CULTURAL LEARNING AND THE FUTURE OF MUSEUM EDUCATION – SOME THOUGHTS FROM INDIA
Katherine RoseFounder Director, Flow India, New Delhi
Director, Flow Associates, London
CULTURAL LEARNING AND THE FUTURE OF MUSEUM EDUCATION – SOME THOUGHTS FROM INDIA
Katherine RoseFounder Director, Flow India, New Delhi
Director, Flow Associates, London
The rise of social and open learning
• Opportunity for self-directed, lifelong learning has exponentially increased
• Opportunity for creating non-hierarchical learning communities exists in a way it never did before
• Permanently changed relationship with knowledge and facts: the google/wikipedia effect
• This is bringing about a shift in the relationship between learner and traditional knowledge provider i.e. a school or museum. They are no longer the sole guardians or ‘imparters’ of knowledge.
Characteristics of 21st century learning
• Active• Enquiry-based• Collaborative• Participatory• Creative• Connected to research• Connected to real world= Focus on aptitude development
and fostering appetite for learning rather than simply knowledge acquisition.
Who is involved in cultural learning?
The cultural & creative capabilities of LEARNERS
The RESOURCES:the cultural & creative organisations or practitioners, that enrich it
The MEDIATORS, or TEACHERS(who include parents/carers), who tap the resources and develop the competenciesof learners.
LEARNING PROCESS
Defining dimensions of cultural learning
PRACTICE: Learning and practicing the skills of creativity (making and thinking)
ACCESSING CULTURE: Learning across the curriculum enhanced by cultural and creative stimuli and resources
ENRICHMENT: The approach might vary with context and veer towards one or two of these: - Learning the values, rituals and stories of your own peoples (culture as identity)- Learning how your own cultural identities are part of a complex global whole (culture as diversity) - Learning about high culture and methods of appreciation (culture as canon).
Evidence for the impact
UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport 2010 report found that participating in structured arts activities led to:
• increases in transferrable skills (including confidence and communication) of between 10-17%.
• increase children’s cognitive abilities test scores by 16% and 19% on average.
In the US, large cohort studies of 25,000 students done by James Catterall show that taking part in arts activitiesincreases student attainment in maths and literacy, withparticularly striking results for students from low incomefamilies.
Flow India
• Founded 2010 to introduce cultural learning / creative enquiry model to India
• 3 directors: 2 British, 1 Indian
• 5 full-time staff members
• Team of 15 freelance workshop facilitators
• We are an independent organisation that operates commercially in the Indian education market.
Partnership programming
Sanskriti Foundation: Museum of Everyday Art, Museum of Terracotta, Textiles Museum
The process of ‘creative enquiry’
•Critical thinking
Honing Critical and analytic judgment
•Creativity
Employing imagination and reflection
•Cultural awareness
Encountering wide based cultural art
forms
•Communication
Articulating our own ideas while listening to
others •Enquiry
Developing research skills through fascination and
self discipline
Challenges opportunities constraints
Scale and scaling
Training
Operating within a market with customers
Logistics
Unpredictability of environment
Developing cultural learning evaluation in India
educational e.g. measurable through attainment
physical e.g. measurable through wellbeing & sporting aptitude
cultural e.g. measurable through participation in culture & creativity
economic e.g. measurable through production of financial & non-financial capital for groups/communities and economically viable skills in individuals
social e.g. measurable through 'belonging', cohesion, improved behaviour
Museums and education in the future?
Will continue to be vital places, spaces and catalysts for experiences and learning that allow us to connect with our past to help us better understand our present and future.
The distinction between informal and formal learning will matter less.
But the cultural empathy that museums afford is more important now than it has ever been before.