National Curriculum and Museums workshop

Invitation to Workshop

Museums and the developing National Curriculum: Making our voice heard

Responding to the National Curriculum Board’s framework papers

for History and Science

 

The Education SIG of Museums Australia has asked David Arnold, Manager, Education, at the National Museum of Australia, to lead a team of people to investigate how we can engage with the national curriculum development process.  David has been working with Louise Zarmati (Macquarie University) and Marie Wood, (National Office, MA) to establish strong museums sector relations with the NCB. Many of you were at the Melbourne symposium of Museums Australia Victoria on learning in museums and will have heard David and Louise discuss the impact a National Curriculum will have on the museums sector.

 

Since then, several MA members have taken part in the workshops organised by the NCB to discuss the development of the four key curriculum areas, history, english, mathematics and the sciences.  The revised draft framework documents are due for release in mid November, so we invite you, as museum educators, to help us develop a formal submission to the Board in response to these draft documents. Our aim is to identify how museums can contribute to best practice national curriculum outcomes, especially in the areas of history and the sciences.

 

To this end, I am excited to invite you to be part of the discussion.  The National Museum will host a forum of educators from cultural institutions and other relevant interested parties in Canberra on December 9^th from 10am to 3pm (program attached). 

 

I realise this is short notice, and only one location, but hope as many of you as possible will join us.  To register for the day please contact Marie Wood at Museums Australia – details overleaf.  If you are unable to attend, feel free to forward your thoughts on the National Curriculum process and museum involvement in response to the documents to me at derekw@phm.gov.au or David at d.arnold@nma.gov.au

 

Remember that this is a key point in the development of the curriculum that will be taught to young Australians in the future and will have a significant impact on where they will learn, and the manner in which they learn. 

 

Museums hold a special place in education – we are the custodians of the collections of significance, the Australian story that underpins so many aspects of curriculum, knowledge, process and skills development in students.  We are also sources of motivation, international context and social connection for many of the outcomes contained within curriculum documents around Australia.

 

I hope to see you in Canberra

 

Kindest regards

Derek Williamson

President Museums Australia Education SIG

 

To register for the Workshop, contact

Marie Wood, MA National Office

02 62732437

networks@museumsaustralia.org.au

 

For information regarding the release of the draft curriculum documents, see

www.ncb.org.au

Learning through the eyes of the Museum visitor – it’s not all tears!

The Powerhouse talks After noon series continues this week with a look at learning in museums.

Helen Whitty, Producer Public Programs, Powerhouse Museum
Dr Lynda Kelly, Head of the Australian Museum Audience Research Centre

Someone once said that visitors don’t come to the Museum to look at objects, they come to find themselves. If this is so, how can we best help them find their way amongst the labyrinth that is the Museum? Museums present a different context for learning, often described as free-choice learning environments visited by a range of people. Through access to objects, knowledge and information visitors can see themselves and their culture reflected in ways that encourages new connections, meaning making and learning. Lynda will uncover the results of her thesis where she looked closely at how adult visitors describe learning and how they position this learning in relation to themselves. Her research primarily focused on visitors and exhibitions. Helen meanwhile will look at how public programs have responded to the visitors’ search for themselves, their interests, enjoyment and yes, learning.

Time: 12.30

Date: Wednesday 12 November

Free with Museum entry

Museum Education and Social Media: 10 points from the conference

I was at the social media and Cultural communication conference last Friday which looked at the way the latest developments in internet interactivity (called web 2.0) could be used to enhance the reach and impact of museums. So here are 10 of the more salient points I took.

1. Kevin von Appen, Ontario Science Centre, gave examples of museums which are using web capabilities to engage their “community” in co-creation of content. Questacon’s own Climate x change being a perfect example.
2. Caroline Payson, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s online Educator Resource Center suggested that in the first instance at least we should not use the opportunity offered by social media to pursue new audiences but to creatively engage important current audiences with an “A+” experience.
3. Seb Chan, Powerhouse Museum, spoke about the opportunity of learning from the way our audience use and interact with our web presence to inform our “physical” museum activities. See Seb’s work.
4. Seb again, we need to look to the ability of web activities to build our impact and influence. That the effort may not generate direct physical visitors to our door, but can enhance the reputation of the Museum among different and enlarged audiences.
5. Lynda Kelly, the Australian Museum, highlighted research they have done which had teenagers explaining that museums do not need to try to be “cool” but rather the audience knows what we are, and if they are visiting our sites they are there to use us as Museums. They have plenty of other places to play games and socialise. Lynda has a very informative audience research blog.
6. Tim Hart, Museum Victoria, posed the question of how we will support 21st century learners, those people who are learning to be participants ion a future we can’t really see and certainly don’t understand.
7. Tim Hart again, from the film Shift happens, China has more gifted and talented students than Australia has students. How can museums be part of ensuring we don’t fall behind in the clever country race?
8. Brett McLennan, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, told us how the brains of “digital natives” think and act differently.
9. Brett again, as quick as we train teachers, new and old, in the new contexts of knowledge and understanding – that training becomes outdated.
10. Damien Tampling, Deloitte’s Corporate Finance Advisory group, encouraged us to see the highly innovative way the modern museum/cultural worker thinks.

