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Museum Education
This is a peer-reviewed entry published in Encyclopedia Journal, full entry can be found at 10.3390/encyclopedia5010003

Museum education involves using a museum’s resources and collections to facilitate learning for diverse audiences. It includes activities like tours, workshops, and interactive exhibits that promote active, inquiry-based learning. Focused on accessibility and inclusivity, museum education aims to engage visitors, enhance their understanding, and foster a deeper appreciation for cultural, historical, or scientific content to foster active citizenship and lifelong learning in a non-formal learning context. Museum education uses collections and exhibits to engage audiences through hands-on, inquiry-based learning. By integrating digital tools and interactive technologies, it enhances learning through immersive and distance-based experiences. This approach promotes active engagement, critical thinking, and meaning-making, transforming traditional teaching methods. Museums serve as inclusive spaces where knowledge—embodied in artifacts and digital mediators—supports cognitive, emotional, and social development, fostering deeper connections with culture and history.

museum education digital cultural artifacts teaching mediator inclusion

Museum education refers to the intentional use of museum resources, collections, and environments to facilitate learning and personal development for diverse audiences. It encompasses a variety of formal and informal educational practices aimed at engaging visitors in active, inquiry-based learning. This includes guided tours, hands-on activities, workshops, and interactive exhibits that encourage critical thinking, emotional engagement, and the co-creation of knowledge. These objectives can also be achieved through didactic workshops, the use of interactive installations, and the integration of multimedia technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence (e.g., digital tutors and avatars) or digital twins of scanned works of art transformed into digital artifacts. Museum education is grounded in principles of accessibility, inclusivity, and learner-centered approaches, with a focus on fostering meaningful connections between individuals and cultural, scientific, or historical content. The goal is to enhance visitors’ understanding, stimulate curiosity, and cultivate a deeper appreciation for the collections, artifacts, and narratives within the museum setting. This vision of the museum as a place of learning is a commonly accepted one; indeed, on 24 August 2022, during an Extraordinary General Assembly held in Prague, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) approved the proposal for a new definition of museums. Following this decision, the newly adopted ICOM museum definition is as follows: “A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing” [1]. It is important to note from the outset that the topic of museum education [2] must draw its vitality from a variety of disciplinary fields. These include museography and museology [3][4][5], pedagogy and educational methodologies [6][7][8][9], emerging fields in neuroscience [10][11], the use of technology for educational purposes [12][13][14][15], media education [16], and constructivist and socio-constructivist psychology [17][18][19][20][21][22], to name just a few.

References

  1. International Council of Museums . Museum Definition. 2022. Available online: https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ (accessed on 27 November 2024).
  2. Todino, M.D. Didattica e Tecnologie per i Beni Culturali: Prospettive Inclusive; Pensa: Lecce, Italy, 2024.
  3. Falchetti, E. Costruire il pensiero scientifico in museo. Spunti e Riflessioni Sull’educazione scientifica nei musei delle scienze. Museol. Sci. Mem. 2007, 1, 95–112.
  4. Poulot, D. Musei e Museologia; Jaca Book: Milano, Italy, 2008.
  5. Tomea Gavazzoli, M.L. Manuale di Museologia; Etas: Milano, Italy, 2003.
  6. Damiano, E. La mediazione didattica. In Per Una Teoria Dell’insegnamento; Franco Angeli: Milano, Italy, 2016.
  7. Chevallard, Y. La Transposition Didactique; La Pensée Sauvage: Grenoble, Italy, 1985.
  8. Sibilio, M. L’interazione Didattica; La Scuola: Brescia, Italy, 2020.
  9. Rivoltella, P.C.; Rossi, P.G. (Eds.) L’agire Didattico; La Scuola: Brescia, Italy, 2019.
  10. Borghi, A.; Caruana, F. Embodiment theory. In International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences; Elsevier: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2015; Volume 7, pp. 420–426.
  11. Berthoz, A. La Vicariance; Odile Jacob: Paris, France, 2015.
  12. Gee, J.P. The Anti-Education Era: Creating Smarter Students Through Digital Learning; Palgrave Macmillan: London, UK, 2013.
  13. Sibilio, M.; Di Tore, S.; Todino, M.D.; Lecce, A.; Viola, I.; Campitiello, L. MetaWelt: Embodied in which body? Simplex didactics to live the web 3.0. In Proceedings of the HCI International 2023 25th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, Copenhagen, Denmark, 23–28 July 2023; IEEE: Piscataway, NJ, USA, 2023.
  14. Rivoltella, P.C.; Rossi, P.G. Il corpo e la macchina. In Tecnologia, Cultura, Educazione; La Scuola: Brescia, Italy, 2019.
  15. Di Tore, A.P.; Di Tore, S.; Todino, M.D.; Berthoz ASibilio, M. Perceptual egocentrism and mental rotation in primary school age: The Invisible Man paradigm proposal. J. Incl. Methodol. Technol. Learn. Teach. 2023, 1–7. Available online: https://inclusiveteaching.it/index.php/inclusiveteaching/article/view/75 (accessed on 27 November 2024).
  16. Todino, M.D. Simplexity to Orient Media Education Practices; Aracne: Roma, Italy, 2019.
  17. Hein, G.E. La teoria costruttivista della conoscenza (e dell’apprendimento) Il museo e i bisogni della gente. In Intervento alla Conferenza della CECA, Tenutasi a Gerusalemme; International Committee of Museum Educators: Jerusalem, Israele, 1991; Available online: http://www.george-hein.com/downloads/teoriaCostruttivistaHein.pdf (accessed on 27 November 2024).
  18. Hein, G.E. The constructivist museum. J. Educ. Mus. 1995, 16, 21–23.
  19. Hein, G.E. The role of museums in society: Education and social action. Curator 2005, 48, 357.
  20. Hein, G.E. Museum Education. A Companion to Museum Studies; John Wiley & Sons: Hoboken, NJ, USA, 2006; pp. 340–352.
  21. Bruner, J.S. Verso una Teoria Dell’istruzione; Armando: Roma, Italy, 1995.
  22. Bruner, J.S. La fabbrica delle storie. In Diritto, Lettura, Vita; Laterza: Bari, Italy, 2002.
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Subjects: Education & Educational Research
Contributors MDPI registered users' name will be linked to their SciProfiles pages. To register with us, please refer to https://encyclopedia.pub/register :
Michele Domenico Todino
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Lucia Campitiello
View Times: 241
Book: Encyclopedia of Social Sciences
Online Date: 06 Jan 2025
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