The Heritage Given: Cultural Landscape and Heritage of the Vistula Delta Mennonites as Perceived by the Contemporary Residents of the Region

All tangible and intangible elements of cultural heritage that the past has conceded to local communities create unique landscapes shaped by tightly connected anthropogenic and natural factors. This heritage is a keystone of local identity which plays a significant role in politics, economic development, society and world view. In some regions, such as in the Vistula delta in Poland, the cultural heritage has been created by consecutive groups of settlers who represented different values, beliefs and ways of life. On the one hand, such a rich heritage may be perceived as a valuable asset and become a landmark or tourism product of a region. On the other hand, it may be perceived as alien and unwanted by contemporary residents, especially when they are not descendants of the former communities. The main objective of the study presented herein is to analyse how the residents of the Vistula delta region, called Żuławy Wiślane, perceive and use cultural heritage of the Mennonites, representing the most extraordinary group of settlers who used to live in the region. The analysis covers original data gathered during survey research in the period of 2017–2018 under the project Miniatura I “Perception and usage of cultural heritage of the Vistula delta Mennonites” financed by the National Science Centre in Poland.

Thinking Language Awareness at a Science Centre

Situated in the highly multilingual context of Vancouver, this article discusses aspects of a collaborative research project, intertwining the development of language awareness and scientific, technological, and multilingual literacies in a science centre environment. Participants were multilingual, kindergarten-aged children who attended an interactive, activity-based science educational program in a local science centre and participated in writing activities in a nearby community centre. The article will discuss the science centre as a transformative learning environment to harness cultural and linguistic diversity, a vital resource to simultaneously develop language awareness, and science knowledge. Multimodal data sources include visual documentation of the linguistic landscape at the science centre, as well as photographs, video recordings and field notes of children working individually or in small groups, and a selection of the products children created.

Zulu Creation Myths by Credo Mutwa – Ancient Tradition or Mutwa’s Invention?

Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa (1921–2020) was one the most famous and controversial sangomas in South Africa. He is the first sangoma who published books about sangomas’ vocation and work, and revealed his version of Zulu myths. This paper first establishes if Mutwa’s tales can be considered myths, then if those stories are cohesive with versions known to academics and contemporary sangomas. The aim of this article is to analyse the creation myths that Mutwa presents, establish if they are original Zulu myths or his creations, and find international mythological motifs that could have influenced him. Mutwa’s myths are compared with myths collected by other researchers. Mutwa’s opinions, gained during a 2013 field visit to his home in Kuruman, South Africa, are also presented. The field studies among contemporary sangomas were financed by the Polish National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki), Poland, project no. 2017/25/N/HS1/02500.

Facilitators Improve the Learning Experience of Visitors to a Science Centre

We studied how interactions with interpretative science centre staff impacts the learning behaviours and engagement levels of visitors who engage with exhibits at Science North (Sudbury, Canada). This study uses the Visitor-Based Learning Framework. The tool consists of seven discrete learning-associated behaviours that visitors show when engaging with exhibits, which are grouped into three categories of engagement: Initiation, Transition, and Breakthrough. These categories reflect increasing levels of engagement and depth of the learning experience. We studied forty-seven Science North exhibits, and 4,835 visitors to analyse the impact of unstructured facilitation in a naturalistic setting. We compared visitor Engagement Levels with and without a facilitator present. We determined that the presence of staff has a statistically significant impact on the percentage of visitors that engage in Breakthrough behaviours. When a facilitator is present, more visitors reach the Breakthrough Level of Engagement (p < 0.001). In the second phase of the study, we explored what facilitators do and say through thematic analysis to uncover common patterns of facilitator actions and comments. Our findings showed that facilitators employed strategies and methods that can be grouped in four categories or Facilitation Dimensions: Comfort, Information, Reflection, and Exhibit Use. These dimensions encompass different strategies and techniques of facilitation, that are used in a variety of situations and sequences. Our study goes beyond anecdotal evidence to show that staff-visitor interactions have a positive impact on visitor engagement with exhibits and therefore, potentially on visitor learning from exhibits. Our findings can be used to inform not only training programs but also managerial decisions and considerations around resource allocation. We suggest that facilitators are a fundamental asset for institutions that prioritize visitor engagement, one that should be given top priority when considering areas for investing.

