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Introduction
Museum learning is an interactive informal learning process motivated by children’s interest and fun in discovery through their physical explorations and social interactions in a free-choice learning context (Perry, 2012; Diamond et al., 2009; Falk et al., 2009; Scott, 2013). To facilitate meaningful museum learning experiences and revisit motivation, it is essential to consider the museum’s contextual influences in supporting children’s effective learning (Falk and Dierking, 2013). Among the museum learning theories, the Contextual Model of Learning (CML) is widely applied and recognized as the most important guideline for designing learner-centered museum services for diverse target visitors within museum contexts (Hou et al., 2014). According to this model, museum learning experience is shaped through continuous interactions among personal, sociocultural, and physical contexts over time (Dierking, 2002; Falk and Dierking, 2000). The personal context explains individual differences, including: prior interest, experience, knowledge, learning preferences, and visit expectations; all of these significantly affect children’s museum learning behavior and experiences, and thus play a key role in self-directed learning in museum contexts (Falk and Dierking, 2013). The sociocultural context explains that most children learn through their social interactions with others, including conversation and collaborative learning in museum contexts. The physical context describes the object-based learning qualities of museum learning (Speight et al., 2012). Hence, museums should provide children with friendly and intelligent navigation tools to support children freely learning through their interactions with the museum exhibits (Falk and Storksdieck, 2005). Owing to the fact that museum learning is a lifelong learning process, Dierking (2002) later added a time factor to the CML, and highlighted that museum learning is an ongoing process and the result of continuous interactions among personal, sociocultural and physical contexts. Therefore, to promote long-term interactions between children and the museum, it is important to consider the whole contextual influence whereby children’s continuous learning and revisiting can be promoted.
The above-mentioned studies show that there is a need for museums to design appropriate services to match children’s diverse needs and preferences within museum contexts. More specifically, previous research explains that children of different ages in a variety of visitor groups present various behaviors during their visits (Talboys, 2012). To develop child-centered services for diverse children, many studies highlight that most children...