At 08:22 18/09/98 +0100, Eilean wrote:
We need to
>find a way of evaluating museum education that takes on board the
>constructivist learning theory that most of us subscribe to. To do this
>we need to develop a new language of evaluation that indicates that we
>are concerned with individual learning, which might be very different
>foreach person involved.
Now this does start to get interesting! If it turns out that we do not have
a clearly-articulated and shared theory of learning (and an associated
shared pedagogy of museum education) we are unlikely to agree on
qualitative, evaluative measures of the effectiveness of our museums as
educational organisations.
I am certainly not a 'pure' constructivist in the sense that I take George
Hein to mean in his writing (e.g. JEM 16 p21). As far as I am concerned
there is a real world out there from which we can obtain objective
knowledge, but perhaps that's the scientist speaking. (The best paper I
know on the strengths and weaknesses of the constructivist position as they
affect science education is Jonathan Osborne's in Science Education 80 p53).
The more I think about these things (and read the likes of Gardner et al)
the more I believe that we provide the best conditions for learning in
museums by providing diversity (and redundancy) of approaches, so different
individuals with different learning styles and preferences can find
attractive, comfortable ways in. That is why we need to mix 'traditional
displays' (text and object-based), with interactives, multimedia, drama and
other programming. How we get that to some sort of performance measure that
would stand up, I don't know yet, but please send me ideas! This is the
approach we have pursued in our Challenge of Materials gallery (and
visitors seem to like it) and is informing (along with other
'constructivist-type' notions such as understanding people's pror knowledge
and conceptions) the development of our Wellcome Wing.
Roland
Dr Roland Jackson
Head of Education and Programmes
Science Museum
London SW7 2DD
tel: 44 171 938 9760
fax: 44 171 938 9804
http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/education/
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