Professionalizing Practice. A Critical Look at Recent Practice in Museum Education by Briley Rasmussen Scott Winterrowd

Author:Briley Rasmussen, Scott Winterrowd [Briley Rasmussen, Scott Winterrowd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781611328202
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 17738686
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2012-06-30T00:00:00+00:00

In what ways could such partnerships transform a museum from a place to consume what is already known into a creative space to explore, envision, and enact habits of mind for twenty-first century learning?

These questions sum up the focus of emerging work resulting from a recent collaboration between the Saint Louis Art Museum and the CoLab, an innovative community of National writing Project sites, museums, and diverse private and public schools. Since 2009, this growing collaboration has focused on transforming both formal and informal learning settings into spaces that nurture an innovator and growth mindset. The partnership has brought together professionals from diverse educational landscapes to address the daunting educational challenges of the twenty-first century through a shared, co-expertise model grounded in ResponsiveDesign, the CoLab's theory of action. The following case utilizes three essential practices of the ResponsiveDesign approach: Explore, envision, and enact. Together they provide a picture of this model in action at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

Explore

As members of the CoLab, four teacher-leaders from an area middle school recently wondered what insights and practices they could explore in partnership with their area's public art museum. Rather than succumb to another pre-established professional development session on state standards, these teachers sought to team-up with their colleagues and respond to a question they had been asking themselves: How can we make the art museum a cultural landscape for in-school and out-of-school learning for our students? With support from their administration, a total of twelve seventh-grade teachers scheduled a daylong experience at the Saint Louis Art Museum where they could openly explore a broader vision of learning.

Envision

At the center of this professional learning experience at the museum were practices that focused on making thinking visible, scaffolding multidimensional interactions with works of art, and envisioning student learning experiences that each teacher would co-create with the museum. After reflecting on the types of thinking at the core of their own subject areas, teachers spent two hours with a single artwork engaged in looking, questioning, moving, making sound, writing, and uncovering complexity. These activities paved the way for teachers to envision what learning could look like in the museum with their own students—and they left the museum with the task of prototyping an experience they could guide for their students during an upcoming museum visit.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.