Introduction to Museum Education

Fundamental questions:

• What is museum education? • What are its historical beginnings? • Who ARE our audiences? • How we learn - learning theory as foundation

of museum education• What’s changing?

Early Education Departments

• Early docents set the foundation in today’s art museums for education departments

• Currently docents are primarily women, with numbers in the thousands, especially in art museums

Early History of Docents in American Art Museums: 1890-1930

• The Museum of Fine Arts, with its origins in 1807 as a gentlemen’s reading club, the Boston Athenaeum, introduced the first docents, 1890-1930

• Benjamin Ives Gilman (Secretary and Trustee for the MFA,1851-1933) and a group of men, the first officers of the museum, provided docent services in the earliest years

Museum Education: Who are our audiences?

• Children• Adolescents• Adults

• Families• Schools• Community Groups

Children

• Concrete learners

• Learn by doing

• Captive audiences in schools

• Experiences revolve around world they know: highly

personal, family, friends, school

• Difficulties with abstractions such as time

Adolescents

• Individuation from families; independence• Concerned with identity: who am I in the

world?• Adults in body, still firmly entrenched in family• Interested in the big topics, like sex, death,

meaning of life• Peer interaction extremely important• Technology important form of communication

Teen Docent Program at the Danforth Museum of Art

Adults

• Young, middle, older adult groups each motivated by different adult life stages

• “passionate and purposeful” learners• Personally motivated by experience and living

in their own historic period• Leisure time, more free time to spend• Not a captive audience – visit the museum of

their own volition

Families

• A family is a multi generational social group of up to 5-6 people with or without children that comes as a unit to the museum.

• Families are dynamic and changing. Members grow and develop, members are added and subtracted.

• Families constitute an important visitor group for museums, comprising at least 50% of all museum visitors.

Families through the lifespan: how do we cultivate them at each age?

• Young children accompany parents• School aged children come with parents and

to classes with their schools and other groups• Teenagers, now comfortable, come with peers• Young adults visit during childbearing years• Adults at various stages of life• Families “enfolded” into the museum

What does family learning look like?• Playful and highly social experience• Influenced by the ages of the children and/or

adults in the group• (Families perceive museums as good for their

kids)• Members learn in different ways• Find value in their own personal observations

and experiences by working, talking, and solving problems together

Observing families in museums• Conversation a key characteristic• Families interact in predictable ways, influenced

by the age of the children, familiarity with the setting, and their family learning style.

• Behaviors include verbal and non-verbal interactions: looking at exhibitions, participating in programs, visiting the gift shop, engaging in conversation, gesturing, modeling, and emoting.

• These behaviors are carried out collaboratively within the museum, but also extend beyond the museum.

Museums and Schools

• Museums and schools both provide unique and valuable learning environments

• Both share a vision for education of children • Both have vastly different cultures: formal and

informal education• Both in need of funding for collaboration• On-going communication essential to defining roles

and responsibilities clearly

School groups visit museumsVisiting school groups often represent the highest

percentage of visitors to a museum – very important audience

1. Social interaction in a school group is important for a positive learning outcome

2. Recognition and accommodation of children’s social agendas can result in increased learning

3. Students enjoy seeing and learning about new things and perceive museums as places to do so.

4. Children prefer to share what they are learning with peers rather than listening to an adult tour guide

5. They learn better when they visit multiple times 6. …when the teacher prepares unit with related

classroom activities before and after visit7. …when there are opportunities for choice and

personalized learning

Museum/school collaborations

• Prepare students and teachers for lifelong appreciation of the benefits of what a museum can offer, enjoyment of museums

• Enhancement of the curriculum with hands-on objects and experiences, exposure to multiple perspectives

• Can increase as sense of ownership of the museum• Greater appreciation of cultural diversity

Problems with Museum /School collaborations

• Lack of money to fully realize collaboration• Lack of understanding of the different “cultures” in

schools and museums – on both sides• Lack of strict relevancy to the subject areas in

standardized testing• Schools lack time to attend museums, because they

need to “teach to the test”

Museums reach out to schools

• Museums often have active outreach programs in schools

• Museum professionals visit schools with slides and/or hands-on objects, and conduct programs for several groups

• This allows some interaction with the museum but is less expensive for the school

• Technology is allowing innovation in outreach

Community Outreach

Groups from the community commonly visit museums

• Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, 4-H Clubs, Homeschooling families, after-school programs

• Museums offer studio and other kinds of educational classes for adults, teens, and children after school, nights and weekends

Learning theory informs museum education

The following learning theories are particularly important in museum education, an informal learning setting (different from the formal, school/classroom experience

Constructivism

…is a theory describing how learning happens, regardless of whether learners are using their prior experiences to understand a lecture or following the instructions for building a model airplane.

Learners construct knowledge out of their prior experiences through assimilation and accommodation

Jean Piaget (1896 – 1980) was one of the first theorists to define stages

of development in childrenPreoperational stage: from ages 2 to 7 (magical thinking

predominates. Acquisition of motor skills). Egocentrism begins strongly and then weakens. Children cannot use logical thinking.

• Concrete operational stage: from ages 7 to 12 (children begin to think logically but are very concrete in their thinking). Children can now think logically but only with practical aids. They are no longer as egocentric.

• Formal operational stage: from age 12 onwards (development of abstract reasoning). Children develop abstract thought and can easily conserve and think logically in their mind.

Lev Vygotsky, 1896-1934

• Individual cognition develops as a result of interactions in the social life of the individual.

• Cannot isolate individual processes from social processes: must

understand an individual’s social relationships to understand the learning process. People spend the majority of their time in social interaction.

• All learning is built upon previous learning, not just of the individual, but of the entire society in which that individual lives.

• People use language not only for social communication but to guide, plan, and monitor their activity in a self-regulatory way.

• Language mediates social interaction and cognitive activity between individuals as well as within individuals.

John Dewey (1859-1952)• Dewey was known as the “father of experiential education”• Learning should be active; schooling unnecessarily long and

restrictive. Students should be involved in real-life tasks and challenges - Math could be learned by learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how long it would take to get from one place to another (a popular math curriculum today is called “Every Day Math”)

• Dewey's philosophy helped forward a "progressive education" movement, and spawned the development of "experiential education" programs

• Dewey's philosophy lies at the heart of bold educational experiments, including modern museum learning

Howard Gardner, 1943- Multiple Intelligences

• Linguistic intelligence: sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. Includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself ; and language as a means to remember information.

• Logical-mathematical intelligence: analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically; can detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically. Associated with scientific and mathematical thinking.

• Musical intelligence: skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. Can recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. Musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence.

• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence: using whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. Ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements.

• Spatial intelligence: recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas.

• Interpersonal intelligence: capacity to understand intentions, motivations and desires of other people. Allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counselors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.

• Intrapersonal intelligence: capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one's feelings, fears and motivations. Involves an effective working model of ourselves, and to be able to use such information to regulate our lives.

What’s new?

• Museums are becoming more audience-focused and participatory

• Our understandings of how people learn in a museum setting are beginning to be better researched, articulated, and applied

• Availability and types of technology growing rapidly in the 21st Century