cultural needs of different visitors, the adoption of different scientific and cultural communication strategies is a guarantee for the realization of STM’s function of public cultural service. For example, for preschool children, the ‘Science Park’ is set up to realize scientific enlightenment education mainly through games and experiences; for students in school, the ‘combination of STMs’ and schools’ education activities are set up in combination with the science curriculum standards; for young people with innovative needs, the ‘scientific and technological innovation’ exhibition area and related training courses are offered; for the parents who accompany the children to visit, parents-children interactive education activities are set up; for the elderly visitor, health and nutrition lectures are offered. In a word, the STMs in various places continue to explore and innovate in the dissemination of science and culture, and play a more and more important role in promoting the improvement of scientific and cultural literacy of the whole people.

Keywords: Science and Technology Museum;Visitor; Demand; Scientific Culture; Communication

On March 1, 2017, the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Guarantee of Public Cultural Services (hereinafter referred to as the Guarantee Law) formally implemented. The law clearly points out that public cultural facilities mainly include libraries, museums, cultural centers (stations), art galleries, science andtechnology museums, memorial halls and so on. The main purpose of the Safeguard Law is to take the people as the center and meet the basic cultural needs of citizens, which is also the goal of the science and technology museums. The promulgation and implementation of the Safeguard Law further confirms the legal status of science and technology museums as a public cultural facility, and provides a basic legal guarantee for the dissemination of science and culture of science and technology museum.

Scientific culture communication is to popularize scientific knowledge, advocate scientific method, disseminate scientific thinking, promote the scientific spirit, in order to improve the scientific literacy of the public. As a public scientific and cultural service facility, modern science and technology museums should not only disseminate scientific knowledge, methods, thinking and spirit, but also constantly improve the public’s ability to understand science, innovate and apply science, and enhance the integration of scientific culture and humanistic culture.

To meet the scientific and cultural needs of the public, science and technology museums need to provide different scientific and cultural communication strategies according to different needs of different visitors. From the perspective of the visitor structure of science and technology museums, children, adolescents, adults and the elderly are all parts of the visitor of the museum. Different people have different physiological and cognitive development charac-teristics. It is necessary to study and analyze the characteristics and needs of different visitors so as to provide exhibitions or activities which they need.

1. Setting up Paradise for Children

Children’s concepts are mostly formed in life and play, and new knowledge is acquired in play. They seek physical contact and participation in hands-on exhibits, and acquire new knowledge in contact and participation. Children tend to discover multiple senses, which are the natural way to understand their surroundings. Multisensory knowledge is also a means for children to grasp and test things. Children, especially those aged 3 to 6, can repeat their favorite exhibitions and experimental activities and enjoy them. They visit science and technology museums for both play and study.

Play is the main way of children’s participation exhibition in Science Park. According to incomplete statistics, about half of science and technology museums in China have specialized children’s exhibition halls or exhibition areas. According to the observation in the science and technology museums work and field research, no matter in the off-season or peak season, Science Park is one of the most popular exhibition areas with a large flow of people Science and Technology Museums.

The exhibition hall of Children’s Science Paradise of China Science and Technology Museum, which was the earliest completed in China, opened in 2001. It is warmly welcomed by children and parents. It received an average of 380,000 visitors a year. In the eight years from 2001 to 2009, it received more than 3 million visitors and won the National Museum System Most Popular Award for Visitors.

The exhibition hall of Science Paradise in the new China Science and Technology Museum takes children’s growth needs as the basis, exhibits scientific contents suitable for children’s physical and mental characteristics, adopts a variety of teaching and exhibition methods based on games and exploratory interactive participation, encourages children to experience and think positively, pays attention to the interaction between children and parents. In the exhibit and play, children can experience the pleasure of inquiry, which are stimulated curiosity and cultivate a passion for science.

When designing the exhibition area of Rainbow Children’s Paradise, Shanghai Science and Technology Museum thinks that the most important activity in childhood is ‘play’. Children learn and imitate through play, and then construct their own ideas and thinking. For children aged 3 to 10, play is an important way for them to learn. Therefore, the activities of the children’s science exhibition area are planned and designed in accordance with the characteristics of children’s behavior and the way of games.

