Issues and Contemporary Pedagogical Practices in Museums: the Educational Proposals of the Douro Museum (Portugal).

Author(s):

Marta Coelho Valente(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

29. Research on Arts Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

29 SES 02, The Construction of Knowledge and Pedagogical Practices within Museums

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-23

15:15-16:45

Room:

NM- J114

Chair:

Fernando Hernández-Hernández

Contribution

This communication aims to present and reflect together on the research project Issues and contemporary pedagogical practices: the Douro Museum, the territory and its community, as well as some of the results of the fieldwork carried out this year at the Douro Museum in Portugal.

Internationally, it is urgent nowadays to rethink the educational and the pedagogical in their forms of implementation and presentation in cultural institutions and in their relationships with the territory and the community. Issues related to museums and education are definitely on European research agendas, considering that museums are agents of cultural, social and political transformation and spaces for integration and construction of a shared sense of European identity in their relationships with what is local and national.

The research project seeks to know the models and educational practices considered in museums, analyse how they are interpreted and applied, and the meanings they produce, enabling us to learn what is meant to be represented through educational practices.

It will focus on the observation of educational models which aim to position themselves close to the context they belong to (Hooper-Greenhill, 1999; Padró, 2004; Rodrigo, 2007). The educational models are created from background knowledge of the context's needs, envisioning a natural convergence between what one wants to represent and what it really means (Rio, 2007).

On the other hand, we will particularize those approaches that position the educational in museums as a space that promotes creative, emerging possibilities which are unexpected and which connect subjectivities (Rogoff, 2008). Additionally, we will deal with the discussion generated around the social role of the museum and a more egalitarian and democratic collaborative participation (Bishop, 2006). The concept of collaborative and social participation focuses on the transgression of ‘traditional relations between all that goes into making (practice) and all that goes into viewing (audience) the objects of visual cultural attention’ (Rogoff, 2005, p.119), i.e., on the transgression of the relationship between the producer and the receiver, the artist and the public, the actor and the spectator (Bishop, 2006; Rogoff, 2005; Sternfeld, 2012), proposing a new positioning of the spectator as co-author (Acaso, 2012). Educational programs designed from a perspective of promoting participation and creative collaboration foster social aggregation and experience (Bishop, 2006) and bring forth critical models of socializing that incite a gradual transformation of the community’s cultural practices.

The research project’s object of study is the Douro Museum which, as a Territory Museum, promotes, through the Educational Service (ES), new and recent pedagogical discourses and models where contemporary art practices and the subjective converge in an unexpected way, clearly demonstrating an interest in looking at and thinking about the landscape, in addition to acting within the territory with the people who are invited to participate in the building of the project.

Method

The first stage of the research project involves the bibliographic review of concepts that surround Arts Education and Museology in international literature, as well as mapping models and educational practices considered in museums, with particular emphasis on those that take into account the context, collaborative participation and creative, emerging educational possibilities which involve the subjective and the contemporary. The second part consists of a year’s participant observation within the ES team of the Douro Museum during the different stages of conception, implementation and assessment of the program and educational proposals at various times and in different places. This approach will be based on three different structural moments: conception, participation and transformation. In terms of conception, we intend to: examine the educational programs and reflect on the educational policy of the Douro Museum’s ES; observe and analyse the discourses established with the community and its context and identify convergences, tensions and complexities; get to know the educational program’s construction process, identifying and analysing the areas of dialogue established between the museum and the community. With regard to participation, it is important to: get to know the meaning of the museum's programs and their effects on the local community; analyse the ES’s commitment to promoting participation; get to know and analyse the experiences and meanings of participation and artistic experimentation in the participating community, as well as the potential for continuity. As far as transformation is concerned, we intend to: foster areas of reflection within the ES team from the observed results returned, and promote open dialogue with the community about its involvement and the meaning experienced; and organize a seminar at the Douro Museum with international experts, in order to promote the rethinking of educational action in cultural institutions by discussing the local, national and international realities.

