Stichwort: Lernen im museum Oder: Eine kamerafahrt mit der besucherforschung

This contribution sketches the museum landscape and investigates - from different perspectives - to what extent museums can be defined and studied as an informal learning location. We shall start with a look at the heterogeneity of museums, which is a consequence of the different collections, the characteristics of visitors and their motives for visiting, and the relatively young history of didactic methods used in museums. Does learning take place? Research on visitors, which looks at this question, typically reflects in its theories of learning the paradigm shift from behaviourism to cognitive and constructivistic concepts with a corresponding change of perspective regarding the subject of investigation: whilst first investigations looked at the characteristic of exhibits and made recommendations on this basis for improved didactics, more recent studies look at visitors' theoretic constructs of these characteristics. This article argues for a link between both perspectives in order to achieve further theoretical and practical insights.