With the increase of children’s vocabulary, there is a sensitive period of speech, reading and writing. However, language development is still influenced by context and depends on context. It is one of the methods of exhibition design in Science Park to create a situation so that children can master more scientific knowledge in the situation experience. According to the characteristics of the children in this age group and relevant educational theories, the Children’s World in Guangdong Science Center can be understood through interactive games, role playing, situational experience, scientific inquiry and other colorful forms from the perspective of children’s experience, observation and cognitive development. Simple scientific knowledge can enrich children’s childhood experience, keep them curious, stimulate imagination and creativity, and arouse interest in learning and exploration desire.

2. Setting up Activities of ‘Combination of Museums and Schools’ for Students

Visitors of science and technology museums are mainly students. Young students from primary schools, junior middle schools and senior middle schools constitute the core of the current visitor of science and technology museums. Teenagers at the learning stage have already contacted some basic knowledge in school, but they have not reached a comprehensive, professional and deeper level. The interactive exhibits of science and technology museums can practice what they learned in school, understand the application of knowledge in life, so that they can grasp and use scientific knowledge faster and better.

Zhengzhou Science and Technology Association, Zhengzhou Education Bureau and Zhengzhou Civilization Office jointly issued a paper to promote the work of Science and Technology Museum Activities into Campus. The three units jointly formed an office and established a long-term mechanism of ‘combination of museum and school’. During the activities, Zhengzhou Science and Technology Museum also undertook the work of training courses for primary and secondary school teachers, science course design contest and so on, and promoted the combination of resources of the science and technology museum and school education.

Since 2015, Chongqing Science and Technology Museum has carried out a comprehensive project of combination of museum and school, which includes theme visits, exhibition hall theme activities, happy popular science drama, interesting scientific experiments, and hands-on training in the Science Dream Workshop. All activities are designed on a class basis. The school can arrange and calculate the teaching content by ordering dishes according to the students’time in science and technology museums. By September 2018, Chongqing Science and Technology Museum independently has developed 125 curriculum resources, signed 108 primary and secondary schools, a total of 1557 reception classes, 3268 class hours, benefiting more than 140,000 students. Chongqing Science and Technology Museum has also designed and manufactured ‘Activity Manual’ which combines museum and school services and has put into trial use more than 30, 000 copies.

China Science and Technology Museum established the project of ‘school based on museum-school combination’ in 2017. It provides the first batch of 200 cooperative schools with five services, including venue activities, innovative personnel training, school-based curriculum development, science and technology teacher training, and the activities of the CSTM into the campus. In the venue activities, in addition to the exhibition hall visits, but also for the students to come to the museum to provide a‘first lesson’ ‘high school entrance exam string talk’ ‘custom Science and Technology Museum tour’ and other brand activities.

Combining with the science curriculum standards, we carry out various activities of combining museum with school, invite teachers and students to come in, design various visiting routes and experimental courses which are combined with the curriculum standards, and provide scientific practice activities for students; at the same time, the science experiment and curriculum of Science and Technology Museum ‘go out’ make the science course of science and technology museums enter the science classroom in school.

3. Setting up Parent-child Interaction Activities for Adults

Survey data show that in science and technology museums the most is the age of 26 to 45 years old visitors, accounting for 47.1%, mostly visit with children. So parents constitute the largest number of visitors in science and technology museums. In addition to student group visits organized by schools, children and adolescents and other minor visitors are mostly accompanied by parents to visit science and technology museums, and even two or three parents accompany with a child, especially in science parks where parents are more than children. So, is the parents looking at the museum during the visit, or do they take the whole process to guide their children to visit?

