Discussing sensitive topics, such as slavery, political extremism or religion, in the history classroom presents an interesting challenge for history teachers and museum educators. The goal of this ...small-scale case study was to evaluate a domain-specific professional-development course for Dutch history teachers that was developed in cooperation with museum educators. This course trains teachers to explore the dynamics of and multiple perspectives on a heritage object by asking historical questions, starting from an overarching main question. We investigated: 1) to what extent trainee and experienced history teachers felt competent in teaching sensitive topics before and after the training; and 2) how three experienced history teachers discussed multiple perspectives in a follow-up lesson after the training. Results showed that teachers reported higher self-efficacy in teaching sensitive topics and that the course offered them practical ideas about how to discuss these kinds of topics in their classrooms. Lesson observations showed that the teachers applied some parts of the design principles demonstrated in the course. This article discusses how using tangible heritage objects could support history educators in negotiating sensitive issues.
Despite an extensive body of literature that has examined the role of museums in cultural reproduction and public education, most of the current discussion is western-centred. Whilst explorations of ...museum education in developing countries often focus on the institution, the agency perspective regarding how different social groups negotiate access to museum resources is relatively understudied. Aiming to address these lacunae, this paper presents a qualitative case study of a major museum in Hangzhou, China, focusing on how people from distinct social groups, with different orientations to cultural consumption, developed multiple strategies for cultural participation in museums. Their practices arguably reinforced and justified a dispositioned judgment of taste and class identities that mirror the social transition of contemporary China. Conceptually addressing Bourdieu's theories of 'cultural capital' and 'taste', this study explores the dialectics between culture and power and demonstrates the complexity of cultural reproduction in a state-funded museum.
This essay explores five exhibitions created for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Artmobile, the first mobile art museum in the United States. The mission of the Artmobile was to bring works of art ...directly to citizens throughout the state of Virginia from 1953 to 1994. In analyzing educational and exhibition materials, such as exhibition booklets, audio guide recordings, press releases, and speeches, this research examines the educational philosophies of each exhibition in relation to contemporaneous museum education literature. Applying Tony Bennett’s analysis of the impact of culture on the social to the creation of educational philosophies, this essay argues that while the mission of the Artmobile remained constant, there was a shift in the educational objective from the development of cultured citizens through art appreciation and the improvement of public taste to fostering individual visual literacy and encouraging visitors to make art historical and personal connections.
Archaeological museum exhibitions are made up of collections that represent complex cultural systems. Consequently, museum education has the role of mediating these objects to different categories of ...users, clarifying the relationships between the collections and the cultural system they belong to. However, for some kinds of pieces, such as musical ones, this activity includes a ‘performative’ part, where the object is an instrument to perform an action. For centuries, museum studies have been split between the conservation of objects and the preservation of their performative capacities and, in the case of musical instruments, in order to use them in educational and research contexts (ICOM CIMCIM, 2019). The use of reproductions, such as digital modeling, has been widely discussed, sometimes controversially; however, scientific studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of active teaching methodologies, such as Object-based Learning, in museum contexts for active users’ engagement (Duhs, 2019), promotion of soft skills (Poce et al., 2020), social inclusion, and well-being (Kador & Chatterjee, 2021). Starting from these assumptions, the paper describes the first results of a museum education pilot study carried out through the 3D-printed reproductions of ancient Etruscan musical instruments. The learning pathway, addressed to primary school pupils, is aimed at the integration and enhancement of 4C skills (Trilling & Fadel, 2009) in education from an inclusive perspective.
Este trabajo presenta los resultados de una investigación que busca conocer la potencialidad didáctica que tienen los museos para ofrecer a los/as jóvenes formas creativas y atractivas de entender ...los conceptos relacionados con el género a través del arte y del patrimonio. Para ello, se diseñó un taller que se implementaría simultáneamente en un museo del país de cada una de las instituciones participantes. Para el análisis de los resultados se ha aplicado una metodología de investigación cuantitativa: a través de un cuestionario pretest y otro postest, se realizó, en un análisis descriptivo-comparativo. Los resultados demuestran que los jóvenes participantes en los talleres han adquirido las competencias necesarias para detectar los sesgos de género que están presentes en la historia y memoria cultural.
Neue Wege der kulturellen Teilhabe zu finden ist ein Hauptziel des Kuratierens. Doch was passiert, wenn Kinder in den Prozess des Ausstellungsmachens einbezogen werden? Das museologische ...Pionierprojekt »Kinder kuratieren Klee« probiert es aus: Von der Konzeption über die Werkauswahl bis hin zum öffentlichen Auftritt planen Kinder eine umfangreiche Ausstellung zu Paul Klee, einem der bedeutendsten Vertreter der Moderne. Die Beiträger*innen dokumentieren ihre Erfahrungen und die Methoden, die dieses vielfältige und ungewöhnliche Projekt möglich machen - und legen so beispielhaft Chancen und Herausforderungen des Kuratierens mit Kindern im Kontext des Kunstmuseums offen.
