Jag sätter mig här så kan du leka : lärande, lek och social interaktion i olika typer av utställningar för barn

Sammanfattning: Children has become an increasingly important target group for the Swedish cultural politics where museums play an important role. This focus on children has urged the museums to create different activities, such as exhibitions, specially modeled for the target group. This thesis studies the possibilities for learning in three exhibitions that in different ways have been adjusted for children and their co-visitors from a sociocultural perspective. The different types of children’s exhibitions are sorted in three categories based on how much they encourage play and what role authentic objects have in the exhibitions. The categories are the playroom, the children’s exhibition and the children’s trail. The sociocultural perspective proposes a view of learning within its broadest definition where learning is an inevitable result from every human experience with focus on social interaction. Behavior and social interaction have been observed in three exhibitions through passive observations and self-ethnographic observations. The co-visitor’s behavior and interaction is analyzed with focus on the roles they take and how different exhibitions encourage the different roles. The children’s behavior and social interaction are analyzed with focus on different aspects of social or content-based learning. The results of the analysis show that exhibitions for children will inevitably be a place for play. The parts of the children’s-exhibitions that focus on play and the parts that focus on content are often separated which leads children to focus mainly on play as it is more stimulating for them. Thus, the big challenge for museums who wants to mediate a specific content to children is to integrate play and content in a way that invokes interest for both adults and children.