John Howard Falk (December 6, 1948) is Director of the Institute for Learning Innovation [1] and Sea Grant Professor Emeritus of Free-Choice Learning at Oregon State University. [2] [3] He's a leading expert on "free-choice learning," learning guided by a person's needs and interests. At the Smithsonian Institution's Chesapeake Bay Center for Environmental Studies at Edgewater, Maryland, Falk spent over 13 years "studying lawns and how man relates to them." [4] His current research focuses on the community impacts of museums, libraries, zoos, and aquariums; understanding the reasons people utilize free-choice learning settings during their spare time; and helping cultural institutions rethink their educational positioning in the contemporary era.
Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called holocultural studies or comparative studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences such as sociology, psychology, economics, political science that uses field data from many societies through comparative research to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture.
In education, a curriculum is broadly defined as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals. A curriculum may incorporate the planned interaction of pupils with instructional content, materials, resources, and processes for evaluating the attainment of educational objectives. Curricula are split into several categories: the explicit, the implicit, the excluded, and the extracurricular.
The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is a 183-acre (74 ha) zoo in Cleveland, Ohio. The Zoo is divided into several areas: Australian Adventure; African Savanna; Northern Wilderness Trek, The Primate, Cat & Aquatics Building, Waterfowl Lake, The RainForest, and the newly added Asian Highlands. Cleveland Metroparks Zoo has one of the largest collections of primates in North America, The Zoo is a part of the Cleveland Metroparks system.
The Calgary Zoo is located in Bridgeland, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, just east of the city's downtown and adjacent to the Inglewood and East Village neighborhoods. It is accessible via Calgary's C-Train light rail system, by car via Memorial Drive, and by bicycle and footpath via the Bow River pathway. A large portion of the zoo is located on St. George's Island in the Bow River.
Community archaeology is archaeology by the people for the people. The field is also known as public archaeology. There is debate about whether the terms are interchangeable; some believe that community archaeology is but one form of public archaeology, which can include many other modes of practice, in addition to what is described here. The design, goals, involved communities, and methods in community archaeology projects vary greatly, but there are two general aspects found in all community archaeology projects. First, community archaeology involves communities "in the planning and carrying out of research projects that are of direct interest to them". Second, community archaeologists generally believe they are making an altruistic difference. Many scholars on the subject have argued that community collaboration does not have a pre-set method to follow. Although not found in every project, there are a number of recurring purposes and goals in community archaeology. Similarities are also found in different countries and regions—due to commonalities in archaeological communities, laws, institutions, and types of communities. It has also been suggested that public archaeology can be defined in a broad sense as the production and consumption of archaeological "commodities".
Institutional ethnography (IE) is an alternative approach of studying and understanding the social. IE has been described as an alternative philosophical paradigm, sociology, or (qualitative) research method. IE explores the social relations that structure people's everyday lives, specifically by looking at the ways that people interact with one another in the context of social institutions and understanding how those interactions are institutionalized. IE is best understood as an ethnography of interactions which have been institutionalized, rather than an ethnography of specific companies, organizations or employment sectors, which would be considered industrial sociology or the sociology of work. For the institutional ethnographer, ordinary daily activity becomes the site for an investigation of social organization. IE was first developed by Dorothy E. Smith as a Marxist feminist sociology "for women, for people"; and is now used by researchers in social sciences, education, nursing, human services and policy research as a method for mapping the translocal relations that coordinate people's activities within institutions.
The Texas State Aquarium is a nonprofit aquarium located in Corpus Christi, Texas, United States. It aims to promote environmental conservation and rehabilitation of the wildlife of the Gulf of Mexico. It has been accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) since 1995. It is the largest aquarium in Texas, and one of the largest aquaria in the United States.
Andrew P. "Pete" Vayda was a Hungarian-born American anthropologist and ecologist who was a distinguished professor emeritus of anthropology and ecology at Rutgers University.
Museum theatre is the use of theatre and theatrical techniques by a museum for educational, informative, and entertainment purposes. It can also be used in a zoo, an aquarium, an art gallery, and at historic sites. It is generally performed by professional actors. Varieties of museum theatre include historical characters, puppetry, movement and music.
A green museum is a museum that incorporates concepts of sustainability into its operations, programming, and facility. Many green museums use their collections to produce exhibitions, events, classes, and other programming to educate the public about the natural environment. Many, but not all, green museums reside in a building featuring sustainable architecture and technology. Green museums interpret their own sustainable practices and green design to present a model of behavior.
The John Cotton Dana Library Public Relations Award, usually referred to as the John Cotton Dana Award, is an annual award given by Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures, American Library Association for excellence in library public relations. It is named for John Cotton Dana, a Progressive Era librarian who strove to make libraries accessible to as many people as possible. This award has been given continuously since 1946 and is sponsored by EBSCO Information Services, the H.W. Wilson Foundation and the Library Leadership and Management Association (LLAMA), a division of the American Library Association (ALA). Eight winners receive a $10,000 prize and a plaque. The award is considered to be the ALA's most prestigious honor.
Paul A. Shackel is an American anthropologist and a Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He joined the Department of Anthropology in 1996 after working for the National Park Service for seven and a half years. His research interests include Historical Archaeology, Civic Engagement, Social Justice, African Diaspora, Labor Archaeology, and Heritage Studies. He teaches courses in Historical Archaeology, Archaeology of the Chesapeake, and Method and Theory in Archaeology.
The theory of divergent modes of religiosity (DMR) is intended to explain how religions are created, transmitted, and changed. DMR theory was first developed by anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse following his ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. The theory proposes that religions tend to coalesce around two divergent modes, termed imagistic and doctrinal, which are distinguished primarily by their ritual practices. The imagistic mode is characterized by infrequently performed, high arousal rituals (e.g. initiation rites) and is associated with small scale, exclusive religious groups. In contrast the doctrinal mode is characterized by frequently performed, low arousal rituals (e.g. daily recitations of sacred texts) and is associated with larger inclusive communities, as found in the major world religions.
Museum fatigue is a state of physical or mental fatigue caused by the experience of exhibits in museums and similar cultural institutions. The collection of phenomena that characterize museum fatigue was first described in 1916, and has since received widespread attention in popular and scientific contexts.
Sherylyn H. Briller is an American cultural anthropologist, who specializes in medical anthropology and applied anthropology. Briller is a professor of anthropology, a faculty associate for the Center on Aging and the Life Course (CALC), an affiliated faculty in the Critical Disabilities Studies Program, and an instructor for the Design and Innovation minor at Purdue University. Briller's research focuses on the cross-cultural study of health, aging, disability and end-of-life issues in Mongolia and various parts of the United States. She has completed work as a researcher and consultant for various public and private organizations, including the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Cultural Keys, LLC.
Lynn Diane Dierking is a Sea Grant Professor in Free-Choice Learning, Science & Mathematics Education in the College of Science at Oregon State University. She is also the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Education at Oregon State.
Digital Technologies and the Museum Experience (2008), edited by Loïc Tallon and Kevin Walker, is a book about the use of digital technology by museums.
Jewish Responses to Persecution is a book series that reprints and analyzes primary source texts by Jews to understand the Jewish response to persecution by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1946. It was sponsored by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Museum Experience is a non-fiction book written by John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking. It is considered by many in the museum profession to be amongst the most important books on museum learning.
David Lancy is an American anthropologist and professor emeritus at Utah State University. He has made contributions to childhood development and the concept of "chore curriculum." He has been called "perhaps the world’s leading expert on child-parent relationships throughout the world." In 2001, he was awarded the Carnegie Foundation's Professor of the Year.
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