Expected Outcomes

We intend to illustrate and develop a critical analysis of the emergent educational approaches that are practised nowadays in museums and of the discourses and meanings established with the territory and the community. Focusing on the participant observation with de ES team of the Douro Museum, we intend to establish a critical examination of the way the educational program is conceived and applied, as well as ascertain the meaning that the Museum’s educational activity produces in its territory, in its (human and non-human) landscape and in the institution itself. Additionally, we intend to understand how educational approaches studied in the Douro Museum – in a given time and space according to local characteristics and constraints of a particular geopolitical and economic nature – reproduce unique and/or common educational and cultural forms in a national and international context. In this context the data collected will be processed according to various techniques, within a multimodal approach combining text, sound and image by means of digital media, in order to build a material archive of the process that will be reflected during its production and subsequently in different debates. We seek to collet a set of materials that might encourage ES teams to reflect on and rethink their practices, and possibly construct new narratives and discourses.

References

Acaso, M. (2012). La rEDUvolution en los museos: por que el cambio de paradigma ha de haceres TAMBIEN en las instituciones culturales. Paper presented at the Seminário Museus Participativos, Porto, Portugal. http://www.scribd.com/doc/92868814/Comunicacao-Maria-Acaso-Seminario-Museus-Participativos-Fundacao-dr-Antonio-Cupertino-de-Miranda. Bishop, C. (Ed.) (2006). Participation, Documents of Contemporary Art. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery. Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). The Educational Role of the Museum. (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Padró, C. (2004). La museologia crítica como una forma de reflexionar sobre los museos como zonas de conflito e intercambio. In J. Llorente e D. Almazán (comp.), Museologia crítica y arte contemporâneo (pp. 51-70). Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarias de Zaragoza. Rio, V. (2007). La educación artística ante el fraude del conocimiento. In O. Fernandez & V. del Rio (eds.), Estrategias críticas para la educación en el arte contemporáneo. Valladolid: Museo Pátio Herreriano. Retrieved from http://www.victordelrio.net/PDFS/Libros/educacion_artistica.pdf. Rodrigo, J. (2007). Pedagogia Crítica y educación en museos. Marcos para una educación artística desde las comunidades. In O. Fernández & V. del Rio (eds.), Estrategias críticas para una práctica educativa en el arte contemporáneo. (pp. 118-132). Valladolid: Museo Patio Herreriano. Rogoff, I. (2008, novembro). Turning. e-flux journal, 0, 1-10. Retrieved from http://www.e-flux.com/journal/turning/. Rogoff, I. (2005). Looking away. Participations in visual culture. In G. Butt (ed.), After Criticism. New Responses to Art and Performance (pp. 117-134). Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Serviço Educativo do Museu do Douro (Coord.) (2015). Eu sou Paisagem Pograma Educativo 2015 e 2016. Peso da Régua: Museu do Douro. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/semuseudouro/docs/md_pa-2015-16-pagsep-vfinal/1?e=3531648/30394241. Serviço Educativo do Museu do Douro (Coord.) (2014). Eu sou Paisagem Programa Educativo 2014 e 2015. Peso da Régua: Museu do Douro. Retrieved from http://www.museudodouro.pt/tpls/mu/files/educacao/PDF/programa_ atividades_2014_2015.pdf. Serviço Educativo do Museu do Douro (Coord.) (2013). Eu Sou Paisagem Programa Educativo 2013 e 2014. Peso da Régua: Museu do Douro. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/semuseudouro/docs/programa_atividades_2013_2014. Serviço Educativo do Museu do Douro (coord.) (2012). Eu sou Paisagem Atividades 2012 e 2013. Peso da Régua: Museu do Douro. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/semuseudouro/docs/programadeatividades_se_ Serviço Educativo Museu do Douro (Coord.) (2011). Eu Sou Paisagem Programa Educativo 2011 e 2012. Peso da Régua: Museu do Douro. Retrieved from http://issuu.com/semuseudouro/docs/atividades2011_2012_semuseudodouro. Sternfeld, N. (2012). Playing by the rules of the game. Participation in the post-representative museum. CuMMA PAPERS, 1. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/4649528/Playing_by_the_Rules_of_the_Game_

Author Information

Marta Coelho Valente (presenting / submitting)

Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal

i2ADS – Research Institute in Art, Design and Society

Vale de Cambra

Search the ECER Programme

Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
Search for authors and in the respective field.
For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.