Using Open-Ended Questions in Exhibit Labels to Enhance Visitor Metacognition

Solutions to the most pressing environmental problems of our time rest on a well-informed citizenry capable of understanding, analyzing, and thinking critically about ethically fraught social and environmental issues. Engaging in critical thinking requires metacognition—the ability to recognize, reflect on, and understand one's own thought processes. Inquiry-based exhibits at science museums are highly appropriate, well-structured contexts for fostering metacognition as they can provide emotionally safe spaces for visitors to reflect on their own beliefs, thoughts, views, and biases.

In this study, researchers studied metacognition in visitors who engaged with social science exhibits at the Exploratorium, a large science center based in San 29 Francisco, California. Specifically, researchers examined whether a simple metacognitive strategy—question asking—enhanced visitors' metacognitive talk.

Question asking, often used by teachers in formal classroom settings, is a well-known research-based strategy for enhancing metacognition among learners. Although it has been studied extensively in formal education, few such studies exist in informal learning contexts. In this study, researchers examined the use of open-ended questions in exhibit labels as a metacognitive tool in a science museum. They developed and tested two kinds of questions that would stimulate metacognitive talk, namely: (1) exhibit-specific questions (EQ), which prompted visitors to discuss their mental strategies specific to an exhibit, and (2) real-world questions (RQ), designed to elicit conversations about broader metacognitive strategies that visitors found applicable in their own lives. The questions were open-ended and incorporated into flip labels at a social science exhibit. The EQs were under a first flip label and the RQs under a second flip label below the EQs. The social science exhibit was housed in a “laboratory” off the main museum floor in order to minimize external noise and distractions.

The researchers used a quasi-experimental research design with three conditions: baseline, EQ, and RQ. The researchers' goal was to examine whether the treatment (question-asking in flip labels) had any effect on visitors' metacognitive talk. The baseline served as the control, while the EQ and RQ were the treatment conditions. The exhibit was designed so that the visitors would first engage with the elements of the exhibit without the questions (baseline), then they would open the first flip label to engage with the EQ, and then they would open the second flip label to engage with the RQ. This allowed the researchers to measure the effect of EQ, and then the additive effect of RQ, on visitors' metacognitive talk.

Study participants consisted of 59 dyads (adult-adult or adult-teen pairs) recruited from the main museum floor through a combination of random and purposive sampling. The researchers used video coding and analysis to measure metacognition; they identified metacognitive talk and quantified its duration. The videos were coded for two levels of metacognitive talk: (1) All Metacognitive Talk (A-MCT), where the visitor demonstrated a basic awareness of their own or someone else's thinking (e.g., “you are lying” or “your partner knows”), and (2) Stringent Metacognitive Talk (S-MCT), where the visitor demonstrated stronger metacognition that goes beyond awareness (e.g., “I was trying to pick what I thought you would pick”).

Results from ANOVA showed that the proportion of time spent by visitors in A-MCT went from 13% (baseline) to 43% (exhibit-specific questions, or EQ) to 42% (real-world questions, or RQ). Similarly, proportion of time spent by visitors in S-MCT went from 5% (baseline) to 26% (EQ) to 25% (RQ). In other words, participants spent significantly more time engaging in both basic and stringent metacognitive talk after the exhibit-specific questions were introduced. Furthermore, the effect sizes were large for the EQ—a threefold increase in all metacognitive talk, and fivefold increase in stringent metacognitive talk. The RQ maintained this increased metacognitive talk but did not enhance it any further.