Some more thoughts -
Registration must include education provision but also...
The NVQ framework should cover standards for museum educators - they WERE
written (I still have a copy) but never included in the range accepted by
MTI. Deciding what should be in them is another useful mechanism to define
quality of provision. I suspect that the reason they were not used is that
there was pressure to make them applicable to other educational contexts,
and that proved too difficult.
The point about theories of teaching and learning is that institutions can
use whatever theories they think appropriate - but they have to understand
what those theories imply and be certain that they are not mixing up
different approaches unconsciously. This is often where the mis-match
between (for example) curators and educators creeps in - each holds
different views of what teaching and learning are, but the differences are
not realised or resolved at an institutional or individual level. That is
why the institutional policy has to be consistent and, in its formative
process, establish a clear position on the organisation's ethos. It would be
possible to test the policy against output to evaluate how well it is being
managed. I would not wish to reach a position where only one theory of
learning is acceptable. After all, theories are only theories and tend to
belong in the academic arena - reality is always more complex.
Peter Clarke
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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