Wicked Heritage in Informal Learning: Early Childhood Sensory Science Exhibitions

The World faces great environmental challenges in the form of “wicked” problems such as toxic waste, resource extractivism and collapsing ecosystems. This paper contributes to understanding how we can communicate this heritage to children through the exhibition medium. It is taken as a premise that understanding wicked problems depends on scientific understanding and that a good way to achieve this is through interdisciplinary STEM Education. Informal learning environments have a great potential in communicating scientific knowledge to the public, both through out of school visits and non-formal experiences. The aim of the paper is to address how to communicate toxic heritage and similar wicked legacies through the development of aesthetic and sensory experiences in informal learning environments. The paper draws on research from a pop-up STEM early childhood sensory science exhibition, located and developed at University of Southern Denmark in 2022. The design of the exhibition was research-based, drawing on theories of tidalectic curating, Conceptual PlayWorlds, STEM-pedagogy and early childhood science experience.