Murmansk painter Shevnin Anatoly Nikolaevich. To the 70th anniversary of his birth

The publication is dedicated to the anniversary exhibition of art works by Murmansk painter Anatoly Shevnin, organized in the Museum-Archive of the History of Study and Development of the European North of the Barents Centre of Humanities of the Kola Science Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Biographical information about the artist and description of his creative career are given

An evaluation of the Science Learner Assisted Program (SLAP) at the University of Limpopo Science Centre, South Africa

This paper is an evaluation of the Science Learner Assisted Programme (SLAP) at the University of Limpopo Science Centre. The evaluation is intended to be useful for improving the program and informing social action aimed at amending educational problems (related to science education faced by schools in the Limpopo Province (South Africa). The purpose of the evaluation was to evaluate the design of SLAP and how it was being delivered to the target group (Grade 10-12 learners). Data were collected from August to October 2016. Data were collected via documentation review, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, and observations. Forty-five learners completed the questionnaires. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis techniques were employed during the data analysis process. In terms of program design, the evaluation found that SLAP is aligned with the goals of the University of Limpopo Science Centre. With regard to program delivery, the evaluation found that the program's major activity is performing experiments. Methods of engaging learners include class discussions, presentations, and group discussions. The methods proved to be effective as the level of participation was high during lessons. Affordability of lessons, the performance of experiments, and information sharing was mentioned as aspects of implementation facilitating the success of the program, while overcrowding, small labs, insufficient resources, and learners being unprepared for lessons were reported as impeding the success of service delivery. Teachers reported that the program was of great assistance to them as they learn to simplify topics and improve their methods of engaging learners in class

What Makes us Curious? Analysis of a Corpus of Open-Domain Questions

Every day people ask short questions through smart devices or online forums to seek answers to all kinds of queries. With the increasing number of questions collected it becomes difficult to provide answers to each of them, which is one of the reasons behind the growing interest in automated question answering. Some questions are similar to existing ones that have already been answered, while others could be answered by an external knowledge source such as Wikipedia. An important question is what can be revealed by analysing a large set of questions. In 2017, “We the Curious” science centre in Bristol started a project to capture the curiosity of Bristolians: the project collected more than 10,000 questions on various topics. As no rules were given during collection, the questions are truly open-domain, and ranged across a variety of topics. One important aim for the science centre was to understand what concerns its visitors had beyond science, particularly on societal and cultural issues. We addressed this question by developing an Artificial Intelligence tool that can be used to perform various processing tasks: detection of equivalence between questions; detection of topic and type; and answering of the question. As we focused on the creation of a “generalist” tool, we trained it with labelled data from different datasets. We called the resulting model QBERT. This paper describes what information we extracted from the automated analysis of the WTC corpus of open-domain questions.

Environmental Sustainability in New Zealand Museums: A Case Study of Te Manawa Museum, Gallery and Science Centre

<p>Environmental sustainability is becoming an increasingly essential component of modern life. The contemporary museums’ role as public educators, and as guardians of tangible and intangible culture, places them in a unique position to address the various issues surrounding environmental sustainability, from climate change, to bio-diversity loss, to conservation. There is increasing momentum behind the idea that museums should not only engage with environmental sustainability, but that they indeed have a responsibility to. Although museums throughout New Zealand are addressing environmental sustainability, there is currently no thorough examination of how they are doing this. Therefore, the aim of this dissertation was so find out the current state of environmental sustainability in New Zealand museums, and specifically how staff are approaching it. Through engaging in a case study of Te Manawa Museum, Gallery and Science Centre, Palmerston North, and specifically the environmentally themed exhibition Te Awa/The River: Heart of the Manawatu, this dissertation analyses and discusses the realities of addressing institutional environmental sustainability. While the previous literature surrounding this topic has addressed the many reasons why museums should engage with environmental sustainability, this dissertation has expanded on this by analysing and discussing the realities of addressing environmental sustainability from a staff perspective. Through interviews with five Te Manawa staff members, this dissertation has revealed that while museum professionals agree that engagement with environmental sustainability should become part of bottom line holistic sustainable development, the status of museums as trusted democratic institutions can place them in a conflicted space ‘in-between’ when dealing with polarising issues such as the environment. This is particularly relevant to the discussion around new-museological theory, and the importance of local context and reflexive community engagement, where the community essentially help drive museological direction and content.</p>