Exploring alternative pedagogical terrain: Teaching and learning in art museums

Abstract

For school-based education, museums provide important learning opportunities that potentially bridge the gap between the classroom and the world beyond, enabling education to fulfil its aim of preparing students for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life. However, little research has specifically addressed the pedagogical demands and challenges of school-based teaching and learning in the specific context of art museums. This paper reports on a doctoral study that engaged the previously largely unrepresented voices of school-based educators and student audiences, in an investigation of interactions between schools and museums, with a specific focus on art educators and art museums. A pedagogical model is proposed that addresses the structural characteristics of art museum contexts while also exploring how approaches to teaching and learning can engage individual subjectivities, to make the invisible determinants of action visible, and to activate the possibilities of agency. The organising structure of the model extends the pedagogical repertoire of school-based educators, equipping them with approaches that allow for the development of purposeful and integrated educational experiences. In the provision of theoretical positions and strategies for inter-and intra-field interactions, the model ultimately identifies art museums as distinctive sites for transformative and inclusive school-based pedagogies that potentially provide a foundation for future cultural practice.