Using Mobile Devices to Connect Teachers and Museum Educators

The use of mobile devices is increasing rapidly as a potential tool for science teaching. In this study, five educators (three middle school teachers and two museum educators) used a mobile application that supported the development of a driving question. Previous studies have noted that teachers make little effort to connect learning experiences between classrooms and museums, and few studies have focused on creating connections between teachers and museum educators. In this study, teachers and museum educators created an investigation together by designing a driving question in conjunction with the research group before field trips. During field trips, students collected their own data using iPods or iPads to take pictures or record videos of the exhibits. When students returned to the school, they used the museum data with their peers as they tried to answer the driving question. After completing the field trips, five educators were interviewed to investigate their experiences with designing driving questions and using mobile devices. Besides supporting students in data collection during the field trip, using mobile devices helped teachers to get the museum back to the classroom. Designing the driving question supported museum educators and teachers to plan the field trip collaboratively.     

The role of medical museums in contemporary medical education

From the early 19th century until the most recent two decades, open‐space and satellite museums featuring anatomy and pathology collections (collectively referred to as “medical museums”) had leading roles in medical education. However, many factors have caused these roles to diminish dramatically in recent years. Chief among these are the great advances in information technology and web‐based learning that are currently at play in every level of medical training. Some medical schools have abandoned their museums while others have gradually given away their museums' contents to devote former museum space to new classrooms, lecture halls, and laboratories. These trends have accelerated as medical school enrollment has increased and as increasing interest in biological and biomedical research activities have caused medical schools to convert museum space into research facilities. A few medical schools, however, have considered the contents of their museums as irreplaceable resources for modern medicine and medical education and the space these occupy as great environments for independent and self‐directed learning. Consequently, some medical schools have updated their medical museums and equipped them with new technologies. The Anatomical Museum of Leiden University Medical Center in The Netherlands and the Medical Museum of Kawasaki Medical School in Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan, are two examples of such upgraded museums. Student surveys at Leiden University have indicated that all students (100%) found audio‐guided museum tours to be useful for learning and majorities of them found guided tours to be clinically relevant (87%). However, 69% of students felt that museum visits should be optional rather than compulsory within the medical training curriculum. Anat Sci Educ 3:249–253, 2010. © 2010 American Association of Anatomists.     

Memory and critical education: Approaches in the District Six Museum

Abstract

This article begins with the argument that education has become an important site of activity in museums around the world. This development has been of crucial significance for South Africa where many new museums have come into being and where old museums are now taking new courses. The challenge that these museums are having to confront is how to deal with the question of their public education responsibilities with respect to issues such as race, identity, nation and nation-building. How does the museum tell its story in ways that are inclusive and at the same time critical? How these challenges play themselves out in a museum such as the District Six Museum is important to talk about. What this discussion about the District Six Museum reveals is how little attention is paid to forms of public education in institutions outside of the school in South Africa. It is significant that the museum, which has come to play such a significant role in the reimagination of South Africa and is assuming in the intentions of the new government such a pivotal role in teaching South Africans about their pasts, is understood so poorly. The article uses the District Six Museum example to look critically at what a new museum educational practice might consist of.     

Supporting Teachers on Science‐focused School Trips: Towards an integrated framework of theory and practice

Although science centres and museums are important educational resources, school trips to these places are not often conducted in a manner that could maximise learning. In addressing this issue, a Framework for Museum Practice (FMP) is proposed, derived from the perspectives of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, theories of intrinsic motivation, and research into conceptual learning. It is hypothesised that this theoretically derived framework, if implemented by museum educators, can potentially lead to the creation of resources for teachers that would enable them to make better use of the learning opportunities afforded by school trips, and to maximise the impact on pupil learning, including their affective experience. This paper also describes how the framework was used to guide the development of resources to be used in conjunction with a science museum trip. The resources were tested by two primary school teachers and their classes, and the data were analysed for evidence of teacher and student behaviour consistent with the design principles in the FMP. Findings lend some empirical support for the FMP and suggest that it may offer a guide for the development of museum‐provided resources, which would have the potential to improve the utilisation by teachers of informal science institutions and, consequently, their impact on pupil learning.     

