Kalantzis and Cope use decades of research to investigate how people come to know and how they make meaning. Their theories constantly evolve to anticipate emerging technology and cultural changes caused by living in a transformative global world that is always connected. By examining the learner as unique, diverse, and having their own individualistic way of processing, Kalantzis and Cope’s ideas reflect real-world learning using 21st-century skills to make meaning out of knowledge. When looking at meaning, Cope and Kalantzis (2016) reference the work of sociolinguist M.A.K. Halliday, who challenged the traditional concept of grammar and text.

At the same time, whenever we use language there is always something else going on. While construing, language is always also enacting: enacting our personal and social relationships with the other people around us. M. A. K. Halliday and Jonathan J. Webster (2005).

Video 3: Halladay’s Function of Langauge (tu ingles sin miedo 2021)

Cope and Kalantzis (2020) expanded on Halliday’s ideas in the book Making Sense.

Making Sense is a grammar of everyday life. In our old-fashioned schoolish understandings, “grammar” was the syntax of language, rules for correct speaking and writing. Following Michael Halliday’s suggestion, we want to use this word in a wider sense, to develop an account of grammar as patterns in meaning.

Eliminating grammar as a syntax of language is a difficult concept simply because the study of grammar in its traditional sense has been engrained as the cornerstone of education for centuries. In addition, replacing grammar with meaning can be disconcerting for learners of all levels simply because meaning is an ambiguous word - especially within different cultures. However, Kalantzis and Cope’s idea is based on today's world and the fact that we are an emerging, ubiquitous learning environment due to technology that uses a “knowledge economy.” Students of all ages have at their fingertips the tools, skills, and diversity to transform knowledge by creating meaning as individuals. And they are creating regardless of what they learn in school.

One way to explain this new concept of meaning is to analyze the synapses from material to idea. Kallantzis and Cope (2020) refer to the material as the reference point for interpretation. As it is processed by the learner, it transforms into the learner’s unique idea. The giver communicates it, and the taker processes the material to make their own meaning. In the traditional museum world where the object was displayed with a label or theme, academics would study the object (material) and, using their experience and research, interpret it into meaning (idea) that makes sense to them so that they can complete the step of quantitatively evaluating it.

Kalantzis and Cope (2012) offer a Charter for Change that focuses on transitions that should disrupt education. This transformation revolves around what they call a “knowledge economy” using “ubiquitous learning environments” that appreciate individual learners' life experiences, knowledge processing, diversity, and tools for knowing (multimodality), creating, and processing knowledge.

Transpositional grammar addresses the question of how individual learners take the material and turn it into an idea. This is done by the use of form and function to categorize grammar. In Adding Sense, Kalantzis (2020) states:

The main ideas in our transpositional grammar are form and function. Forms are the things we do to make meaning. Functions are the kinds of meaning we make.” Kalantzis and Cope (2020) categorize these functions into five categories “that meaning does in everyday life.” While grammar is defined by “what it does,” Kalantzis channels grammar into describing a “shared pattern language.

Converted into questions, Kalantzis describes using the functions of meaning in the following way:

Reference: What’s this about?

Agency: Who or what is doing this?

Structure: What holds this together?

Context: What else is this connected to?

Interest: What’s this for?

Figure 4: Meaning and Its Functions from Adding Sense, (Kalantzis and Cope 2020)

How does Cope, Kallantzis, and Halladay's research on meaning and its relation to grammar translate to museums as they form visitor and learning experiences?

The Nature of Museums

Figure 5: Old Picture of the Smithsonian Museum used in the book American Louvre (Charles J. Robertson, 2015)

Museums are known as aesthetically pleasing places that display objects of artists and evidence of the past known as artifacts. Historically, museums have been a place to care for collections so that academic researchers outside the museum could observe objects for study. 21st Century museums have transformed into venues that not only store and care for collections but interpret and make meaning for visitors of all ages, regardless of academics. Museums take pride in being experts on the object and the designers of thematic experiences that connect the objects. Museum workers extensively research the object and pass that knowledge on to visitors.

Within the museum world, giving knowledge about the object and curating the experience and theme contradict the impression from museums that museum visitors interpret objects to make their own meaning and sense in the world. This becomes even more complex because museum employees spend significant energy interpreting objects but proudly portray the message that museums are learning environments where visitors are the interpreters. Museums belong to a category of education traditionally known as informal education, and some museum designers and educators are also trained to be interpreters. As meaning makers, how does the museums' design of learning experiences and meaning compare against Kalanzis and Cope’s research on meaning? More specifically, how do museums intend to use material (the objects) so that visitors can transform them into their own ideas with their own meaning?

