Pedagogy and Practice
Embodying Assets-based Pedagogies in Museum Education: A Case Study of Museum Educators at the Hmong Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kalia Vue
The term culture is often viewed from an anthropological stance. It is often perceived as static when in truth, culture is not permanent; it is continuously evolving. When the term culture is thought of in museums, it is often attached to the classification of ethnicity and race, while in lived experiences, it is fluid. Challenging the notion and definition of culture and its continuous meaning is necessary and ongoing work. In linking museum education and assets-based pedagogies, it grounds museum education to see all forms of cultures in their fluidity. It affirms the learners' experiences and knowledge as assets to the museum narrative and interpretation. Learning with museum educators through how they embody assets-based pedagogies will redefine museum education as a space that fosters and sustains the plurality of cultures while disrupting the injustices maintained through a deficit lens structured within the Western normalization of museums. Through a case study of the Hmong Museum, I explore how its mission of preserving the Hmong culture and history is embodied through educators, artists, and storytellers and the evolving definition of culture. The significance of this study expands and deepens the understanding of teaching and learning in museums from the curriculum, programming, and facilitation. It also bridges formal and informal learning through assets-based pedagogies to foster and sustain the multitude of cultural identities, languages, and knowledge from the community and students as assets of the museum learning experience.
Paths and Places in between Museum and School: Arts Education in a Social Purpose
Innovation Showcase Andreia Dias
What new education places and approaches may arts education propose today by investing in the encounter between Museum and School? What new poetics and worlds are built in the deepening of this relationship? How do we turn it into a common ground? What paradigm shifts operate? In this paper, we share some recent participatory and arts education projects with schools, from the education department of the Modern Art Centre, of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, that create a new relationship between the museum and the school by bringing an arts approach to the classroom to discuss human rights, citizenship and democratic practice. They propose new educational approaches and transformations in the daily and regular educational space - asking, listening, proposing and adapting according to the characteristics and needs of schools, classes, teachers and students - presenting curricular alternatives without intending to be prescriptive, based on different strategies, based on artistic practices and centered on art as a unifying experience from which knowledge can be generated on any topic. Working on values such as empathy, inclusion, equity, democracy and social justice, in a shared ground between museum and school with art as a thinking language trying and exploring new possible ways - paths and places, for arts education in the contemporary world.
Schools, Teaching, Pedagogy and Museum Learning : Whose Knowledge Is It Anyway?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Adam Unwin
This paper explores the potential of museum learning for teachers and schools. It uses two examples in London, UK to problematize the variety and forms of learning that can be enabled by teachers for school students. These are the Bank of England Museum - located in the heart of the City of London and the British Museum in central London. By integrating physical museum visits within carefully planned school activities that adopt active, groupwork and role-play elements a deeper and more meaningful engagement with knowledge and concepts can be achieved. These learning activities are underpinned by principles of inclusion in that they were for all students and start with their own experiences and cultural knowledges. Theoretical perspectives on learning are used to analyse and explain these museum learning phenomena. These include experiential learning and situated learning. It was apparent that the role of the teacher to design, facilitate and enable learning was important. This work uses a framework for thinking about what influences learning and pedagogy, as well as acknowledging the variability (and complexity) of such factors.