高校美术馆的定位与管理

高校美术馆是美术馆(博物馆)领域的新兴试验田,我国高校美术馆在上世纪90年代开始大兴土木,较国外的高校美术馆来说,它仍然十分稚嫩,但高校美术馆尤其是艺术类院校的美术馆具有很大的研究价值和发展空间。作者认为对高校美术馆的管理应该借鉴企业管理的新模式新思路,不应对美术馆的资金收入存有芥蒂,因为美术馆只有在产生自我供血机制后,才能更加有效地发挥其公共性能和社会性能。     

Provoking Points of Convergence: Museum and University Collaborating and Co‐evolving

This article outlines art education courses undertaken in museum and gallery contexts as a component of the Certificate Programme in Visual and Material Culture within the University of British Columbia's Department of Curriculum Studies. With the creation of this programme and through the forging of relationships with area museums, unique ways have evolved for graduate students from diverse areas of education and art teacher education candidates to interact with works of art, museum professionals, artists, and the museum space itself. The purpose of these courses is to use museum and gallery settings as sites to test ideas, critique educational programmes, and advance new approaches for teachers to use museums in more creative and integrated ways in their teaching while expanding theoretical knowledge and interpretive repertoires. Through participating in this collaborative venture we have learned that when you invite teachers into museums, make efforts to increase their comfort within these spaces, while recognising what interpretive insights they offer as active participants in museum discourses, points of convergence between teachers, universities, and museums are formed.     

荆门行业博物馆资源调查和建设构想

行业博物馆是上世纪八十年代开始逐步兴起的一种新的类型的专题博物馆,近两三年发展如火如荼.荆门目前建有两个行业类博物馆,一个是油菜博物馆,一个是蜜蜂博物馆,但经调查,荆门行业博物馆资源还有农耕文化资源、漳河水利资源、古民居资源、石碑石刻艺术资源等,因此,荆门应从现有特色资源出发,努力规划建设中国农谷农耕文化博物馆、漳河水利博物馆、荆门古民居博物馆、荆门石碑石刻艺术博物馆等,以此引导和发展荆门地区的行业博物馆建设.     

Rocking of a rigid block freestanding on a flat pedestal

The seismic protection of objects contained within museums is a topic of great interest, especially with reference to how they are displayed or stored. This problem is the same as that of a large class of non-structural components, such as mechanical and electrical hospital and laboratory equipment that could lose their functionality because of earthquakes. Statues and ceramics simply supported on the floor represent a significant set of case. In some cases, like the Bronzes of Riace, isolation systems have been developed. However, in general museum exhibits are not equipped with devices capable of mitigating the oscillations induced by possible earthquakes. The case study of a marble statue placed on a freestanding squat rigid pedestal is examined. The system of algebraic differential equations governing the problem has been derived and included in an ad-hoc numerical procedure. It is shown that the insertion of a squat rigid body with low frictional resistance at the lower interface with the floor, and high frictional resistance at the upper interface with the artifact significantly reduces the amplitude of the rocking response. As a result the artifact rocks without sliding on the rigid base that slides without rocking with respect to the floor. The numerical analysis performed can be a tool to help in the choice of the optimal friction values in the surfaces of the flat block, designed as a simple isolation system.     

高校美术馆的定位与管理

高校美术馆是美术馆（博物馆）领域的新兴试验田,我国高校美术馆在上世纪90年代开始大兴土木,较国外的高校美术馆来说,它仍然十分稚嫩,但高校美术馆尤其是艺术类院校的美术馆具有很大的研究价值和发展空间。作者认为对高校美术馆的管理应该借鉴企业管理的新模式新思路,不应对美术馆的资金收入存有芥蒂,因为美术馆只有在产生自我供血机制后,才能更加有效地发挥其公共性能和社会性能。     

中国闽台缘网络虚拟博物馆建设的探讨

计算机科学技术的飞速发展,为博物馆数字信息化和走上网络舞台提供了前提条件,也给博物馆的管理以及不同地区的博物馆之间的沟通带来了新的方式,促进博物馆之间的协调与发展.文章主要分析了实体博物馆存在的局限性,提出建设中国闽台缘网络虚拟博物馆的思路,并论证了实现这一思路的可行性.     

