Improving Learning at the Museum Paper Presented to The

Seeing Practice Anew: Improving Learning at the Museum Paper Presented to the Australian Association for Research in Education/New Zealand Association for Research in Education Joint Conference Auckland, 29th November – 3rd December, 2003 Susan Groundwater-Smith Faculty of Education & Social Work University of Sydney [email protected] Lynda Kelly Australian Museum [email protected] This paper reports upon a joint project undertaken with the Australian Museum and the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools, a network of seven schools of varying size and from varying socio -economic locations, that is hosted by the Centre for Practitioner Research in the Faculty of Education and Social Work, at the University of Sydney. The project has been designed to examine ways in which the museum’s presentation of its collection and special exhibitions may assist or inhibit learning. The project has been undertaken in two phases. In the first instance education staff and interpretive officers of the museum have collected photographic images which they see to relate to learning in the museum. These have been constructed as conceptual posters. Posters have been discussed in small groups, using a strategy that ensures that each participant’s voice is documented. In the second phase school students and their teachers have engaged in school based learning workshops and have then, as a result of visits to the museum, followed the same procedures as those undertaken by museum staff. The posters from both groups have been compared and contrasted and formed the basis for a discussion regarding ways in which the museum might better support learning. The project is of interest both in terms of its substance and its methodology. While image based research is now being increasingly recognised in the qualitative research community as a legitimate means of documenting social phenomena, there is still some hesitancy in adopting it. The written word has long been regarded as the more authoritative mode of recording such phenomena. It was believed that imagery did not have the capacity to communicate sophisticated and abstract constructions. This has been defined as a logo-centric approach that denies much of the multi-sensory experience of trying to know the culture of an organisation or practice. In this case the research tool which is principally in the hands of practitioner researchers, in the schools and the museum, is seen as a means of contributing to professional learning in both settings. It also contributes, more broadly to a wider understanding of how learning is apprehended when it takes place in contexts other than classrooms. Finally, the project is one that has only been possible 1 because each of the stakeholders has engaged in an authentic partnership, recognising their joint skills and talents. Introduction: The Australian Museum is a commanding sandstone building which has occupied its present site for over one hundred and fifty years. Its beginnings were inauspicious to say the least. It was originally established in 1827 in a variety of temporary settings. By the 1830s “its main employees were an Irishman who had been sentenced for bayoneting a rioter and a Londoner, who convicted for stealing clothes was now the museum’s field collector and taxidermist” (Blainey, 1979, p. i). Today it has a large establishment of staff including scientists of international repute, guides, interpretive officers, education officers, designers and maintenance people. It also has an Audience Research Unit whose purpose is to regularly investigate the ways in which the various visitors to the museum receive the collection and specific exhibitions. It was in this context the Unit in partnership with the Centre for Practitioner Research at the Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney decided to undertake an investigation with school students regarding the ways in which the museum contributed to learning. During the course of the discussions it became clear that it would also be important to explore the perceptions of those officers most directly involved with school visitors, that is to say the education and interpretive officers. As a consequence a study was conceived to be undertaken in two phases. The first of these would involve the museum staff, the detail of which is spelled out below. The second phases would be conducted with a range of schools who were members of the Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools. The Coalition consists of seven metropolitan Sydney schools, three of which are in the Independent Sector with the remainder in the Government Sector. Five of the seven schools participated in the study. The notion of the school as a knowledge building organisation, founded upon evidence based practice, has now been widely discussed (Hargreaves, 1999; Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2002). Practitioner enquiry, in this context, moves beyond the individual to the collective and sees as its objective that the whole school can be engaged in systematic enquiry as a normal part of its practice and a means of contributing to school improvement. The norms of individuality and privacy are transcended by norms of collaboration and collective deliberation. The Coalition schools see as their purposes: • developing and enhancing the notion of evidence based practice; • developing an interactive community of practice using appropriate technologies; • making a contribution to a broader professional knowledge base with respect to educational practice; 2 • building research capability within their own and each other’s schools by engaging both teachers and students in the research processes; and • sharing methodologies which are appropriate to practitioner enquiry as a means of transforming teacher professional learning. The processes which they employ and share are: • developing new practitione r research methods; • sharing methodologies which are appropriate to practitioner enquiry; • engaging in cross researching in member schools; • considering forms of documentation; • reporting and critiquing research; • engaging in collaborative writing and reflection; • planning professional development to support practitioner research; and, • considering ethics in practitioner research. The project with the Australian Museum was welcomed by the schools as an opportunity to develop an innovative research methodology that could be later used within the schools themselves as well as making a contribution to the wider educational community. Methodology: Phase 1: In this phase education staff and interpretive officers gathered photographic images of that which assists or inhibits visitor learning in the museum. Images were collated as posters which conceptually linked the images and provided additional text that acted as signposts for the viewer. Learning was taken as that described by Kelly (2001): Learning is a dynamic process dependent on the individual and their environment within a social context that focuses on some change. Ultimately, museum learning is about ‘changing as a person’: how well the visit inspires and stimulates people into wanting to know more, as well as changing how they see themselves and their world both as an individual and as a part of a community. (p.3) What the participants were attempting to capture in their image based collages was that which facilitated or impeded meaning making by those who visited the museum; that is to say “how do people make, or not make, meaning from the objects that are displayed, the forms of display, the accompanying text (whether print or digital), the physical settings and those personnel who are available to provide assistance of one kind or another?” While image based research is now being increasingly recognised in the qualitative research community as a legitimate means of documenting social phenomena (Prosser, 3 1998) there is still some hesitancy in adopting it. The written word has long been regarded as the more authoritative mode of recording such phenomena. It was believed that imagery did not have the capacity to communicate sophisticated and abstract constructions. Ruby (1995) as an anthropologist, characterises the elevation of the written word as a “logo-centric approach (that) denies much of the multi-sensory experience of trying to know another culture” (p. 135). In the project being discussed here, the culture is well known to the participants, so the argument is slightly different. It was reasoned that where participants in a community of practice are familiar with the mores and norms that govern that practice this may, in effect, mask what is taking place; in that the practices become implicit and taken for granted. It is not that the photographic image transparently discloses “the real” but rather that it captures an instance that can then be problematised (Schein, 1992). Importantly, the participants were also the photographers. The images that they selected represented their subjective understanding of the environment that surrounded them and of which they were a part. The nature of this study is such that the subjective becomes the intersubjective in that the images become the basis for discussion and debate. As Heath (1997) notes, in relation to video imagery, the technology has the capacity to enhance a new sociology which permits an investigation and analysis of social actions and activities (p.195). What we have are what Walker (2002) refers to as “visual cues” about the contexts in which people engage in a particular social practice. That these clues may be ambiguous

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