中加场馆开展家庭教育的比较研究——基于场馆教育者的视角

场馆是家庭开展教育活动的重要场域,而家庭也被列为场馆教育的核心面向。针对场馆究竟如何开展家庭教育的问题,本研究从场馆教育者的专业视角出发,考察中国和加拿大场馆开展家庭教育的情况,寻求跨文化的经验借鉴。通过对场馆的教育理解和期待、家庭与场馆的教育动机以及家庭行为与场馆支持三个方面的深度比较,研究显示中加场馆开展家庭教育的特点各有侧重。无论优势,还是缺陷,都有共识和差异。在取长补短的意义上,我国场馆和家庭分别获得三点启示。     

A Conversation on Object‐Centered Learning in Art Museums

Danielle Rice and Philip Yenawine are veteran art museum educators who have wrestled for decades with the thorny issues involved in teaching about and learning from art objects in the museum setting. While there is general agreement within art museums today that the object should be the focus of educational practice, debate continues as to the most effective processes for facilitating learning. Gallery teaching is one of the most contested arenas, with much of the disagreement centering on the place of information in teaching beginning viewers. In art museums, the issue of what and how to teach is complicated by the fact that many people, including artists, museum professionals, psychologists and educators consider art primarily as something to be enjoyed, and they posit this enjoyment in direct opposition to learning about art. Partly because of this, the function of art museum education and gallery‐based instruction is still evolving.     

社会文化视角下基于展品的互动研究——来自《解读科学中心与博物馆中的互动:走向社会文化视角》的启示

《解读科学中心与博物馆中的互动:走向社会文化视角》一书运用社会文化视角,以众多实践案例为基础,对科学中心与博物馆中产生的各种互动进行了详细的论述。同时也对互动之于博物馆教育活动的重要性,如何才能开展有益的互动以及展品是如何促进学生学习等问题做了相关阐述。通过此书可以为博物馆教育工作者、学校教师以及在校学生带来一些启发和思考,并在一定程度上促进博物馆开展教育活动的进步。     

Finding the Natural Interface: Graduate and Public Education at One University Natural History Museum

University natural history museums are much like their public museum counterparts, yet they differ in some important ways including how they are funded and staffed and how they serve their parent institutions. These circumstances provide some unique opportunities for university‐based natural history museums but they also present challenges, especially for their public education goals. While there are surely a variety of creative solutions for resolving these dilemmas, this article explores how the graduate program at the University of Colorado Museum may be seen as an example serving as an interface between diverse facets of the Museum and its several audiences and constituencies. The usefulness of the program as a model and as a means of training and nurturing future museum professionals is discussed.     

University Natural History Museums: The Public Education Mission

University‐based natural history museums are specialized cultural institutions that serve diverse constituencies. On one hand, these museums promote scientific research and collections through the work of curators and students and must advance the universities' missions. On the other hand, they must provide exhibition and public programs for the local community, or if they are a state museum, serve the citizens of the entire state through these activities. The challenge for university‐based natural history museums is to achieve a balance among their activities and services, given available resources. In the twenty‐first century, university natural history museums must further adapt by promoting social awareness of topics such as biodiversity and fostering learning in informal and formal settings. The Florida Museum of Natural History, an official State museum located at the University of Florida, is a prime example of a comprehensive university museum with a broad spectrum of programs that promote and enhance learning activities.     

From Period Rooms to Public Trust: The Authority Debate and Art Museum Leadership in America

A recent lecture series at the Harvard University Art Museums titled “Art Museums and the Public Trust” marked the eightieth anniversary of the founding of Harvard's famed Museum Course. A graduate seminar begun in 1921 by the Fogg Art Museum's associate director, Paul J. Sachs, the Museum Course became the primary training ground for art museum leadership in the first half of the twentieth century. The 2001 commemorative lecture series was intended to foster a healthy debate on the place of the art museum in Anglo‐American culture. Instead, the speakers, veteran directors of America's and England's most prestigious art museums, invariably returned to one concern: authority—theirs and that of the art museum itself in contemporary society. Authority was at the heart of the Museum Course decades earlier, tellingly explored in annual debates around two significant topics. The first debate involved the pros and cons of including period rooms in American museums. In the second, students argued about whether America's established art institutions should collect the work of living artists. Questions of how museums should respond to the interests of audiences and communities, their responsibility to contemporary artists, and the meaning of a public trust trouble America's museum leadership now as then. This article explores the common ground between the Museum Course debates of the 1930s and Harvard's recent commemorative “debates” by America's contemporary museum leaders and comments on its significance for today's museums.     

