There was an interesting discussion at our breakfast table yesterday about the nature of curators and the role of expertise.
While curators are not well-represented in this house (population: none), the debates about cultural authority are. Probably the result of too much post-modern, post-colonial, Foucaultian training in anthropology, education, museum studies, and even law, the nature of expertise comes up in conversation not infrequently around here. This time we were playing with the nature of authority as represented by the curator stereotype.
To wit: do expert curators a role to play in the future of museums as the sole voice of authority?
In the Web 2.0 participatory world, the answer may be "no."
For an educator, however, expertise does have a role to play. After all, if everyone already knows everything, then why have school? Stick a diploma in someone's hand and send them out into the world. In a Web 2.0 world, everyone participates and the crowd is supposed to be wise, collectively. Yet as studies have shown, children don't know as much as they think they do, even about the Web 2.0 world (of which they are supposed to be Digital Natives), and that people often overestimate their capabilities. Someone who knows something needs to speak up, and be heard.
This expert role in museums has traditionally been that of curator. Not of education department or anyone else. But the curatorial information flow traditionally has been one-way. How to manage the expertise?
Added to these considerations are readings about NAGPRA and "cultural property." NAGPRA represents in part a way to reclaim curatorial authority over items removed from the home culture by a "superior" entity in a power-dynamic that was at the time inherently skewed. Items of cultural patrimony are to be repatriated when they meet certain conditions (such as colonial exploitation). Knowledge and power -- as described in Foucault's Archeology of Knowledge -- are conflated in the person of the curatorial expert and the institution which appoints the curator, an institution that is hegemonically empowered on the global stage and displays the objects gained from the cultures of "others"
In the readings about NAGPRA are two diametrically opposed positions presented by
Durrans, “Museums, Representation and Cultural Property,” Anthropology Today,
and
Lowry, “Cultural Property: A Museum Director’s Perspective,” International Journal of Cultural Property, 1998
Durrans was wrangling with the concept that museums represent the cultural hegemony of that institution and its surrounding culture – that it speaks to its own cultural audience. This hegemonic power is not shared, and thus we need a reflexive approach that is multivocal and works on multiple levels and spaces – probably in multiple areas at multiple times – about the sharing of information about the objects. Thus, curators may have a role, but not the only role.
Lowry presents more problems for me. He argues that art transcends the concepts of cultural property and therefore beyond culturally-based issues of history, politics, and law. To quote Lowry:
By "works of art," I mean those objects, such as paintings, drawings,
photographs, and freestanding sculpture, that were created as separate and
independent forms. What is important about works of art, whether or not
they are considered to be cultural property, is that they must be understood
first and foremost within the ontological context of art, not jurisprudence,
national significance, or UNESCO Conventions.
Does this mean that art transcends all? Who defines something as art? By whose standards? It seems that Lowry implies only curators have sufficient expertise to make an argument about art. And, that art cannot be claimed as a cultural product, and therefore not property nor patrimony, and cannot be reclaimed by the original owners, because art is transcendent. This argument seems paternalistic in its claim that the big western museum is entitled to keep famous artworks because this museum is creating interest in the art and the other (less powerful but place of origin) country's museum cannot possibly do this and therefore the big Western (post-) colonial power gets to keep it…
My best working definition of art is something that has been created by human agency and is called such. It seems I disagree with Nelson Goodman and the art aesetheticians. Everything is made somewhere by someone and is a cultural product. This includes art.
Art seems to the lightning rod here. Aptly so.
More than one person I know has commented on how art museums have galleries upon galleries of "western" art, and then lump all of the world's cultures into another room, and one that generally does not have any contemporary examples, at that. This means that those producers of art are depicted as frozen in time and, by extension, evolutionary growth as well. These "Others" are not equals and do not share in the exchange of information, nor retain control of their own material culture. Seems I'm on the Durrans side of the argument, but really, Durrans still seems to be discussing the same side as Lowry -- it's still Eurocentric and does not change the power dynamic of curatorial authority. For a view from a different perspective, try Michel-Rolph Trouillot or another native anthropologist.
