Decoding And Other "sounding Outs" Of Museum Texts

By Author: Amandda
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Decoding printed text is no minor point when it comes to museum literacies. Many museums display lengthy printed wall texts and labels that can take on the appearance of content area textbook pages. From those texts, a teacher or parent, for instance, might assist readers with sounding out words on a printed label or show how derivatives unlock meanings of words on museum wall texts. But sounding out texts takes on new meanings in virtual and actual museum spaces—recently museums have begun to use a host of new media for decoding assistance, literacy teaching and learning, and other support.

Take for example, the audiotape guides that often accompany exhibited objects, such as the guides offered by New York City's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). There is a growing network of museum podcasts and related multimedia available online that may be used by educators, as shown in Table 1. In addition to supporting students in their printed text reading (e.g., gallery labels) by providing Vibram Five Fingers audio files during a virtual or actual museum visit as shown in the ...
... online MoMA example, some museums provide multimedia files with dialogue among museum experts about particular collections and exhibitions, background music, video content, and printed text messages. These multimedia resources enable teachers, as well as students, to prepare for and follow up on museum visits as well as have virtual museum experiences when, for instance, travel to actual museums is not possible.

The Bedford Museum offered audio guides and devices for patron use, and their podcasts had titles designed to attract patron attention, such as "What's Love Got to Do With It?" (a conversation about reuniting the head and body of an Aphrodite statue) and "Die Like an Egyptian" (labeled by the museum as Egyptomania). However, none of the participants in this study chose to use these devices, although they were available. Nevertheless, the adolescents sometimes participated in oral reading and sounding out of printed museum texts, particularly when encountering technical words on museum labels. This took unusual turns with Periwinkle and Chastain, two adolescents who visited the museum outside of school time.

Periwinkle and Chastain were extroverted girls who attended a private high school in an affluent suburb of Marthasville and identified themselves as white. They reported that they enjoyed reading, especially magazines focused on popular culture, and that they were AP (advanced placement) students. Like other participants in the study, they were wired with audiotape recorders as they passed through galleries at the Bedford Museum. The following is representative of their nearly nonstop conversations and took place in front of a long glass case of labeled museum objects from Mesoamerica:

As this conversation suggests, the girls spent time in Bedford galleries attempting to pronounce label words. This might be seen as a rather mundane effort for Chastain and Periwinkle to learn new terms and Vibram Fivefingers Shoes draw associations with objects. However, they also laughed and poked fun at museum texts during their museum stroll and label decoding, as shown in the following observations and exchanges:

Chastain: [removes a laminated museum guide, which looks much like an illustrated textbook page, from a museum wall pocket; glances at it; and quickly places it back into the pocket while rolling her eyes] Ha ha ha.

Periwinkle: [noticing Chastain's actions] I did read one of those things back there. It was telling about the mummies and what they were made of and stuff. It was the only one I read, I saw other ones, but I didn't really read them. Ha ha.

Chastain: [looking at a display case, giggling, and spelling aloud] S-C-O-L-I-O-S-I-S [giggles].