This case study uses research based on museums within the United States. However, it is important to distinguish between U.S. museums and International museums, using Europe as a model, when investigating the purpose of meaning. European museums are primarily government-owned and regulated. Their history is rich and long.  The intellectual ideas promoting individual rights from the time of the Ancient Greeks and Romans were lost or hidden, bringing about the early Middle Ages that suffocated the rights of individuals. Europe lived through this age, and one of the best ways to ensure it doesn’t happen again is for Governments to provide resources that protect cultural and historical objects (meanings) that translate into lessons from the past. This is why, in its mission statement, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) prioritizes the care of objects:

“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”

In contrast, the recommending body in the United States, the American Association of Museums, focuses on the visitor and community but doesn’t mention the objects:

“AAM states that its mission is to “champion equitable and impactful museums by connecting people, fostering learning and community, and nurturing museum excellence.”

If this case study were about European museums, it would be easier to connect Kalantzis and Cope’s “meaning” ideas because Europe's minimal use of themes and labels prepares the material specifically for interpretation and meaning-making. In the United States, creating an environment of meaning-making that all five functions of meaning can address is complicated. Although the meaning functions behind Kalantzis and Cope’s theory are relevant for learners to ask themselves, the functions could also be interpreted as the person behind the knowledge of the material curating the learning experience.

Video 4: Nick Saban on Trusting the Process (Supreme Leading South 2022).

As a coach, I am a fan of creating a simple target to focus on and believing in the process to get to the target.  The target is usually the "eye on the prize" and "trust in the process," which are used to convince players to work on the small steps to make the team successful, even if they fail at first.  To simplify Kalantzis and Cope's ideas about New Learning, I explain that it is about students' ownership of their own learning and the small steps they take to connect meaning. The "eye on the prize" is important but not vital if the process is followed. 

Video 5: Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Their Own Learning (Nic Hahn 2016)

This concept of learner ownership is easier to implement in a classroom because the five functions are known to the teacher, who establishes the objectives so that the students can also use the five functions to find meaning.  However, museums don't have that luxury. Visitors can come and go as they please, and museum staff don't have a relationship of trust established.  

While U.S. museums traditionally resembled modern European museums, focusing on the academic and elite, they began to see a significant decline in visitors as the internet, especially smartphone technology, emerged. This is a significant problem because visitor numbers are measured by stakeholder support and donations. STEM programs and a focus on emerging learning ideas equal big corporate donations. However, corporations want something in return, something that U.S. museums have unethically been forced to agree to, while European museums don't need to. Corporations want their name connected to the program, and ethically, this gives the perception, often correctly, that the design was not based on theory but on marketing, 

In her book A Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections, Third Edition, Marie Malaro (2012), emphasized the importance of museums following legal and ethical guidelines instead of chasing visitors. Malaro spent years developing the Smithsonian's legal and ethical guidelines, and the Smithsonian still abides by them today. But that is the Smithsonian, and by its name alone, it attracts the most visitors in the world with the added bonus of being funded by the Federal Government. In this view, the Smithsonian resembles European museums. The Smithsonian is also the museum all other museums in the United States aim for, but these museums don’t have government support or the name.

If Malaro’s book is considered the primary guidance for museums, which AAM endorses, then how can other museums attract the necessary visitors without compromising ethics like bypassing guidelines on donations, copyrights, ancestry, and selling the museum like a show? One way is to focus on meaning and learning experiences instead of objects. In the last twenty years, many museum theorists have proposed ideas that transform meaning from objects so learners can take ownership of their learning. 

The decline in visitorship to heritage sites and museums, starting in the late 1990s, led to several museum theorists developing ideas that focused on visitor types and how to capture them.  These controversial ideas resulted in a division between museum purists vs. museum education. Museum education departments were typically at the low end of priorities in the museum industry until the decline of visitors inspired research into how museums need to redefine themselves and increase visitation. The majority of research focused on museum education. Eventually, the purists would reluctantly concede that a shift towards the visitor experience needed to focus on learning to attract more visitors and please the stakeholders paying their salaries. Below is a brief explanation of the most significant theorists, their ideas, and an interpretive analysis of whether or not these ideas meet Kalantzis and Cope's ideas about meaning. 

Sam Ham on Interpretation

The late Sam Ham is considered the guru of interpretation education. In his book Making a Difference on Purpose (2013), Ham strongly emphasized the importance of meaning in interpreting objects and National Heritage "materials." 

Figure 6: Seminar on using provocation to make meaning for visitors (Ham 2013).

 

Ham (2013) teaches interpreters to provoke a sense of meaning so that participants will go back to their communities and make positive changes to protect the environment and cultural resources. Barbara Oakley (2014), who teaches some of the most popular free courses on Coursera, agrees with Ham's teaching that meanings are senses that come to life through associations linked to other meanings she calls (chunks). These chunks of meaning are what Oakley and Ham call interpretation. 

