The role of the museum in the education of young adults: motivation, emotion and learning.

This book is the result of an international research project funded and based at the University of Roma Tre (coordinated by Stefano Mastandrea). The aim of the research project was to create a survey on a large scale to investigate attitudes, motivations, personality traits, emotions and learning processes regarding the museum visits experience by young adults. The research group was constituted by scholars of eight different Countries: Austria, France, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Portugal, Taiwan, and USA. Participants of the research (N=2,247) was made up by a sample of undergraduate university students of different non art Departments ( psychology, education and sociology). Main findings showed that about the 75% of the total sample visited at least one museum in the last 12 months and about 40% visited between 2 and 5 museums. Modern art museums were visited more than other types of museums. Participants reported a good level of satisfaction with their museum visits. Overall, the most prevalent emotions associated with museum visitation were curiosity, interest, and pleasure; however, emotions varied according to the kind of museum visited, with aesthetic enjoyment for ancient art, aesthetic enjoyment and interest for modern art, and fun and curiosity for science museums. An international congress was organized in October 2013 in Rome by the Department of Education and the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology of the University of Roma Tre. All the international partners of the project participated presenting the results of each single research unit. The data and findings presented at the congress and subsequent developments constitute the chapters of this book.