Learning Museum

Abstract

Learning Museum 2011–13 is a nationwide multidisciplinary collaboration project involving 26 Danish museums (art, cultural and natural history) along with 13 colleges of education.1 The project has provided a large group of pre-service teachers with unique opportunities to participate in training courses, academic internships and bachelor's thesis preparation work in collaboration with the country's museums. Perceiving pre-service teachers as important resources who can significantly contribute to knowledge-sharing within museum educational departments allows those students to develop their professional and pedagogical competencies and strengthen museum teaching practices on the whole. New, user-driven educational offerings and teaching resources take form, creating innovative initiatives and products that provide enrichment for individuals and institutions in direct relation to the potential target audience—the future primary school teacher.2 Through a selection of best practice case examples, this article discusses how the work of the museum, as an integrated learning space and a developmental forum for pre-service teachers, helps to develop those teachers' academic and pedagogical skills and to create exciting and innovative learning opportunities for the pre-service teachers themselves as well as their future pupils. It is further discussed how these processes have contributed to the development of Danish museums as educational providers, and how museum educators have gained a critical awareness of the importance of collaboration and mutual responsibility in their role as educational providers.