“Attraction,Attention, and Desire”: Consumer Culture as Pedagogical Paradigm in Museums in the United States, 1900-1930

Urged on by a young generation of reform-minded professionals, museums in the United States adopted the premises and practices of consumer culture in the early twentieth century. This article argues that this turn towards consumer culture resulted from a new institutional commitment to public education and a radical re-conception of visual pedagogy. In doing so, the article opens dialogue between two bodies of scholarship that rarely inform one another: the history of education and the history of early twentieth-century consumer culture. Focusing on natural history museums, the article explores how and why museum reformers gradually came to accept the psychological principles underlying advertising and salesmanship and to believe these principles could be employed on behalf of education. It chronicles how museum staff increasingly emphasised visual pleasure as a pedagogical tool, and constructed displays to arouse attention, attraction and desire for knowledge. Finally, it describes how these new pedagogical ventures did not always have the effect that reformers anticipated.     

Aesthetic encounters and learning in the museum

Abstract

This article discusses how museum settings can provide opportunities for sensory and aesthetic encounters and learning. It draws on research into museum education programmes that included examinations of curatorial construction and display, observations of teaching and open-ended interviews with museum educators. The examples selected here focus on themes of display and learning to illustrate how aesthetic experiences can emerge as incidental adjuncts to learning in other fields. They also acknowledge how museums draw on aesthetic judgements to categorise or present objects and employ aesthetic artefacts and practices as representative devices of cultural engagement, especially in learning themes in the humanities. The studies show how museums can offer opportunities and skills, and cultivate dispositions to the examination of challenging ideas about aesthetic status, sensibility, interpretation or value. Examples of purposefully constructed sites for aesthetic learning show how museum educators have rethought ways of facilitating affective sensory experiences, and raising questions of aesthetic status, response and the social and cultural functions of the arts. The studies discussed here suggest that museums can provide dedicated opportunities to cultivate independent aesthetic thinking and debate about aesthetic ideas as lifelong skills and pleasures.     

What to Collect? Museums and Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Collecting

Although museum and galleries are under increasing pressure to refect and explore culture diversity in their collections and public programming, this has largely been interpreted in terms of ethnicity. Issues of sexual orientation are largely ignored by these cultural institutions. This article explores both some of constraints facing museums and the strategies, ethical considerations and curatorial practices they might explore and adopt to refect and document our rich LGBT histories and heritage in their collections, and to highlight these histories in mainstream and special exhibitions and public programming such as events, talks and conferences hosted by museums. This work should be guided by close partnerships with the LGBT communities such as advisory groups. These changes will not be achieved overnight, but if museums have the leadership of their institutional management and the support of their colleagues, a change agenda can be implemented progressively.     

What is distinctive about museum pedagogy and how can museums best support learning in schools? An action research inquiry into the practice of three regional museums

It seems uncontroversial to claim that museums are unique places of interest with the potential to inspire learners, yet what this means and how it is managed are complex questions. Museum educators’ work is currently shaped by accountability requirements typically expressed as visitor targets. Centralised teaching and learning initiatives are presented as ‘good practice’. In opposition to these factors, the action research inquiry discussed here set out to enable the participants to research and reflect upon the challenges of their individual contexts, and to develop ideas for practice that were ‘bespoke’. Deliberation on particular predicaments raised important issues, such as the relationship between schools and museums; the educational value of museums to schools; and the distinctive nature of museum pedagogy. A group of museum educators began with the question: ‘How can we support teachers in integrating learning in a museum, with the school curriculum, to help raise pupil attainment’? The paper tells the story of the project and includes reflections on the use of action research as a method of personal professional development and organisational problem-solving.     

美国博物馆学校案例解析及运行特点初探

美国博物馆学校是馆校合作深入的产物,提高了对博物馆资源的利用效率,降低了社会的教育成本。它与普通学校教育相比有着自己的运行特点和优势,不仅是对学校和博物馆这两种文化机构资源的整合,更是这两种文化机构适应时代发展做出的反应。其对新的教学方式的探究和应用,一直走在当今美国教育改革的前沿。通过对美国明尼苏达州科技馆学校、纽约市博物馆学校和圣地亚哥儿童博物馆小学这三所比较有代表性的博物馆学校个案的解析,归纳总结出美国博物馆学校的运行特点：办学特色突出,充分利用博物馆的资源;结合正式教育和非正式教育的优势,以促进学生发展为目的;课程设置灵活,鼓励教学方式创新;管理架构开放,交流渠道顺畅。     

Was verbinden Museumsbesucher mit Lernen im Museum und in der Schule?