Western museums are the products of a society that produced not only upper-class noblesse oblige and patronage for the arts but also Social Darwinism on a global stage. Thus there is a conflict between "patrimony" and "paternalism" when it comes to objects and repatriation.
If one takes a central tenet of cultural anthropology that members of a culture are experts of their own lives, and then add to that the ideas of Participatory Museums, then shared authority makes sense.
This seems to be the more logical response and application of the postmodern critique.
So, with shared authority is there expertise? Depends on whom you consider expert, and the conditions under which they share knowledge. Today it seems appropriate to allow a variety of voices to speak. This means curatorial experts should be present, but not the only voice -- truly multivocalic discourse.
Sharing the knowledge may mean sharing the stuff. By allowing claims of cultural property and repatriating items, including art, shifts the balance of power and allows greater participation by all.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
"The movement continuum "
Time for recess? Too much turkey?
This item from the ASCD Smart Brief seems relevant. The piece does a nice job of presenting the different positions on movement in the classroom (pun intended!).
Some schools view physical activity as superfluous to learning, others see it as an integral part of the learning process, and the rest fall somewhere in between. These views dictate where a school lies on the "movement continuum," explains ASCD Healthy School Communities Director Sean Slade. In his recent Whole Child Blog post, Slade explores the continuum, the benefits of integrating movement into the school day, and ideas for incorporating physical activity into a range of lessons. Read the full blog post.
This item from the ASCD Smart Brief seems relevant. The piece does a nice job of presenting the different positions on movement in the classroom (pun intended!).
Some schools view physical activity as superfluous to learning, others see it as an integral part of the learning process, and the rest fall somewhere in between. These views dictate where a school lies on the "movement continuum," explains ASCD Healthy School Communities Director Sean Slade. In his recent Whole Child Blog post, Slade explores the continuum, the benefits of integrating movement into the school day, and ideas for incorporating physical activity into a range of lessons. Read the full blog post.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Brain-Based Research, Understanding by Design, and Museum Education -- or, What I Learned at Learning and the Brain....
Last Friday (November 18, 2011) I attended a pre-conference workshop at the Boston Learning and the Brain Conference. The workshop was Jay McTighe and Judy Wills' "Instruction and Curriculum for 21st Century Brains."
The talk was an integration of the principles of Understanding by Design (UbD) and Brain-Based Research. In other words, how to design student learning based on how brains learn.
While the information is still "consolidating" in my own brain -- and I'm still trying to figure out how to apply McTighe and Wills' talk to how museums work with visitors -- two things did capture my attention and lead me to make connections between their work and museum education.
1) "The video game model"
A main component of Wills' portion of the presentation was that video games create intrinsically-motivated learners.
How do they do that? Because the basic design of the game and the nature of the gamer interact to produce behavior-reinforcing feel-good chemicals in the brain (dopamine). Dopamine is something the brain seeks. Through the process of being rewarded (through dopamine-release) or not, behaviors become patterned, memory is stored, and neural networks develop. [Ok, this is a vast reduction of what Dr. Wills was saying -- and she was drastically simplifying!] As Wills said, "The brain seeks patterns and pleasure."
Video games create situations in which the gamer gains pleasure.
Video games:
--challenge each player at the individual's level
-- provide immediate feedback
--reward success with greater challenge
-- provide frequent feedback on incremental progress throughout play.
Video gamers:
--buy into the goal
--persevere through challenge, despite an 80% failure rate
--use immediate feedback to improve
--consult resources for help
--will work hard for the pleasure of going to higher levels of play.
Anyway, for classroom instruction and for online learning, making the experience more like a video game should improve learning and instruction.
Would this be true of exhibit experiences and museum education I wonder? How would we do this?
2) The Power of Predictions
As McTighe and Wills explained, being able to see and to predict patterns (seeing how the experience fits together and matches previous experience) is a motivator. Making predictions and waiting to see the results of those predictions sustains interest (dopamine is release when the prediction proves true). The brain "needs to know" if the prediction was correct.
