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The initiatives focusing the professional development of explainers are multiplying around the world, building an informal network of researchers, museums managers and directors, explainers, and regional/continental networks, as THE group, the Thematic Human Interface and Explainers group of Ecsite.The Workshop Sul-Americano de Mediação em Museus e Centros de Ciência e Escola de Mediação em Museus e Centros de Ciência, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in September 2008, was a further important step along this path. We believe it is worthwhile to offer to Jcom readers some of the workshop contributions concerning the training of explainers, to which we added an overview of the general problem presented by Lynn Uyen Tran (Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California, Berkeley).

This article seeks to reflect on mediation in museums based on experiences that occurred in the “Learning in order to Teach” Project.  In this case, the mediation acquires specific characteristics because it deals with young deaf people learning art-related contents in order to teach other youth in their first language.  The most interesting aspect of this encounter between museum and deaf culture is a mutual, immediate and highly visible influence.  While museum-goers and professionals understand that the “gestures” used by the deaf are not random (rather, on the contrary, they make up a complex language), new signs are created by the students based on the contents that are worked with and discovered in the museum.  These new signs thus enrich the language itself and begin to circulate within the community.

This paper discusses three mediation concept approaches and, consequently, three facets of mediator action.  The approaches presented start with a bibliographical review of the concept of mediation present in education and scientific communication studies.  These approaches serve as a basis for interpreting a semi-directive interview with the director of the Museum of Morphological Sciences of the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG).  They also help us reflect on the complexity of organizing the objectives of a museum action that takes into account the transformational role of the meaning of objects in interaction with different socio-cultural subjects.  In conclusion, the museum's purpose in organizing a museum action using socio-cultural mediation approach and with the mediator as a passeur libre among exhibit objects and visitors is highlighted.

Global changes such as urbanisation, new ways of travelling, new information and communication technologies are causing radical changes in the relationships between human beings and the environment we are both a part of and depend on. Relationships which – according to a multiplicity of researches in various fields – are crucially important. Science education and the language of science risk exacerbating a tendency towards objectifying nature and inhabiting a virtual reality, thereby rendering ever more tenuous the dialogue between people and the natural world. This article examines two approaches to science and language – as products or as processes – and suggests how awareness of the dynamic relationship between language and knowledge can help restore that vital dialogue.

In the globalisation era, arts have provided food for thought on “how latitudes became forms”, to stress again that now, at global level, one should no longer define art as a contemplation “space”, but as an “environment”, a place for experience. On the other hand, already when Bern saw the inauguration of the historic exhibition “When Attitudes became Forms” in 1969, people realised that the problem was lying in the behaviour, in the attitude, of making arts towards the world. Basically, the formalistic concept of self-referentiality in a work of art was to be overcome, and attention was to be paid to procedures and contexts. In search of a new humanism in contact with the natural universe.

The educational function of science museums was born with the first naturalistic collections ever, flourished in 16th-century Italy. The pedagogic thought and the educational experimentations carried out in approximately five century of history have allowed the educational mission of museums to acquire many different facets, drawing a task having an increasingly higher and complex social value. Recent publications explore these new meanings of an old role.

Martin W. Bauer is right, two evolutionary processes are under way. These are quite significant and, in some way, they converge into public science communication: a deep evolution of discourse is unfolding, along with an even deeper change of the public understanding of science.

Artists have used the environment as a subject forever and there is a long history of artists whose works affect peoples’ awareness of and perceptions of their natural environments. But only relatively recently have other artists become part of the modern environmental movement and of efforts to educate college students and the population at large about environmental issues. Environmental studies programs need to take advantage of this increased interest on the part of artists, and global warming provides a perfect vehicle.

The world, all at once, has become a small world. Not only owing to TV, satellites and the Internet that allow us to jump from side to side of our planet in a click. But also owing to a phenomenon that evokes dry lands, devastating rains, tsunamis and hurricanes, torrid summers and melting glaciers: global warming. In the heated argument on this issue with so many people talking, in the past few years also artists have made their rising voice be heard. Artists-popularisers, aware of their role and of the considerable communication potential of the art medium. Because “One salient image, sculpture or event can speak louder than volumes of scientific data”.

In January 2006, my wife Susannah Sayler and I set out to photograph landscapes around the world that were being transformed by global warming. We called our work The Canary Project. From the beginning, as now, we had both activist aims and artistic ambitions. These two types of motivation overlap in places and in other places feel completely distinct. In general, we feel as though are carrying forward a torch that science cannot carry any further. Following are some thoughts on our role as activists and as artists and as collaborators with the scientific community.