Developing Local Narratives for Objects in National Collections: Lessons Learned from the “Number Please? Working with the Enfield Exchange” Project

Museums of science, technology, and engineering are developing new ways of interpreting and displaying their collections. Increasingly objects are being placed within narratives of everyday use; the human side of technology. The focus of this article is a section of one of the last UK manual telephone switchboards, which was acquired by the Science Museum, London, following its decommissioning in 1960. This artifact offers a unique insight into a communication technology that relied extensively on female telephonists, a distinct way of understanding gender roles in the twentieth century. The authors explore strategies for developing local narratives for objects from national collections and reflect on lessons learned from a cross‐institutional collaboration. This article highlights: the value of local historians, community events and oral histories to developing local narratives; how these activities informed understandings of the telephone switchboard; work life in the communications industry; the relationship between women and technology; and practical strategies that can enhance collections and museum practice through collaboration.     

The Puzzle of Museum Educational Practice: A Comment on Rounds and Falk

Abstract Museum practice is in the midst of a fascinating practical and theoretical trajectory. The mandate that museums place education at the center of their public service role has had the effect of framing a new set of questions and—inevitably—problems. If museums have primary value to society as educational institutions, what kind of learning actually happens in them? Jay Rounds and John Falk, writing at the leading edge of this inquiry, explore curiosity, motivation and self‐identity as paramount considerations for the special type of learning museums promote. Their analyses present interesting challenges for the museum practitioner, who may observe that people find the pursuit of curiosity pleasurable and value it more highly than knowledge acquisition. The practitioner may conclude that museums have a calling: They stand for the value of curiosity for its own sake, and for that reason will never wear out their welcome.     

The 2010 Horizon Report: Museum Edition

Abstract The 2010 Horizon Report: Museum Edition examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in education and interpretation within the museum environment. The report is based on conversations and dialogues with technology and museum professionals from more than two‐dozen countries.     

Project ASTER III: A Model for Teacher Professional Development Integrating Science Museum Exhibits with State and National Science Education Content Standards

Abstract This article describes Project ASTER III (Active Science Teaching Encourages Reform), a science professional development program for early elementary teachers, which is based on the premise that people learn best by doing. Very few professional development programs focus on early childhood teacher development and how best to integrate informal science centers into teaching. In ASTER III, development teams—consisting of university scientists, science educators, K‐3 teachers, and educators from a hands‐on science museum—developed 5E lesson plans aligned with the Ohio Academic Content Standards and the National Science Education Standards in conjunction with the museum’s exhibits. This study explores the impact of the ASTER III model on teacher perceptions about the role and effect informal science museum visits have on subsequent teaching and student learning.     

博物馆教育空间与活动的“分众化”规划

时下,一些博物馆已开始就其教育空间与相应活动进行“分众化”规划,即根据不同的目标观众进行分层的、有的放矢地组织与计划,以达到“因人施教”、“空间尽其用”的目的。本文应用文献研究法、调查法、定性分析法、经验总结法等方法,以首开先河的美国大都会艺术博物馆、芝加哥艺术博物馆为案例,对博物馆的分众化教育空间与活动实践展开探讨,包括馆内的主要教育空间、“分众化”活动规划、以及规划原则等,以期为国内博物馆界的实践提供参考。     

Behind the Findings: Yes,the Science Explorations Program Worked,but Why?

Abstract The Science Explorations program was developed by the Milwaukee Public Museum (MPM) out of a desire to use the unique resources of MPM to advance informal science education and to address a community need of local and national concern: improving science education and accessibility for underserved audiences. In 2002, with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and private donors, MPM launched this after‐school program for a target group of urban, mostly minority, middle school girls, a group at risk for underachievement in science and technology. The museum staff built a combined program with five middle schools and also sought to reach out to family members of the participating girls in order to increase support for the young women's science endeavors. A three‐year evaluation of the Science Explorations program demonstrated positive findings from primarily quantitative data. An aim of this article is to present findings from the qualitative data to shed light on the reasons this program met nearly all of its targets. Findings from case studies and qualitative interviews suggest that the museum staff's efforts to demystify science—a process that provided ongoing access to real scientific endeavors and invited personal contact with scientists—influenced the program's success. Findings also suggest that strong school liaisons may help increase family support for young women's scientific pursuits, which can in turn play a role in their success in this program.     

