Museum Education with Storyline Method: How Do Primary School Students Perceive Historical Artifacts?

Abstract

An educational museum is an active learning environment created for students’ participation (art, music, and drama) to learn by doing and experiencing, and didactic knowledge. This research seeks to determine the effect of the Storyline Method on students' perceptions and interpretations of historical artifacts through museum education. This research applied the phenomenology design as one of the qualitative methods, consisting of first-year students (20) in a public school in Istanbul. The students were trained for a total of 15 hours, 5 hours a week, on museum education with the Storyline Method. The research data consisted of interviews with children, pictures made by children, and diaries written by them. The collected data were analyzed using the descriptive analysis method. The research results found that the method of storyline positively affected the students' perceptions of historical artifacts. Also, as a result of the interviews of the students and their drawings, there was a positive change in students' perceptions of the importance and preservation of historical artifacts. In addition, as a result of the Storyline Method, the students had "happiness, excitement, sightseeing" feelings and thoughts about historical works.