Abstract
Drawing on research involving interviews with secondary school teachers and students in Australia, this paper addresses the opportunities and risks of learning with the confronting past. It explores the capacity for understandings of the difficult experiences of people in the past to make history more meaningful for young people, by helping them to connect to global patterns in the past and present. In most cases, student participants felt their insights into the past allowed them to see and understand the present more clearly, and they engaged with political debate in thoughtful and productive ways, understanding the complexity of perspectives they might encounter. They also demonstrated a desire for a more just future, particularly in terms of cultural recognition. Significantly, a more emotionally-informed engagement with the past was seen as more interesting and more meaningful to students, but also allowed a deeper and more analytical insight into both past and present. This has implications for museum exhibition and education work, as emotional/affective engagement with displays and programs carries risk, especially amongst the vulnerable and marginalised communities museums increasingly seek to attract. This paper lays out the argument for trauma-informed museum practice, highlighting some examples of how this might be achieved in gallery and education spaces.
Presenters
Amy McKernanLecturer, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
History, Learning, Museum, Education, Trauma