I am sure others who were there will add their input soon. I will have more after a little time to digest it.

An audience with Australia’s first pregnant man

The Powerhouse played host to a theatre piece for our recent Ultimo Science Festival, titled ‘An audience with Australia’s first pregnant man’. A staged press conference with a character actor playing Adam Jones, a pregnant man, the piece is designed to explore the possibilities offered by science and to allow the audience to informally question the ethical dilemmas raised by those possibilities.

The piece involved a 20-minute interview of our pregnant man by an education officer at the museum, in which Adam explained why he became pregnant, how it was possible, the public reaction and the complications posed by the procedure. Then the audience had an opportunity to ask Adam questions.

There were a number of surprising outcomes from this program:

• Firstly, the audience was completely accepting of the possibility of science enabling a man to carry a baby. I had expected at least some people to have a problem with the concept on moral or ethical grounds, but no.
• Secondly, the audience went far further with this piece of theatre than I had expected, to the point where the questions from the audience really challenged our poor actor whose script – though well researched – didn’t cover things like… How would he explain the procedure to the child as it grew up? Could/would he breastfeed the baby? What about his maleness after the procedure?
• Thirdly, people had difficulty separating fact and fiction. Although not explicitly stated during or before the performance, we had asssumed that people would know this was theatre. But in each session there were a number of people who eventually piped up with the question – is this real?

These observations have raised what I think are important questions that we could consider here at Assembly:

• How careful need we be with the fiction/fact boundary in the museum setting? Should we have stated that this was an actor playing a part before the show – or after the show?
• How much prior knowledge can we assume for our audience? How much should we let the content interfere with people’s interaction with a program as a piece of theatre? After one audience – in which the fact/fiction boundary had been explained to the best of our ability and elderly man walking out the door walked up to our actor and wished him all the best with the imminent birth.

We never knew quite where people were at between belief and suspension of disbelief, as thespians say.

Does any of this matter?

Thanks to Spectrum Theatre UK who first developed this piece for roving performances at the Science Museum, London.

Memorable moments of the MA conference

So… Museums Australia conference 2007 has happened. For me, the bloodrush of the session-to-session dash was a welcome relief after sitting still for an hour and a half, so I enjoyed the multi-venue approach. And how good was it having an umbrella in your conference pack?

I also got a lot out of the presentations, and hereby present my list of memorable moments. (I’m leaving out the part where we learned about the reproductive cycle of giant squid, although I’m happy to share that too, on request.) I’d call this a list of favourite quotations except they’re mostly paraphrasings.

1. There is no longer any excuse for failing to consult with Indigenous people about museum practices – Jackie Huggins, historian/author from the Bidjara and Birri-Gubba Juru peoples
2. The Faith Bandler–Pearl Gibbs alliance is a critical part of Australian political history – Professor Marilyn Lake, historian at La Trobe University
3. Museums should develop a sabbatical approach to research – David Pemberton, Curator–Zoologist at Tasmanian Museum & Gallery
4. Zoos are worryingly bereft of intellectual curiosity – David Hancocks, consultant/author
5. You can demand plain English where you can’t demand good writing – Jennifer Blunden, consultant

Feel free to add your own items to this list.

History Summit in cloud-cuckoo land

Over the weekend, I read the transcript of the Australian History Summit that Education Minister Julie Bishop convened after Prime Minister John Howard criticised school history as ‘fragmented stew of ‘themes’ and ‘issues’. The summit agenda was to revive the narrative approach to teaching history, and to agree on the main currents and big themes in Australia’s national story.

For me, whether a historical narrative is necessary – and even what gets into the narrative – is less critical than the issue of historical enquiry. If students are encouraged (as they have been since the enquiry-driven approach of the latest curriculum), to come to their own conclusions by researching, reading and evaluating a range of sources, then it matters far less what picture their teacher paints about the past. The narrative is a starting point. But the work of history students happens after that, as students examine the evidence and begin to form their own narrative.

