Museum Education by George E. Hein review

Chapter 20, Museum Education by George E. Hein

Below is a summary of the chapter, very closely paraphrased with direct quotes form the original text. In other words, the formulations are those of Hein, and not me unless noted in text:

The eighteenth Century enlightenment brought private collections to the public sphere. The first “children’s museum” was formed in 1899 and was explicitly educational. During the nineteenth century, the unevenness in museum education was comparable to the unevenness in attention to public education. The chapter notes the increased but uneven role of specialized education in museums over the past 50 years.

The 2005 ICOMS mission statement stresses museum education while the earlier 1946 statement does not even mention museum education.

Three possible museum philosophies are elaborated: educational, aesthetic, and social.
The educational philosophy is seen in the very notion of moving from guards to docents. The earliest mention of a “museum educator” is from a 1927 publication. A 2002 survey showed that museum educators operated in seven areas of programming with more than 45 task in these programs - the point being that museum educators are highly flexible in their responsibilities.

Several pages discuss the learning theories along a passive to active continuum, leading to a discussion of the advantages and challenges of a “Constructivist Museum” that seems to me to counter a modernist to a post-modernist paradigm. For example the “meaningful experience” is countered to the “defined content outcome.” Of interest is a mentioning that that mandatory testing programs in school systems have tended to force an overshadowing of addressing curriculum standards in museum education.

The chapter concludes with a very interesting discussion of the social responsibility in museums citing the contributions of John Dewey from the early twentieth century. Four aspects of Dewey’s contribution are highlighted: Constant questioning of dualisms; the goal of education is further education; applying progressive theory in education universally; connect educational work back to life.