Ham's theoretical influence was Freedman Tillman, who wrote the book Interpreting Our Heritage in 1957. At the time, Tillman's ideas on interpretation and education were progressive. The National Parks Service still uses his Six Principles of Interpretation as the basis of its education program. 

Figure 7: Tilmans Six Principles from the 1957 Book Interpreting Our Heritage

Ham expanded Tillman's principles by studying visitor interactions with museum and park staff and how they use objects at museums and heritage sites. His theory focuses on using an interpreter to provoke participants to make their "own connections" and "think for themselves" about the object. The similarity between Kalantzis and Cope's ideas on meaning is Ham’s intention to create learner agency and ownership. However, there are significant differences. Both Oakley and Ham believe that material needs to be manipulated (the interest function), planned, and told in a way that provokes the learner. Noble, as his intentions are, manipulates the "material" process, which interferes with the learner's transformation of the material into the idea. It is like giving the learner a car to use on their own but remotely controlling the gas pedal. Ham’s theory makes the interpretation for the learner by giving them the "text" information seasoned with the interpreter's own ideas. Using provocation prioritizes the function of interest, which, in this case, can actually work against the idea's transposition. In addition, while Kalantzis and Cope’s meaning concept focuses on linguistic grammar, Ham’s is purely non-linguistic.

John Falk

Dr. John Falk (2013) is another prominent museum theorist, perhaps the most referenced, with a background in science. He developed the idea of Free Choice learning. Falk shares Kalantzis and Cope’s idea that meaning is transformative and learners should freely process their own learning experience, especially through experiential learning. Falk calls this Free Choice Learning. For example, if blocks are available in an exhibit on buildings, people might start building their own structure or design that means something to them. Falk focuses primarily on the function of agency and context, with the participants using their life experiences and the curated learning environment they are surrounded by to make meaning.  This, in many ways, creates the transformation from material to idea. 

However, Falk differs from Kallantzis and Cope in his reliance on constructivism. Piaget's Four Stages of Cognitive Development and Gardner's Multiple Intelligence (1993) are the basis for Falk's justification for using his theory of visitor types, especially with youth, to design Free Choice learning experiences. In other words, museums should design learning experiences by visitor type, not for the diverse individualistic learner. 

Figure 8: Falk's Visitor Types Training (Minneapolis Museum of Art 2012)

Kalantzis and Cope (2016) appreciate constructivism but believe it focuses on the collective learner. A collection of learners can process meaning, but the group's end result will not reflect each individual's meaning. They also list (2016) "five major and highly interdependent problems with second-order categorization according to gross demographics:" 1. Unmanageable Lists of Differences; 2. Internal Group Variations; 3. Inter-group Relationality; 4. Intersectionality; 5. Change.  

No person with diverse experiences and learning processes, let alone all the daily changes happening in that person's life, can be pigeonholed into one learning group category.  Although Falk appreciated individual learning differences, he failed to identify each learner as unique and uncategorizable.  In terms of meaning, Falk's transformation from material to ideas can only exist within the confines of his visitor types (groups) instead of individuals.  

Figure 9: Falk’s Identity Types (Philbrook Museum of Art: Museum Audience Identities and Motivations 2016).

The influence of Falk can't be underestimated.  A professor of environmental science, Dr. Falk, cut his museum teeth at the Smithsonian helping the museum transform from a traditional object displaying forum to a world-leading educational institution that serves as the educational programming model, right or wrong, today. His name and visitor types are the most talked about words at museum workshops, conventions, and education training today.  Dr. Falk's theories were necessary to transform museums, but the use of his visitor's types and identity categorization doesn't reflect real-world and reflexive learning applicable to today's visitors. 

Nina Simons

While Falk and Ham's ideas are widely discussed (thrown around to make the impression that programs were planned using research) but rarely used at museums, the traditional purpose of museums focusing on caring for the objects, not educating, remained. Falk's ideas were only applied at science museums, and Ham's ideas were applied at heritage sites. For the traditionalists, the object is the magic that can increase visitation if the marketing team would "do their job." 

Discovering a way for visitors to create and demonstrate their meanings through a museum experience, to make personal meaning from an object, wasn't on the radar because of the perceived magic mentioned above. In 2006, Nina Simons, an engineer and exhibit designer, started the Museum 2.0 blog, which has now become her exhibit design firm. Nina self-describes herself as a museum nerd who actually enjoys traditional museum learning experiences despite advocating against them.  The problem is that most people who visit museums are not subject enthusiasts or elitists.

Through her own insight, Nina discovered she was a museum elitist who developed exhibits and learning designs because she has a passion for creating and for showing others what she knows. She believes most museum education and exhibit staff are also elitists whose concerns about visitor learning are at the bottom of their reasons for doing what they do. They talk Falk, Gardner, and Piaget but send out educational programs that have always been used (The 5 W's of George Washington's Boat or Make a George Washington Boat).  In the world of fiction writing, telling instead of showing is taboo. In the museum world, it tends to be the norm.