Buying into a goal and seeing patterns are big connects to UbD -- the student learns what the big picture is and how they fit into it. As neural networks are built on patterns, patterning works at a brain level, too.
These ideas finally gave me an answer to something that has been nagging at me for four years now: what about constructivist approaches? My sense has been that while constructivism and Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) work well, the extreme versions do not. What's extreme? Never confirming students' answers.
Case in point. Several years ago, during a research on learning in museums class, we had a presentation by a museum educator who had been trained in the extreme version of the constructivist/VTS approach. She presented to us, the adult learners and professional educators, a set of wooden objects that she had used in her research and had included in an exhibit. While we came up with a ga-jillion questions and possible answers, including some excellent connected-knowing responses, we never once learned what these objects actually were.
To this day, I don't know if those things were spindles or not. In fact, I no longer care -- because this information is floating in my mental space somewhere and not connected to the other things I understand about objects and history. Frankly, my annoyance was such that I remember this experience more as a lesson on how NOT to teach. (See? There's that emotion in learning concept again....).
I have heard of similar experiences, most of which were pretty painful for the audience. Never knowing if one's predictions were correct or not caused a lot of agony for some groups of very bright and motivated graduate students in arts education. This has bothered me deeply.
If, as Wills and McTighe argue, the building block of "perseverance and memory" (i.e., learning) is the "instrinsic satisfaction of discovering that a prediction made in an unknown situation" is correct via "feedback that it is so," then somebody needs to provide that feedback. The brain needs to know.
On a practical level, this means that the instructor in the gallery does need to gently guide the conversation to a wrap-up place and provide confirmation of the group's ideas. (NOT force a conclusion, or just tell the visitors the answers right away - but find the pattern and give feedback about the accuracy of the prediction.)
On a broader level, this also means that there is a role for the expert in museums (and elsewhere). Elaine Gurian has asked this question in "Curator: From Soloist to Impresario" (part of Hot Topics, Public Culture, Museums The practical and philosophical implications of curatorial authority in museums are a "hot topic" in the museum field. Given the brain-based UbD approach of McRight and Wills, it looks like museums DO need experts to provide feedback...
...but those experts need to share authority and allow for participation by the audience.
Now, can anyone tell me what those objects were? Can I reexperience them in the video game model? Inquiring minds wanna know!!
For additional resources and the presentation slides, go to Jay McTighe's website's Resources Page.
The talk was an integration of the principles of Understanding by Design (UbD) and Brain-Based Research. In other words, how to design student learning based on how brains learn.
While the information is still "consolidating" in my own brain -- and I'm still trying to figure out how to apply McTighe and Wills' talk to how museums work with visitors -- two things did capture my attention and lead me to make connections between their work and museum education.
1) "The video game model"
A main component of Wills' portion of the presentation was that video games create intrinsically-motivated learners.
How do they do that? Because the basic design of the game and the nature of the gamer interact to produce behavior-reinforcing feel-good chemicals in the brain (dopamine). Dopamine is something the brain seeks. Through the process of being rewarded (through dopamine-release) or not, behaviors become patterned, memory is stored, and neural networks develop. [Ok, this is a vast reduction of what Dr. Wills was saying -- and she was drastically simplifying!] As Wills said, "The brain seeks patterns and pleasure."
Video games create situations in which the gamer gains pleasure.
Video games:
--challenge each player at the individual's level
-- provide immediate feedback
--reward success with greater challenge
-- provide frequent feedback on incremental progress throughout play.
Video gamers:
--buy into the goal
--persevere through challenge, despite an 80% failure rate
--use immediate feedback to improve
--consult resources for help
--will work hard for the pleasure of going to higher levels of play.
Anyway, for classroom instruction and for online learning, making the experience more like a video game should improve learning and instruction.
Would this be true of exhibit experiences and museum education I wonder? How would we do this?
