We are exploring the possibilities of museum education to support children affected by socio-cultural disadvantages. This summary clarifies the relationship between language use and social background, the communication patterns and psychological challenges linked to socio-cultural disadvantage, pedagogical challenges, and the museum's opportunities for motivating disadvantaged learners and assisting their self-expression.
How is language use connected to social background?
Basil Bernstein (1924-2000), an English sociologist, began his pioneering research in the early 1960s, searching for the reasons behind the school failures of children from working-class families in London’s docklands. He found that social background is intricately connected to language use, which is crucial for educational success. A deficit in the language use required at educational institutions leads to failure in self-expression, learning performance, and integration into school. He referred to this complex phenomenon as linguistic disadvantage, which he viewed as a socio-cultural issue.
The economic situation of middle-class groups allows children to thrive through autonomous, free decisions. Their economic environment is characterized by open role structures, where argumentation, insight, and mentalization are self-evident. To communicate their perspectives and needs, understand others’ viewpoints, and continuously align them, speakers develop and elaborate their statements, using a more complex and flexible syntactic and lexical system. Bernstein referred to this type of language as the “elaborated linguistic code.”
According to Bernstein’s research, families of socially disadvantaged groups are placed within a strong hierarchical society. Many work environments, such as low-level positions in the factory, are defined by these fixed roles. In such role structures, the role defines the activity: everyone has their task, and there is no need to inquire about how someone feels, what they want, or what changes they would suggest. Bernstein found that groups defined by such behavior patterns replicate these roles within their families. Family roles in these cases may be structured in rigid hierarchies, where each member has unquestionable responsibilities, while individual thoughts, feelings, desires, and intentions are not subject to debate.
To describe the linguistic forms of these fixed roles, Bernstein introduced the concept of the "restricted linguistic code." These relationships do not require the elaboration of information, and typical dialogues rarely address causal relationships. As understanding each other’s perspectives is irrelevant in fixed role structures, communication relies on rigid syntactic and lexical choices or non-verbal channels. The restricted linguistic code, therefore, is characterized by short, simple sentences, limited use of adjectives and adverbs, and a narrow, relatively constant vocabulary. According to Bernstein, linguistic disadvantage arises from the use of the restricted code, which is a direct result of fixed role structures, impeding thinking, self-expression, and social interaction.
What learning difficulties are linked to linguistic disadvantage?
Children raised in open role structures experience, from infancy, the belief that their individual feelings, intentions, and thoughts are important and should be respected. Likewise, they understand the value of respecting others' feelings and opinions. This constant experience leads them to use the elaborated linguistic code. The school provides a familiar social environment and training ground for understanding human relationships and making independent decisions. In contrast, fixed role structures prioritize conformity to expectations rather than self-expression or the ability to negotiate. Children raised in such structures find it just as difficult to express their intentions as they do to understand others, and they are not accustomed to negotiating their views. When schools require refined communication forms and the elaborated linguistic code from the outset, it creates difficulties, experiences of failure, and increasing frustration for children from disadvantaged socio-cultural backgrounds.
Children coming from families using a restricted linguistic code start school already at a disadvantage. The education system primarily relies on logical and linguistic abilities, so these kids' disadvantages will only increase over time.
Each student has a unique set of abilities and developmental trajectories. For students arriving at school with linguistic disadvantages, several shortcomings are expected. They often need more time to develop linguistic abstraction skills, are more connected to topics related to their daily lives than to abstract knowledge in texts, and may struggle with following the serial causal relations characterizing written language. Instead, they are more comfortable processing information holistically. Issues such as listening comprehension, reading difficulties, or text comprehension problems (slow reading speed, inaccurate reading, poor vocabulary, or poor verbal abstraction skills) may arise. Their thinking may seem slower or rigid, but this is not due to weaker abilities but rather to the difficulty of observing and analyzing situations from multiple perspectives or abstracting from immediate, observable things.
The learning attitude of children who have experienced multiple school failures may reflect what many researchers call 'learned helplessness': they believe they will not succeed so they stop trying. Resistance to tasks, lack of engagement, and cognitive demotivation are common. Without experiences of success, they may become increasingly disengaged from classroom tasks, and in upper grades, they often become alienated from the school world altogether.
There are many individual cognitive or emotional factors contributing to this, which further complicates the situation of each student or group. As with any group, it is most effective if we equip ourselves with efficient methods and good observation techniques, spend time and energy getting to know the children, and try to adapt to them when designing programs.
In the case of children raised in fixed role structures, the school’s important task is to present a different model. It can make the world they live in familiar by showing them options, such as expressing how they feel, what they want, or what ideas they have. Only after this will they be able to understand and appreciate others' ideas and perspectives and negotiate their intentions and suggestions. In addition to promoting familiarity with open role structures, the school’s task is to teach the linguistic and cognitive richness and flexibility associated with the elaborated code.
What can the museum do?
Children who are used to fixed role structures and the restricted linguistic code may feel unfamiliar at a museum, which traditionally promotes open role structures and uses the elaborated code. If we do not accurately assess what communication form is comfortable for them, if the spoken and written texts do not match their language skills, they will feel alienated and anxious.
Museums can take steps to make their content accessible at multiple linguistic (and other sensory) levels. Exhibition themes can address cross-disciplinary topics that are close to the children’s everyday lives. Exhibitions can provide tangible, and ideally interactive, tools to help process information. Working with museum content engages various abilities and allows for a range of personal engagement patterns that can be shared. Learning in museums can follow the methods of experiential education rather than the logic of normative expectations, assessments, and performance rankings. Thus, learning in a museum has the potential to alleviate performance anxiety.
The unique characteristics of museums make them a learning environment that can effectively complement schools in teaching self-expression, mentalization, and debate culture. The museum’s spatial structure is different from the classroom environment, so it allows students to make new connections and experience revived group atmospheres. The learning environment can be flexibly adapted to the needs of visitors and groups, providing opportunities to reflect on individual interests. In the museum, feedback does not have to be linked to a standard evaluation system.
The museum as a learning environment can be more than a knowledge repository: it can provide a toolkit to help understand visitors and engage them in learning. Teachers visiting with their classes can reflect on their students from a different perspective, engage in dialogue, and receive feedback from museum educators and other professionals involved in the projects.