Brown observed the parent-child interaction at the Science Center and found that ‘parental response’ can be divided into eight categories:(1) custodial type; (2) maintain order; (3) aid type;(4) with head type; (5) deputy type; (6) partner type; (7) leadership type; (8) demonstration operation. From the first to the fourth parental behavioral roles are classified as negative, while the fifth to the eighth are positive. Because subconsciously they do not regard themselves as the target visitor of the science and technology museums, but only with the idea of accompanying the visit, the number of parents in science and technology museums is very large, but the degree of participation is relatively low, some just follow the children behind to remind the children of safety, and some even sit beside as spectators, in the process with the children. Play and study as the focus, ignoring their own knowledge of science and technology learning, visit the process of children’s guidance is not enough attention. Therefore, there are more negative parents in science and technology museums.

Many science museums abroad attach great importance to parent-child group visitors, and many family projects emphasize parent-child interaction, such as ‘grandchildren building a house’ and other game forms of parent-child interaction activities have been widely used abroad. It is worth studying how to better play the role of parents and increase the participation of parents. In China, science and technology museums pay more and more attention to parent-child group visitors. When developing the exhibition activities, we should tap the potential of accompanying parents to participate in the interactive experience activities of science and technology museums.

During the National Day of 2015, China Science and Technology Museum held a Parent-child Science Carnival. During the seven-day holiday, 98 events were held, attracting 1548 children and parents from 619 parent-child families. Based on the rich educational resources of science popularization activity room and laboratory, the activity integrates three interactive science games and three science inquiry activities into a carnival theme activity. By setting up diversified parent-child interaction projects, parents and children are allowed to play, compete, produce and experiment in different forms. Explore science and experience pleasure in a relaxed and joyful holiday atmosphere.

Parent-child interaction can better mobilize parents to participate in the exhibition activities of science and technology museums, so that they can not only guide their children to visit science and technology museums, but also experience science in parent-child activities, and enhance parent-child relationship.

4. Setting up Health Education Programs for the Elderly

At present, China has already entered an aging society. According to the statistics in 2005, China’s elderly population over the age of 60 has accounted for 11% of the total population, and is growing rapidly at the rate of 3% a year. The demand for cultural life of the elderly is increasing day by day. With the implementation of the policy of free opening of science and technology museums, more and more elderly visitors come to the museum, especially during non-holiday period, the proportion of elderly visitors in S science and technology museums is relatively high.

Except for accompanying grandchildren, most of the elderly visitors to Science and Technology Museum belong to visiting science and technology museums independently. For many reasons, such as retirement at home, the elderly have more free time to spend than adults. They want to visit science and technology museums to understand the state of social development. The development of science and technology has reached a certain degree. After all, many new technologies and theories are produced every day, hoping to learn from the exhibits of science and technology museums. We live in a different, new, and progressive environment than we have ever experienced. Of course, exhibitions closely related to life may attract the attention of older visitors, which makes it easy for them to relate to the reality of life, and hope that through visits to understand the state of their lives, to understand the common sense of life, to improve and improve their quality of life.

At present, science and technology museums do not pay enough attention to the elderly visitor. Some science and technology museums organize special visits to the elderly on the 9th of September of the lunar calendar. The elderly show great interest in the interactive and experiential exhibits of science and technology museums, and have a high degree of participation and experience. However, science and technology museums have not yet developed a large number of educational activities for the elderly visitor, some health lectures are still traditional lectures, lack of innovation, rigid form. It is suggested that the interactive science exhibition and experience activities should be developed to meet the health, nutrition and health needs of the elderly, so that the elderly visitor can get more scientific and cultural contents of their concern in science and technology museums.

According to the different scientific and cultural needs of different visitors, different strategies of scientific and cultural communication are the safeguard measures for science and technology museums to realize its public cultural service function. Science and technology museums have been exploring and innovating in the dissemination of science and culture. This paper studies the scientific and cultural needs of the visitors in science and technology museums from the perspective of age, and analyzes the innovative exploration made by science and technology museums according to the different needs of different visitors. It is believed that with the deepening of the research on the needs of the visitors, science and technology museums will play an increasingly important role in promoting the scientific and cultural literacy of the whole people to innovate teaching activities according to the different needs of different visitors and improve the effect of scientific and cultural communication.