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Day 3: SPEAKERS

Research 1A – Partnership and Future Classroom

Research 1A – Partnership and Future Classroom

Session Time: 9.30am
Venue: Ngee Ann Auditorium, B1

Learning About Stored Collections: The Case of the Schaudepot

Dr Lara Corona
PhD, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

Museums are stewards of collections to serve several functions for people’s benefit. Because they hold collections, museums can become knowledge hubs and play an active role in the education of society. Previous literature focused on the educational role of museums concerning displayed collections. Nevertheless, little is known about educational experiences involving stored collections. The aim of this study is to provide the reader with an insight into the educational contribution of guided tours in visible storage and their impact on visitors. For this purpose, direct interviews with forty visitors were conducted at the Schaudepot, the visible storage of the Ruhr Museum in the German city of Essen.

Interviewees attending different tours were asked about several aspects of the visit. The outcome of this research highlights visitors longed to participate in the tour to see items not usually displayed and learn something new. Those expectations were successfully fulfilled in as much as people reported they ‘have learned more in the tour within the depot than in the total of museums previously visited’. Amidst the findings, it was found that one of the things people appreciated most was the opportunity to ask questions during the visit. A crucial factor that whetted visitors’ interest in collections was the selection of pieces mainly related to the region and whose anecdotes reminded visitors’ childhood. Besides items, people discussed some issues regarding depots, thereby raising their awareness of stored collections. Another fundamental finding is that people appreciated the simple, but not perfunctory, language for explaining. These results suggest that continuous interaction between visitors and the guide and each other can meet individual knowledge needs.

In conclusion, this study suggests that developing user-tailored experiences engenders people’s engagement with stored collections and successfully meets educational purposes.

Lier l’Art et le Mieux-Être Par une Approche Sensible des Œuvres: Enjeux et Réflexions sur le Rôle Thérapeutique du Musée

Ms Muriel Damien
Art Historian, Musée L – University Museum of Louvain

Le rôle et l’impact bénéfiques de l’art dans le bien-être et la santé sont reconnus depuis 2019 par l’Organisation mondiale de la santé. L’étude scientifique de l’OMS révèle que l’approche sensible et sensorielle de l’art rassemble la majorité des composantes favorisant la santé et le bien-être. Face à cet état de fait, les institutions muséales doivent se questionner sur la place accordée au sensible dans la médiation et élaborer des dispositifs de médiation qui encouragent la santé mentale et physique – en soutien comme en prévention – et contribuent aux interactions sociales.

L’outil de médiation muséale développé dans le cadre de recherches doctorales axées sur le sensible et le sensoriel permet au visiteur d’approcher l’art par le biais de l’expérience, à travers la matérialité de l’œuvre, ses formes, ses textures ou encore son essence tout en se détachant d’une approche analytique, interprétative et intellectuelle de l’œuvre. Cette médiation s’articule autour de différents outils (respiration consciente, regard attentif, attitude d’ouverture, notamment) qui permettent de se connecter au « sentir » et de vivre une expérience émotionnelle, corporelle et sensible, unique et intime. Outre le fait que cette médiation propose d’envisager l’art sous un autre angle, la médiation sensible procure une sensation de mieux-être et se conçoit comme un moment suspendu dans le quotidien. Conçue pour tout un chacun, la médiation sensible constitue en outre un outil thérapeutique, pour les personnes en burnout dont la sensibilité et le lien au corps sont affectés ou encore pour les enfants et des adolescents qui vivent dans un rapport désincarné au monde.

Cette communication propose de mener une réflexion sur les effets et les rôles d’une approche sensorielle et sensible de l’art dans un processus thérapeutique auprès d’adultes et d’enfants, en s’appuyant sur la présentation de cas concrets expérimentés au Musée L, musée universitaire de l’UCLouvain (Belgique). Il s’agira de mettre en lumière les modalités des partenariats investis et de déterminer l’impact et les enjeux de ce type d’expérience sensible et sensorielle en termes de médiation et de réception de l’art. Dans une perspective plus globale, cette contribution permettra d’engager une réflexion sur le rôle thérapeutique du musée. “

A Form of Imagination That Promotes the Understanding of the Objects in an Exhibition by Its Adult Visitors

Prof Colette Dufresne-Tassé
Senior Research Director, Université de Montréal

Among museum visitors, as well as the general public, when we think of imagination, we think mainly of what Kant (1790-2000) called productive and what we now call creative. It is the imagination that supports the brilliant solution of difficult problems or the elegant realisation of masterpieces. It is, in fact, the imagination that served the people who produced many of the objects on display in museums.

However, it is not the most useful form of imagination for the visitor who discovers these objects; rather, it is its twin form, also identified by Kant (1787-2006), as reproductive imagination, that proves to be the most important.

I studied the latter type of functioning in two samples of 80 adults (general public type) based on the information provided by them during a visit carried out by thinking aloud [Thinking Aloud technique developed by Ericcson and Simon, (1993), and adapted for museum research by Dufresne-Tassé et al., (2014)].

In the proposed paper, I only consider the two main forms that reproductive imagination takes in the museum, namely: the imagination that produces images as we read a text; the imagination that allows one to represent the whole of a phenomenon while the exhibition offers only a few elements of it.

More precisely, the proposed paper: defines, explains and illustrates with examples these two forms of imagination. It also sees the implications in terms of the appropriation of the exhibition’s content and the visitor’s immersive experience. Finally, it relates these to the content of recent publications on imagination, such as those by Tateo (2015) and Zittoun (2013).

Can Science Museum be the Future Classroom?

Dr Tak-Cheung Lau
Curator of Science Education (Retired), National Museum of Natural Science, Taiwan
Ms Wenhsing Hsieh
Educator, National Museum of Natural Science, Taiwan
Ms Ssu-Ting Lin
Educator, National Museum of Natural Science, Taiwan

The past decade has seen the reform of science education in many OECD countries with an emphasis on scientific literacy rather than the traditional dissemination of scientific fact as the major learning outcome. It is also noticed by the science education community that the scope of science and technology of the 21st century is so complicated that no single school can deal with it all, and recommending a tighter collaboration between schools and free-choice learning institutions such as museums. In this report, we document how educators of the National Museum of Natural Science in Taiwan, develop and execute a two-day workshop aimed at helping high school science teachers to get familiar with the pedagogy of scientific literacy skills.

We conducted this study in 2019, the lesson plan adopted a case study approach and focus on the inquiry skill of scientific literacy. We use the famous Swedish VASA warship conservation crisis as a case to demonstrate several inquiry skills such as how scientists confront research problems, identify possible causation, formulate verifiable hypotheses, and finally propose feasible solution. At the beginning and the end of the workshop, teachers were asked to complete a survey about their perception of the lesson plan. Among the survey items are the importance of inquiry skills and teaching feasibility of the skills in the school setting. Data analysis shows that, for these two indicators, post-participating perception of importance and teaching feasibility are significantly higher than the perception before participating in the workshop, indicating that the design of the lesson plan may have affect teachers’ perception of the teaching of literacy-based lessons. This study strongly supports the idea that science museums, combining rich collections and highly flexible programmes design could play an important role in the current science education reform, either by supporting school teachers as well as directly interacting with students visiting the museum.