How to design and implement a Group Poem activity Jung, Diane; Chugh, Natasha; Stephens, Mark ...
International review of psychiatry (Abingdon, England),
11/2023, Letnik:
35, Številka:
7-8
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Museum-based learning activities provide interactive and innovative ways to integrate the arts and humanities into medical education. Like other museum-based activities, the Group Poem supports the ...development of multiple clinically relevant skills and attributes, such as observation, communication, perspective-taking, empathy, and implicit bias awareness. In this paper, we present a step-by-step guide for educators seeking to design and implement a museum-based Group Poem activity for medical learners. The overall 'task' of the activity is for learners to collectively create a poem that they perform for others, a process that participants find to be engaging and meaningful to their formation as physicians. In this paper, we provide specific directions on pre-selecting the works of art, preparing the supplies, dividing into small groups, providing iterative instructions to learners, managing the timing of the session, and debriefing the activity. Although designed to be experienced in an art museum, we note that the Group Poem activity can also be conducted in the classroom or virtually using photographic or digital reproductions of artwork.
Abstract This paper presents "The Mediterranean Forest," an interactive exhibit designed for the Science Museum of Valencia. The exhibit engages children aged 3–8 by bringing their animal drawings to ...life in a virtual world. The system allows children to select, paint, scan, and transform drawings into three-dimensional avatars. These virtual animals interact with each other in the environment and with the children in the room. The exhibit is a collaborative space, where users can manipulate the real world, that promotes learning by exploration. The proposed solution integrates various cutting-edge technologies, including a large Virtual Reality projection system with blending techniques, Kinect devices for the interactivity, cheoptics hologram technology for realistic 3D visuals, and AI-driven virtual avatars simulating different behaviors and reacting to the user’s approach. The exhibit was evaluated through a study involving children, with feedback collected using a tailored questionnaire and the results indicated high levels of engagement and enjoyment among the children, with the majority expressing positive experiences. Some questions were not understandable for some children, which should be considered for future formal evaluation. The system's intuitiveness allowed children to navigate and interact with the virtual environment. The exhibit also demonstrates scalability, accommodating large groups of children effectively. Overall, "The Mediterranean Forest" successfully captivates children's attention, fostering creativity and imagination by transforming their drawings into a dynamic virtual world. This study underscores the benefits of using interactive technologies in museum settings to enhance children's learning experiences, encouraging further advancements in this field.
The aim of this interpretative, qualitative research study is to investigate affordances and constraints of dialogic pedagogy in the museums, as well as its broader contribution to society today. ...The background is my involvement in a Danish development project called ‘Museums and Cultural Institutions as Spaces for Citizenship,’ initiated by seven art museum educators in Copenhagen and supported by the Ministry of Culture. Denmark has a strong dialogic tradition dating back to Grundtvig’s belief in the power of ´the oral word’ to foster democratic ‘Bildung.’ Museum education, on the other hand, has a long tradition of monologic transmission. Still, a more participatory pedagogy has been gaining ground over many years.
This study is based on the observations of three-hour-long teaching sessions in seven museums and has a Bakhtinian framework. While the overall analysis builds on the whole project, two cases are discussed in more detail. The overarching research question is how central aspects of dialogic pedagogy played out in an art museum context and its opportunities and challenges. The subquestions focus on three central Bakhtinian concepts: How did the educators facilitate multivoicedness during the short museum visits? What role did difference and disagreement play? What opportunities emerged for students to develop internally persuasive discourse? I have chosen these concepts because they are central in dialogism and combined them because they are closely connected in Bakhtin’s work. The final reflections open a wider perspective of how dialogic museum education may contribute to overarching functions of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification.
Key findings were that the museum educators’ transition from traditional to dialogic pedagogy was enhanced by their genuine interest in hearing students’ voices. They succeeded in engaging students in multivoiced dialogues but with a tendency towards harmonization rather than the exploration of diversity and difference. The practical aesthetic workshops offered unique opportunities for students to develop their internally persuasive word, i.e., by replacing authoritative interpretations of artworks with their own. Challenges experienced by the educators were, e.g., the dilemmas between preplanning and student choice and between disseminating their professional art knowledge and facilitating students’ meaning making and creativity. In contrast, students found the lack of workshop follow-up problematic.
The article provides deeper insight into museums as an alternative pedagogical arena. Museum educators and non-museum classroom teachers may find it useful for cultivating greater dialogic interactions in respective learning contexts.
Museum education is of great importance to an appropriate representation of museums’ collections and exhibits, including traditional fashion. Therefore, museum educators/curators need to be equipped ...with the most essential skills in their profession in order to adequately present the museum’s history and holdings. This could be achieved through specialized training programs. However, Arab countries are still behind in terms of museum education. Therefore, this article aims to shed light on this issue by assessing the knowledge and skills possessed by museum educators/curators and how training programs could affect them
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