Turning Visitors into Citizens: Using Social Science for Civic Engagement in Informal Science Education Centers

How can museums and other informal learning institutions cultivate greater civic engagement among the visiting public around important social issues? This case study of the National Network of Ocean and Climate Change Interpreters' (NNOCCI) professional learning community illustrates how insights from the social sciences can be productively integrated into existing museum interpretation practice. NNOCCI partnered with social scientists at the FrameWorks Institute to strengthen interpreters' capacity to improve museum climate literacy efforts through Strategic Frame Analysis (TM), an approach to communications research and practice that identifies how the public's deeply held worldviews impact civic participation. insights from FrameWorks' original research on the topics of climate change and oceans formed the content of training curriculum. Based on feedback from pilot participants, an interactive pedagogy suited to the museum education context was developed and expanded to reach 150 informal science education institutions through 2015.