The museum education mix: students, teachers and museum educators - Janette Griffin - Understanding Museums: Australian museums and museology, Des Griffin and Leon Paroissien (eds), National Museum of Australia, 2011

Introduction: While some school classes may still sit in a classroom, talked at by education officers, or be met at the museum’s schools entrance and provided with rules and worksheets, there are now many innovative and interactive programs available in museums. Learning opportunities that include emotional, aesthetic and interactive experiences have replaced ‘teaching’. Students spend more time immersed in the galleries, participating in drama, role play, online and hands-on interaction. Changes have been influenced by recent research into school students’ learning in museums. Numerous people, especially in the US and the UK, have contributed to these changes. [1] Many Australian educators and researchers have also expanded our knowledge of students’ learning in museums through practice and/or research. Some examples of their work will be described in this chapter. [2]

Museums have always positioned themselves as educational institutions, and yet the role of education staff has developed erratically and variably. In school-level programs there has been a trend to smaller groups working with a museum educator: from up to 60 in the 1970s to smaller groups now. Less time is spent in classrooms and more time in exhibition areas complemented by hands-on experiences. Programs are considerably more learning- and student-oriented and less object-driven. If worksheets are provided at all, they now seek thought-provoking investigations rather than simply ‘fill in the blanks’. Opportunity for communication with teachers and students has expanded dramatically through web-based information, materials and activities. In this chapter I will explore these changes for the museum educators,[3] the students, the teachers [4] and the museums as a whole. An interesting question that remains as yet unanswered is the amount of influence that students exert on cultural institutions, especially considering how large, diverse and measurable the group is.

Full text: http://www.nma.gov.au

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