The Via Media of American Museum Practice: Henry Watson Kent and the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Speculation about the character and purposes of American art museums has occasioned intense debate since their inception—never more so than today. Whether to be elitist or populist, object‐based or audience‐based forms the crux of many heated arguments. This article asserts that, in the midst of competing philosophies, the successful American art museum has in reality grown from an amalgam of ideas that form a via media or middle path, far more inclusive and pragmatic than is usually noted. This comprehensive philosophy is most effectively demonstrated in the work of Henry Watson Kent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York during the first decades of the twentieth century. The work of Kent and his colleagues at the Metropolitan Museum is here examined as a paradigm for the via media museum practice that speaks to the aspirations of America's current art museum leadership.     

Kelvingrove: Telling Stories in a Treasured Old/New Museum

“Welcome to the future of museums” is one of the many rave head‐lines that greeted the reopening of Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, Scotland, after a $60 (£30) million refurbishment. This article charts the course of the project over the 16 years it was in development, tells how it survived a number of major setbacks, and recounts the key strategic decisions that led to the creation of an object‐based, visitor‐centered, storytelling museum that was more successful than we dared hope. The project team aimed to integrate the demands of research, design, conservation, education, and communication in order to bring visitors and objects—in all their richness and complexity—into meaningful contact. This process has been rewarded with unprecedented visitor numbers‐3,000,000 in the first year, in a city of 600,000 people.     

Are Museums Still Necessary?

Museums today face a crisis of confidence arising from two issues: (1) the erosion of a historically unreliable funding base, and (2) a challenge for audience by entrepreneurial elements in the culture. Other issues center on a growing public idea that museum work can be shared by entities such as theme parks and exhibition halls and the perception that education should be shaped as recreation. Museum responses to these problems have exacerbated their vulnerability as unique institutions. Certain dichotomies in the museum world help to explain this situation: (1) professionalism versus the audience, (2) connoisseurship versus the public experience, (3) the centrality versus the peripherality of objects in museums, (4) museums as businesses versus museums as educators, and (5) visitor expectations versus available resources. Resolution of the conflicts requires museums to remember that they are communication systems capable of teaching hard information, to stop emulating the forces that threaten to destroy them, and to pay attention to certain lessons understood in the business world. Museums also must find stable and reliable funding, reinvigorate the museum accreditation program, and pay attention to what museums really exist for. Museums are still necessary only when they function as true museums.     

Towards an Edible Museum: Exploring Foodways as Sociomuseological Practice in a South African Township

Museum institutions are rarely recognised for their gastronomic potential, particularly in their efforts to draw culturally diverse audiences. This article unpacks the possibility of exploring foodways through a sociomuseological practice, with the aim to facilitate cross‐cultural interaction and tolerance. Following an action research methodology, this study explored the possibility of transforming a township restaurant in a marginalised community in South Africa, into an “edible museum” – a restaurant with sociomuseological aims. The results, however, indicated that the formalisation of the restaurant space in this context further exaggerated cultural difference rather than attempting its engagement towards tolerance through museological means. It is proposed that the “edible museum” concept lends itself to be envisioned as a process, rather than a physical space, through which museum professionals and educators may network with existing food communities and sites towards a sensory interpretation of cross‐cultural tolerance both inside their galleries and within broader communities.     

澳大利亚堪培拉国家恐龙博物馆的互动教育

位于堪培拉的国家恐龙博物馆是一个寓教于乐的互动式博物馆,供成人、儿童和学生游乐。尽管博物馆规模相对较小,但通过提供最大化互动、参与和教育机会,博物馆已能够得到较高的参观人数,并通过使用脸书或微信等社交媒体推广业务,使游览变得愉快而有趣。专注于有效的零售已使国家恐龙博物馆能够产生稳定的盈利,这些盈利继而被用于增加馆藏、展示和储备。     

刍议博物馆宣教工作的探索与研究

博物馆是展示、宣传人类历史文化和自然遗产、传播爱国主义教育的重要阵地,而宣教工作是博物馆的重要工作之一,随着社会的不断发展,人类对精神的需求日益增加,博物馆宣教工作将变得更加重要。为充分发挥宣教工作的优势,有必要博物馆宣教工作进行研究。本文主要从两大方面探索与研究了如何有效推进博物馆宣教工作。     

A Jewish Museum in an Arab Country

Jews have lived in comparative peace with their neighbors in North Africa for millennia. In the last century, however, political forces have altered an ancient live‐and‐let‐live ethos. A Peace Corps volunteer who began work at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism—the only Jewish museum in the Arab world—just before the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York describes the shock waves engulfing her small museum and the Jewish communities whose artifacts it shelters.