Taking time to listen and learn: a museum partnership designed to engage rural audiences in climate change conversations

ABSTRACT

A research-practice partnership between museum-based educators and scientists, learning researchers, and rural community members was designed to support climate change education in public settings. We consider the museum’s role in this work, tracing how the partnership built upon lessons learned from prior work, and used asset-based strategies to learn from the rural community. We present a survey of rural climate beliefs, interests and understandings that was used to surface starting points for our collective design work. The network’s first public-facing event helped the group to check our assumptions about a perceived “spiral of silence” that can shut down discourse and engagement around contentious issues, and provided opportunities to gauge the community’s interest in locally relevant climate change conversations. We describe how museums can address power and position to build trust with rural partners and audiences, and to extend their impact on urgent socio-scientific issues.

KEYWORDS:

• Research-practice partnerships
• climate change education
• rural education
• community-engagement
• museum partnerships
• informal learning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant awards #1906774 to Carnegie Museum of Natural History and #1906368 to the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out of School Environments. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Mary Ann Steiner

Mary Ann Steiner is a Research Associate at UPCLOSE.

Karen Knutson

Karen Knutson is Co-Lead of UPCLOSE.

Kevin Crowley

Kevin Crowley is Co-Lead of UPCLOSE.

Nicole Heller

Nicole Heller is Curator of the Anthropocene at CMNH.

Bonnie McGill

Bonne McGill was Ecosystem Ecologist & Science Communication Fellow, Anthropocene Studies at CMNH.

Laurie Giarratani

Laurie Giarratani is Director of Education at CMNH.

Jay Russell

Jay Russell is District Manager at the Mercer County Conservation District.

Taiji Nelson

Taiji Nelson was Senior Program Manager, Learning Resources of the Climate and Rural Systems Partnership (CRSP) at CMNH.