My most recent research revolves around the design of science museum exhibits as learning environments. Specifically, I used a design-based research approach to investigate the following research questions:

What is the nature of the constraints and opportunities which govern the design of a museum exhibit which features a biological object of knowledge? (Reported in Mortensen, 2010c)

What is the relationship between the designed characteristics of a biology exhibit and the subsequent visitor interactions with and understandings of that exhibit, using the stated learning objectives for the exhibit as a measure of how well it performs? (Reported in Mortensen, 2010b)

How can the relationship between content, learner, and exhibit medium be conceptualised in a form that can optimise exhibit design? (Reported in Mortensen, 2010a)

In a research context, these questions are relevant because the museum research community has recently taken an interest in design-based methods as an approach to understanding the educational potential of exhibition environments (Hsi et al., 2004). Understanding the educational potential of exhibits is important in a societal context because informal learning environments such as museums have the potential to stimulate interest in science (Editorial, 2010) and thereby affect recruitment* to science study programmes.

My general framework for this research is the design-based research paradigm (cf. The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). Within this framework, I use tools from the field of didactics, especially the Anthropological Theory of Didactics (Chevallard, 2007), to understand, analyse, and make predictions about the relationship between scientific content, exhibit medium, and learner.

The series of inquiries mentioned above resulted in the synthesis of a model for the design of educational exhibits. This model, to my knowledge, the first instance of an exhaustive, cohesive prescriptive model for science exhibit engineering in the Anglophone research literature. It is exhaustive in the sense that it addresses the development of content, the strategies of appropriation, and the mechanisms of the didactic interactions of the prospective exhibit. It is cohesive because it accounts for the combination of these domains in the process of exhibit engineering. And it is prescriptive because it goes beyond describing existing practice, drawing on current research to make claims about what prospective practice should be. The next step in this line of research is accordingly to validate the model by carefully testing it in practice.

Chevallard, Y. (2007). Readjusting didactics to a changing epistemology. European Educational Research Journal, 6(2), 131-134.
Editorial (2010). Learning in the wild [Editorial]. Nature, 464, 813-814.

European Commission (2004). Europe needs more scientists. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

Hsi, S., Crowley, Kevin, Duschl, Richard, Finke, Coe Leta, King, Heather, & Sabelli, Nora (2004, June). Models of learning and theories of practice for informal learning environments. Paper presented at the 6th International Conference on Learning Sciences, Santa Monica, California, USA.

Mortensen, M. F. (2010a). Manuscript submitted for publication.

Mortensen, M. F. (2010b). Analysis of the educational potential of a science museum learning environment: visitors' experience with and understanding of an immersion exhibit. International Journal of Science Education, iFirst.

Mortensen, M. F. (2010c). Museographic transposition: The development of a museum exhibit on animal adaptations to darkness. Éducation & Didactique, 4(1).

The Design-Based Research Collective (2003). Design-based research: an emerging paradigm for educational inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8.