Museums offer an opportunity for children to engage with science outside of the traditional classroom. But are all children able to enjoy them equally? Do language barriers prevent some children from fully participating in the museum?

Science museums are unique places to engage with science, but multilingual and migrant families often do not feel welcome there. Multi-STEM collaborates with our partners NEMO, Museon-Omniversum, and Teylers Museum to design strategies that promote the participation of multilingual children and their families in science museums.

By incorporating families’ home languages, through translanguaging strategies, science museums can become more welcoming. In this way, museums can increase children’s (and their families’) engagement, curiosity, and sense of belonging in science museums. In this project, we expect the strategies we design to inform museums about how to better engage multilingual children and promote their participation in science. – PhD researcher Lucía Chisari

For more information about the subproject ‘Science Museums’ contact Lucía Chisari, l.b.chisari@uu.nl