In the early 2000s, she was hired by a future museum that wanted to design a different experience where the visitor takes an active role in the activity and learning. Through research and experience, she challenged the majority of her colleagues to put the visitor’s learning experience first. While most of her colleagues cited John Falk’s Free Choice Learning as their philosophy, Simons (2012) argued that using Free Choice Learning outside of science museums with tremendous resources is nearly impossible. The learning retention and social and community benefits were still unfulfilled.

The ultimate dilemma was to not only convince a workforce known to develop experiences based on what they are passionate about, but Simons had to provide a way to put the visitor first and allow the visitor to be an active participant in their own creation of knowledge and meaning.

She released the book The Participatory Museum in 2012. The book received tremendous attention, including overwhelming criticism, in the museum world until she had the opportunity to practice her Participatory Theory as the Director of a struggling museum in California. After a couple of years, studies showed that Simon’s sample Participatory Museum became profitable, energized a community, and saved lives.

Gamerman’s (2014) research points to the social and emotional benefits of using the Participatory model to encourage participant ownership of meaning. Since childhood, many people have had dreams about creating a design, exhibit, or idea but have never had the opportunity to because of how academic and specialized the design field is. It is one thing to draw paintings; designing a place for paintings that touch people’s lives and promote positive health and mindfulness is extremely gratifying. In addition, the social benefits are extremely healthy for a community (see AAM Mission Statement above), and many retired participants can get lonely, leading to sickness and death. Participating in creating something in a group, but not as a group, connects people and develops lifelong friendships.

A typical Simon's experience would be similar to Figure 9:  Empowering Students to Take Ownership of Their Own Learning. Simons would use an object or a collection of objects and ask the visitors for their interpretation and for them to create and design a gallery based on their meaning of the object. Using design structure, prompts, objectives, and cues, the visitors would use transpositional grammar to form their own meaning.  Similar to Kalantzis and Cope's (2020) ideas on transpositional grammar and meaning and their functions, the object would serve as the material and the visitor's interpretation of the material the idea. Using gallery labels or available primary and secondary resources, and especially collaborating with other participants, the visitor combines the knowledge offered with their diverse experiences to create meaning by intuitively using five functions (Reference, Agency, Structure, Context, and Interest). 

Figure 10: Simons Stages of Participatory Making (Simons 2010)

Simon’s Participatory ideas involve providing museum visitors and community participants with a scenario or a problem to solve, providing a template on how to design, creating a learning experience, and facilitating the experience as if they were designing programs for a museum. By implementing a philosophy of participants creating the experience, they had to create their own knowledge and use multimodal resources to transform meaning from an object or material.

Much like Kalantzis and Cope's New Learning Ideas, Simon's ideas are constantly transforming into real-world changes that seem to be happening faster and faster. As both formal and informal education policy, curriculum, pedagogy, and values continue to be burdened by the more expensive "way things have always been done," the concepts, or at least bits and pieces of the concepts, are increasingly being noticed and realized. However, education reform generally moves slowly in America, and ideas are rarely fulfilled through policy change but by individuals willing to take risks in the trenches until it is seen as common. As data-proving and research back these ideas are, critiques are essential to prove them viable. 

                   How do designers of visitor experiences and learning use meaning?

Kalantzis and Cope - Transformation, Knowing, Meaning Making, Multimodal, Interpretation

An exploration of museum research is important to discover what learning theories are being used to design experiences and programs. Notice I said “are being used” instead of “are used.” The caveat here is that people who work as creators in museums may not be concerned with learning theories, much like artists may know theories but are not concerned with theories and rely on their unique experiences, interpretation, and their own meaning to produce their work.

“Interpretation does not exist in a vacuum. It is communication between the museum staff and the public. Just as a wise merchant comes to know potential customers, the museum must know its visitors.” Burcaw (1997).

Burcaw’s book Introduction to Museum Work was one of the first to detail what museum workers should do and became the “go-to” book for museum professionals. The quote above demonstrates what museums genuinely know they must do - design for the visitor while maintaining museum ethics. However, Burcaw doesn’t mention learning theories, or for that matter, any theories to support what designers should consider when developing experiences. As I looked through the index of other pre-2000 “go-to” museum books, I noticed that they, too, were missing learning theories. It is one thing for a merchant to analyze human behavior to know what they want to buy, but figuring out how people learn is something totally different. This is why the research Kalantzis and Cope have done on meaning is vital and is the basis for comparison to emergent museum theories that are slowly adapted by museum creator staff.

Figure 11: Understanding the learner's mind. Free stock photo. https://www.123rf.com/photo_17635219_questionmark-in-mind-thinking.html