The present study was conducted in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main and the Landesmuseum Schloß Gottorf in Schleswig. 160 museum visitors were asked about their conceptions of learning in school and learning in a museum. These conceptions generate a persons’ individual concept of learning. It is formed by the influence of the subjectively different experiences each person makes in varying learning situations. Since every learning environment offers different opportunities and possibilities for learning, it can be assumed that there are location-specific concepts of learning. The results of this study show that concepts of learning in school can be differentiated from concepts in a museum; albeit reactive and constructive concepts of learning were found for schools as well as for museums. In addition it was found that different people’s concepts of learning depend on their places of learning.     

From Obstacle to Growth Dewey's Legacy of Experience‐Based Art Education

In the last decades theories that emphasise visitors’experience as the key element in the process of meaning‐making have influenced art education in museums considerably. However, there is remarkably little evidence in practice that museums shape their exhibits and educational tools by the actual experiences of visitors. Because museum education is still too much knowledge‐based, people often do not come to understanding or engagement of thinking. This article demonstrates this inconsistency and its consequences based on visitors’conversations during a museum visit while looking at contemporary art. In order to engage visitors into their own thinking and create lasting experiences, the article also investigates Dewey's ideas about experienced‐based education and inquiry learning. The study especially shows that experiences felt as obstacles for interpretation are extremely suitable to stimulate, deepen and improve visitors’engagement in the inquiry cycle.     

Learning Robotics in a Science Museum Theatre Play: Investigation of Learning Outcomes,Contexts and Experiences

Theatre is often introduced into science museums to enhance visitor experience. While learning in museums exhibitions received considerable research attention, learning from museum theatre has not. The goal of this exploratory study was to investigate the potential educational role of a science museum theatre play. The study aimed to investigate (1) cognitive learning outcomes of the play, (2) how these outcomes interact with different viewing contexts and (3) experiential learning outcomes through the theatrical experience. The play ‘Robot and I’, addressing principles in robotics, was commissioned by a science museum. Data consisted of 391 questionnaires and interviews with 47 children and 20 parents. Findings indicate that explicit but not implicit learning goals were decoded successfully. There was little synergy between learning outcomes of the play and an exhibition on robotics, demonstrating the effect of two different physical contexts. Interview data revealed that prior knowledge, experience and interest played a major role in children’s understanding of the play. Analysis of the theatrical experience showed that despite strong identification with the child protagonist, children often doubted the protagonist’s knowledge jeopardizing integration of scientific content. The study extends the empirical knowledge and theoretical thinking on museum theatre to better support claims of its virtues and respond to their criticism.     

‘In and against the museum’: the contested spaces of museum education for adults

This paper focuses on museum and gallery education for adults in Dundee, Scotland. Dundee has recently experienced a shift from being mainly working class to an educational, cultural and tourist centre. Hence, an interesting field for the examination of the educational policies and practices of the city museums/galleries and the different fashions they receive and act upon wider developments in the museum world has emerged. Questions arising are how the new, open and accessible museum (and gallery) has changed the way education is constructed and offered in the museums in the city? What is the relationship of education with marketing and the new discourse of social inclusion and participation in museums and galleries? For example, one of the most pertinent findings was that, at least in Dundee, activity-based and individual learning has been over-valued, at the expense of a more social and dialogic educational experience that participants seemed to largely prefer and indeed propose as more meaningful to them. Although new ideas and participatory practices have improved attendance and the engagement of the local adult population, other issues, such as the new economic reality for museums and the close relationship of education with marketing are policies that were often treated with resistance, if not opposition, by the research participants.     

加强博物馆人才队伍建设的必要性

博物馆事业要获得发展,人才起着至关重要的作用。博物馆的专业基础工作需要高素质的专业人才,时代的发展要求博物馆应有高素质的专业人才,现代管理要求博物馆应有新型的专家型和管理型高素质人才,文化体制改革要求博物馆具有高素质的人才队伍,古今中外的历史经验教训要求博物馆要有高素质的人才队伍。