In this paper, we foreground the concept of experiential education (Kolb, 1984) to discuss the potential of museums in supporting the development of intercultural learning and critical consciousness for Norwegian student teachers. Drawing on the Scandinavian Romani exhibition as a case study (Glomdalsmuseet, 2022), we reflect on how an experiential engagement with this exhibition may create a learning space that awakens student teachers’ critical consciousness and provides opportunities for self-reflection in relation to a historically minoritized group in Norway. This paper is guided by the following question: How may learning about Norway’s Roma people in a museum contribute to the development of student teachers’ critical thinking and intercultural knowledge from an experiential learning perspective?

A growing body of research has explored the possibilities for emphatic development, personal and social transformation in museums from a pedagogical perspective (Andre et al., 2017; Fleming, 2013; Fouseki, 2010; Kalsås, 2015). In a review of research on museums as avenues for learning for children, Andre et al. (2017) found that theories of constructivism, particularly sociocultural perspectives on learning, have been highly influential when museums develop programs, exhibitions, and learning models for children. As noted by Andre et al. (2017), views from both within and outside the field of museology have espoused a conceptual change on the function of museums, from “places of education to places for learning” (p. 48). From viewing museums as sites for the consumption of content information and pre-produced knowledge, often immersed in entertainment, a shift toward experiential opportunities has emerged so as to facilitate an interactive and potentially transformative engagement with the exhibitions.

Although strategies and activities employed in museums tend to be well-grounded in sociocultural and interpretative approaches, we argue that an experiential-critical theoretical lens remains necessary as we reflect upon student teachers’ intercultural learning in museums. As a critical contribution, experiential education warns against “depositing” knowledge in the students. As Freire (2018) argued, teaching within the banking system of education would mean creating a false sense of discovery in the learners by leading them to information that would have been pre-selected by us, educators, based on our own experiences with and objectives for the subject matter. In the banking system of education, the senses and emotions learners experience are numbed and delegitimized because their roles are dehumanized to that of passive recipients of (irrelevant) information.

Anchoring our discussion in Freire’s (1970; 2018) concept of problem-posing education, the paper debates how visiting the Romani exhibition can enhance student teachers’ development of intercultural knowledge of the Roma peoples of Norway in a manner that can challenge their preconceptions of that same group and help them identify where such preconceptions originate from, which includes stereotypes and narratives that have unfavorably informed the social construction of this group in Norway. Equally, or perhaps more important, is the question of how this activity may inspire student teachers to act upon their own knowledge to not only identify, but also confront mechanisms that maintain the social and cultural inferiorization of minoritized groups within schools. 

We employ a hermeneutical–analytical approach to engage with the guiding research question. Our approach includes interpretative and understanding-oriented dialogues with positions and theories to interpret, understand, debate, and propose possible answers to the question guiding our study (Alsaigh & Coyne 2021; Paterson & Higgs 2005). Our analysis is explorative in the sense that we draw on our own experiences with multiple visits to the Scandinavian Romani exhibition—both with student teachers and by ourselves for research purposes, scholarly debates regarding interactions and collaborations between museums and teacher education—to explore connections between (teacher) education, museums, and social justice-focused knowledge of a minoritized group in Norway. We frame our study as a practitioner reflection (Grushka et al., 2005) in which we consider our engagements primarily as teacher educators situated in a particular academic and socio-political environment. We view practitioner reflections in a dynamic and cyclical manner: our practice informs our reflections, and our reflections inform our practice. As such, we prioritize propositions that have direct relevance to our teacher education program in light of its contextual existence. Based on Gadamer’s (2003) philosophical hermeneutical underpinnings, the discussions and reflections we offer aim to enhance an understanding in which the results are open to alternative analyses. Thus, the propositions we make should be considered argumentative contributions to the debate on how museums as an alternative learning arena could be integrated in teacher education. Through such an approach, we hope to stimulate further discussions on student teachers’ intercultural learning, critical consciousness, and social justice.

We maintain that experiential education has the potential for improving and strengthening student teachers’ understandings of cultural diversity within their repertoire of knowledge and experience. As a constructive contribution, we first suggest that experiential education opens possibilities for student teachers engaging in a new experience through the senses and emotions. Second, we find that experiential education can promote abstract conceptualization: the phase in which student teachers formulate new understandings or revise their previously held ideas in consideration of their academic training. Third, we suggest that experiential education can enhance what we frame as active experimentation, meaning activities through which the knowledge acquired is applied through some kind of engagement that can (dis)confirm what student teachers have learned. While in this reflection we are not interested in “measuring” how much students would have learned, we recognize the importance of contextualized forms of what Freire (2018) called critical awareness or critical consciousness. This would include a (better) understanding of historical processes and their impact on the social realities of oppressed groups as well as an understanding of human agency as something natural of the individual, but that can be suppressed in the individual by majority groups.

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