Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This work addresses the research in museum education. It is about a methodological discussion for the analysis of learning activities in museums, according to a research carried out in May and June 2018 for the analysis of school visits in art museums in Barcelona and Gerona (Spain). It presents two proposals of analysis which were erroneous and a third one which finally was adopted. The first analysis proposal was based on the school curriculum; it was erroneous because indicators and variables of the analysis responded strictly to the formal context of education, which meant ignoring the specific contributions to learning of the museum setting. In the second proposal, the analysis was based on trends in museum education, according to theories of Dialogical Pedagogy, Visual Thinking Strategies, Inspiring Learning for All Framework (UK), and the collective text from the ICOM-CECA (2011 in Brazil), which was wrong because no one of them constitutes a proper model of learning, but they all are grounded in sociocultural principles of learning and, then, defining specific indicators was ambiguous. Finally, the results in this work are directed to design the analysis based on the didactic methodology, according to three types of evidences: mesogenetic (didactic and content medium), topogenetic (relationship and roles) and chronogenetic (temporal indicators and learning process); the methodological framework is qualitative, according to reduction of information processes. The contributions of this work address the elements and criteria that must be considered for a successful design of the analysis in research in museum education.