Engaging Museums and Galleries in Pre-service Art Teacher Education in Singapore

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Agnieszka Chalas,  Annabelle Tan,  Tingting Wang  

Today, not only is it readily acknowledged that art museums and galleries have an important role to play in any well-rounded visual arts curriculum, but documentation of the student impacts of visits to these important cultural institutions is mounting in the literature. Despite the reported benefits to students, research indicates that many art teachers still feel ill-equipped to use museums/galleries in support of their classroom art instruction. Numerous scholars have therefore argued that both exposure to museums/galleries and direct training in the use of museum-based resources and pedagogies should be an essential core ingredient in art teachers’ pre-service preparation. The establishment of strong links between university faculty and educators at local museums/galleries is critical to such an endeavour. At the National Institute for Education (NIE) in Singapore, not only are museum methods courses an obligatory part of pre-service provision for all primary and secondary art teacher candidates, but they also make significant use of local art museums and galleries as learning spaces for these future teachers. This paper outlines a pre-service art museum education course undertaken in collaboration with both the National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Art Museum as a component of the teacher preparation program at NIE. Specifically, the study illustrates how museum-university partnerships at the pre-service level can serve to prepare museum-wise art teachers.