Interestingly, some participants looked down their noses at the ‘Wikipedia generation’ of students, as if Wikipedia is not a great place to go for an introduction to most historical events or topics – check out the History of Australia page. If history students are seeing that as the be all and end all of their research, then that’s clearly a problem: whatever narrative they produce, it will not be informed by research or analysis. But the principle of starting with a coherent narrative overview is fine. (Hang on, wasn’t that the point of the whole summit?) So why be so condescending toward students?

Anyway, so I was keen to find out how the summit dealt with the issue of historical enquiry. Was the discussion of narrative content framed by recognition that students need to develop skills, and use primary sources?

Despite many mentions of historical skills, and clear recognition of the need for rich teaching resources, there was only one mention of primary sources. In the last session of the day – ten pages after afternoon tea – Inga Clendinnen said:

I want to be sure we have moved well away from the notion of learning history to doing history. We need analysis of some primary material, because you learn from doing history, not by being taught it. It is a critical discipline.

If I had been invited to the summit, I reckon I’d have uttered a hearty cheer at that point. Maybe that just confirms my position outside the ’sensible centre’. The point is, she was immediately chastened by Gregory Melleuish:

I think what Inga said is fine if you are training a postgraduate historian who will become a professional historian. But when I look at my daughter and her friends, quite frankly, that is up in cloud-cuckoo land.

Well, if Inga is in cloud-cuckoo land, I’m right there with her. And so is Jenny Gregory, who pointed out (Inga Clendinnen persisted for a while but Gregory Melleuish was adamant):

it is very easy to present students with a set of documents about a particular event which gives different viewpoints and then give them the opportunity to analyse, to look at the evidence and come to a conclusion.

Indeed.

I could go on here. I could list a bunch of links to primary sources on the web. Or I could speculate on whether the lobbying by the museums sector and the Australian Society of Archivists (to which Geoffrey Bolton referred) had any effect. But I’d rather hear some other views. Comment, anyone?

How Web 2.0 will change history

As an editor of archival websites, I’m interested in the tools available for historical publishing, research and interpretation. And the advent of Web 2.0 means that such tools are proliferating and becoming easier and more fun to use. Social software is making search interfaces more intuitive and clever; it is making publishing dialogic – readers can also be writers; and it is enabling many new kinds of collaborations to occur in interpreting collections.

Last month I addressed a small group at the Australian Historical Association conference in Canberra on this topic of How Web 2.0 will change history (PDF 312kb). The paper was framed by this mindmap I made

(inspired by other mindmaps on Web 2.0, like the one on Wikipedia).

There are plenty of exciting things the National Archives of Australia could do with these technologies, and it is starting to happen, but the path is long, resources are limited, and in some ways a cultural shift is necessary – it does not come naturally for a cultural institution to radically trust its audience.* So the paper is a bit imagin-ary. But didn’t Einstein say that imagination is more important than knowledge?

* Deep bow here to the Powerhouse Museum and its new collection interface, which you can read more about on the fresh + new blog.

Folksonomic findability

It is a pet peeve of mine that museums so rarely draw on the knowledge and understanding of visitors to help interpret their collections. Ever since I read Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture,¹ I’ve sought out initiatives that facilitate community interaction. In global terms, there are plenty of examples, especially in terms of public programs. But in terms of the core business of museums – collection management, and exhibitions, it remains rare for a museum to involve audiences in the process of making collections meangingful. (Your examples are welcome!)

In the world of the web, though, the story is different. Social software enables visitors to the site to help make the site. And the cultural heritage sector is starting to explore the possibilities.

Steve is a project of a group of seven museums.² It emerged out of the mismatch between the classification systems of museums and the way users tend to think about collection items. A museum might describe an artwork in terms of the artist’s proper family name. Whereas a visitor might search for an artwork according to how they remember it – its shape, or the fact that a painting had some nice clouds in it.

The Steve people are researching and developing a tool that will enable website visitors to add descriptive tags to any item they are viewing. The tags then join in with the official description of the item, so that the collection takes on a hybrid official and vernacular classification system. And henceforth each item becomes more findable for more people. And more collectively meaningful!

Have a look at, and join in, this wonderful experiment. (You need to register if you want to do some cataloguing.)

But wait! Here’s another example, closer to home. Our very own Powerhouse Museum invites users to help describe swatches of fabric, dating from the 1890s to the 1920s. You can enter your thoughts on their colour, pattern, mood and/or ‘other facts’.

1. Ivan Karp, Christine Mullen Kreamer, and Steven D. Lavine (eds), Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
2. Steve stands for Social Terminology Enhancement through Vernacular Engagement.