Enhancing pupil learning on museum visits

Introduction

Museums give children experiences above and beyond the everyday – experiences that enrich and build upon classroom teaching and learning. Taking pupils to a museum, or bringing museum artefacts into school, instantly changes the dynamics of the usual learning environment. It gives you as a teacher the opportunity to start afresh with each child, to reach and engage with pupils in new and different ways. This unit explores practical ways in which you can make the most of the UK's extraordinarily dynamic and diverse museums and galleries; it gives you pathways into museum resources, and shares examples of teachers and museum educators making the most of museum artefacts.

Find out more about studying with The Open University by visiting our online prospectus.

Learning outcomes

After studying this course, you should be able to:

• understand how the use of objects and museum activities can enhance pupil learning

• identify museum resources and support available to teachers, and understand the ways of accessing those services.

1 Object-based learning

Pupils are handling a Second World War gas mask. This is part of their work on the Home Front. They can feel the weight of the gas mask and smell the stifling warmth of the mask on their face. This gives them a depth of understanding that nothing else could. For the moment they are connecting with the sensations and physical feelings of a wartime child.

This richness and immediacy of experience can be applied across the curriculum and with pupils at any age. The resources for activities like the one described above, together with many more ideas and educational programmes, are located in museums.

Museums are the nation's treasure houses. They're packed with objects, stories, ideas and creative, knowledgeable people. When these elements combine with a teacher's professional expertise they can add an extra and magical dimension to a child's learning.

‘Museums’ in the context of this unit refer to the museums sector, including museums, galleries, interactive science centres, heritage sites and children's museums

Provided here are links to three accounts of the ways in which museums and galleries can be used with pupils.

First, a visit by older secondary school pupils to a large national museum. These visits are available for pupils of all ages.

Click on 'view document' below to download Looking at paintings at the National Gallery

Small local museums also have much to offer. Here is a description of a role-play session with a class of seven year olds. Note the comments made by the class teacher on how this activity enhances pupils’ learning.

Click on 'view document' below to download Victorian role-play at Preston Manor

The third account, Museums in the classroom, demonstrates the diverse range of activities and learning pathways that can arise when a school sets up a museum of their own. Whilst the school featured here is a nursery school, the principles of exciting interest, close parental involvement, and offering a range of activities suited to specific learning outcomes, are applicable to all ages.

Click on 'view document' below to download Museums in the classroom

2 What's out there for our school?

There are close to three thousand museums, galleries and heritage sites in the UK and there are approximately 100 million visits made to them every year. Internationally important collections of ancient relics and artistic masterpieces jostle for our attention alongside personal collections of precious oddities.

We have a dynamic national network of hi-tech, interactive science centres, encouraging creative thinking and practical experimentation. The centres look back at the history of science, explain key theories and principles and look to the future. Their emphasis is always on doing and discovering, based on the belief that hands-on interactivity leads to understanding.

Our art galleries, whether a single room in a remote rural area or a vast national institution, act as both display spaces and places for inspiration or reflection. As well as paintings, sculptures and drawings, you'll find photographs, video installations, ceramics, crafts, live artists at work and much more.

We live surrounded by our rich cultural heritage. The British landscape, both urban and rural, is dotted with reminders of our past. Steam railways, castles, coal mines, canals, medieval barns, Roman fortifications, ancient burial mounds, prehistoric fossils … the list goes on.

These resources can be used as inspiration across a range of subjects. History, art and science have the most obvious links, but literacy, numeracy, citizenship, geography and drama can all be taught to great effect with the imaginative use of local museum and heritage resources.

3 Learning styles and museums

It is generally accepted that children and adults learn most effectively in a variety of ways, that we have as human beings a range of differentiated learning styles.

Museums are perfectly placed to cater for different learning styles, in practical and meaningful ways. Museums offer opportunities for play, experimentation, and on a basic level, for walking around, sitting on the floor and standing up. Children are more free to move – no small thing for a child who finds sitting at the same desk in the same position every day an effort which distracts from learning.

There are very often opportunities to listen, to explore through a range of media and to move freely between different types of learning experiences in today's museums. The range of styles of interpretation offered by the sector gives teachers and e-learners a range of ways of accessing collections and subjects.

For instance, a child who learns best in an interpersonal way relates to the world through an understanding of other people and a sensitivity to their feelings and motivations. This type of learner would respond well to an exhibition or display that relates ideas and factual knowledge to an identifiable person, a person they can respond to on a personal level.

An example of this would be the National Portrait Gallery's 2003 exhibition of the photographs of Julia Margaret Cameron, a nineteenth-century photographer. The show covered a range of issues pertinent to the Victorian era – family life, travel, photography as a developing art form, portraiture, literary figures and religion – all seen through the filter of Cameron's work and life.

Conclusion

This free course provided an introduction to studying Education, Childhood & Youth. It took you through a series of exercises designed to develop your approach to study and learning at a distance, and helped to improve your confidence as an independent learner.

References

Acknowledgements

The content acknowledged below is Proprietary (see terms and conditions) and is used under licence.

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this unit:

The content acknowledged below is Proprietary and is used under licence.

This unit was originally prepared for TeachandLearn.net by Anra Kennedy, Education Officer at the 24 Hour Museum. Anra is a trained teacher and has experience of education project work in a museum setting.

Adapted from: Kasuga Sho: http://www.flickr.com/ photos/ skasuga/ 508092493/, Sitomon: http://www.flickr.com/ photos/ sitomon/ 1533274213/, Dave Patten: http://www.flickr.com/ photos/ davepatten/ 2047001490/, notcub: http://www.flickr.com/ photos/ notcub/ 1778089895/, [Details correct as of 19th November 2007]

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright owners, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Don't miss out:

If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University - www.open.edu/ openlearn/ free-courses