EMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT IN CHILDREN’S VISITING EXPERIENCE. Combining qualitative and quantitative research in museum learning settings.

The thesis aims to analyze the visitor’s stream of feelings during the Museum Experience. To do this, reference is made to classical and experimental paradigms of Environmental and Educational Psychology applied to a museum context, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. Specifically, the research project is a pioneering study of the beneficial aspects of museum visits; these include the sense of belonging to a Cultural Community, showing how, behind the aesthetic experience, the visitor gains ethical relief. Museums, in fact, as keepers of Cultural Heritage values, may indeed play an important role in providing an understanding of collective identity and in fostering a sense of belonging to a community.