2) The Power of Predictions
As McTighe and Wills explained, being able to see and to predict patterns (seeing how the experience fits together and matches previous experience) is a motivator. Making predictions and waiting to see the results of those predictions sustains interest (dopamine is release when the prediction proves true). The brain "needs to know" if the prediction was correct.
Buying into a goal and seeing patterns are big connects to UbD -- the student learns what the big picture is and how they fit into it. As neural networks are built on patterns, patterning works at a brain level, too.
These ideas finally gave me an answer to something that has been nagging at me for four years now: what about constructivist approaches? My sense has been that while constructivism and Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) work well, the extreme versions do not. What's extreme? Never confirming students' answers.
Case in point. Several years ago, during a research on learning in museums class, we had a presentation by a museum educator who had been trained in the extreme version of the constructivist/VTS approach. She presented to us, the adult learners and professional educators, a set of wooden objects that she had used in her research and had included in an exhibit. While we came up with a ga-jillion questions and possible answers, including some excellent connected-knowing responses, we never once learned what these objects actually were.
To this day, I don't know if those things were spindles or not. In fact, I no longer care -- because this information is floating in my mental space somewhere and not connected to the other things I understand about objects and history. Frankly, my annoyance was such that I remember this experience more as a lesson on how NOT to teach. (See? There's that emotion in learning concept again....).
I have heard of similar experiences, most of which were pretty painful for the audience. Never knowing if one's predictions were correct or not caused a lot of agony for some groups of very bright and motivated graduate students in arts education. This has bothered me deeply.
If, as Wills and McTighe argue, the building block of "perseverance and memory" (i.e., learning) is the "instrinsic satisfaction of discovering that a prediction made in an unknown situation" is correct via "feedback that it is so," then somebody needs to provide that feedback. The brain needs to know.
On a practical level, this means that the instructor in the gallery does need to gently guide the conversation to a wrap-up place and provide confirmation of the group's ideas. (NOT force a conclusion, or just tell the visitors the answers right away - but find the pattern and give feedback about the accuracy of the prediction.)
On a broader level, this also means that there is a role for the expert in museums (and elsewhere). Elaine Gurian has asked this question in "Curator: From Soloist to Impresario" (part of Hot Topics, Public Culture, Museums The practical and philosophical implications of curatorial authority in museums are a "hot topic" in the museum field. Given the brain-based UbD approach of McRight and Wills, it looks like museums DO need experts to provide feedback...
...but those experts need to share authority and allow for participation by the audience.
Now, can anyone tell me what those objects were? Can I reexperience them in the video game model? Inquiring minds wanna know!!
For additional resources and the presentation slides, go to Jay McTighe's website's Resources Page.
Monday, November 14, 2011
The Participatory Revolution
Asking Audiences is a great museum audience overview blog.
One entry, from May 30, 2011, seems especially relevant to our discussions on participation in the museums: The Participatory Revolution is All Around Us.
It is an overview of a panel made earlier this year at AAM 2011.
The image below, from Peter Linett's presentation (he was the panel chair) which is embedded as a Slideshade on his blog, says it all:
It's saying that while audience authority used to be in the left-hand column, it's now in the right.
The blog entry expands on this theme some more, and makes connections to the activities of the other presenters who, notably, work in science museums.
Unfortunately, since the Asking Audiences authors move to New Mexico this fall, the blog has basically gone on hiatus. To see more of the blog, click here.
The ideas, though, remain....
One entry, from May 30, 2011, seems especially relevant to our discussions on participation in the museums: The Participatory Revolution is All Around Us.
It is an overview of a panel made earlier this year at AAM 2011.
The image below, from Peter Linett's presentation (he was the panel chair) which is embedded as a Slideshade on his blog, says it all:
It's saying that while audience authority used to be in the left-hand column, it's now in the right.
The blog entry expands on this theme some more, and makes connections to the activities of the other presenters who, notably, work in science museums.
Unfortunately, since the Asking Audiences authors move to New Mexico this fall, the blog has basically gone on hiatus. To see more of the blog, click here.
The ideas, though, remain....
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