Testing the Contextual Model of Learning in a Chinese Context

In 2008, China's museums began to offer free admission, which led to an explosive growth in the number of visitors. As a result, more researchers are examining how to determine the learning experience of museum visitors, and improving it gradually will be the next direction for the development of Chinese museums. The Contextual Model of Learning is one of the most effective theoretical frameworks to evaluate museum learning as has been proved by a large number of studies. However, this model has not yet been systematically tested within the Chinese context. The purpose of this study was to examine the cross-cultural adaptability of the Contextual Model of Learning. To this end, this research surveyed 114 adult visitors to a Shandong Museum's history exhibition. Our results suggested that motivation in the personal context as well as light design and orientation in the physical context have a significant influence on museum learning. The factor of within-group sociocultural mediation was moved from the sociocultural to the personal context. The new framework can better describe the relationship between various factors and can be directly applied to the evaluation of the effectiveness of Chinese exhibitions.