Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/2. (2011)
Museum Pedagogy
The museums — specialized environments regarding the teaching system The school - as an institution - has responded to new social challenges through the enhancement of the activity area and the initiation of partnerships contracts with the civil society, local community or different other cultural institutions. Therefore, these two institutions — the school and the museum — can mutually support each other and the activities performed by them cover a wide range of information. As a conclusion, raised from the innovating process of making this two (the school and the museum) work as one, the non-formal education can be complementary for school (formal education) through different methodological approach, but it is particularly difficult to work in a non-formal environment with those formed in a formal one. Here must be created a common path between them, in order to avoid complications and for things to work out smoothly. Within the formal — non-formal education collaboration, the methods used by the formal one are not attractive at all for the public and they must be upgraded, the education of the parents being essentially regarding the evolution. On the other hand, there are few teachers willing to do something else beside their formal curriculum, so, as a matter of fact, for things to work out as expected, it is necessary a national level training for the teaching staff through the initiation in the curriculum of non-formal educational methods, which can be made possible only with a reform among the system, including the required specifications concerning non-formal education which has got standard teaching purposes (at present time, there is no such thing as structured data for non-formal education). In order for those who are in favor of the formal education to get involved with the non-formal concept and also for a better understanding of the process, they must familiarize with the methods used among the non-formal teaching. It is important for the teachers to permanently stay in touch with the activities hosted by the museum, because otherwise, they will consider this institution as a competitor for student’s education, which is totally not the case. By taking into consideration the true intentions of the museum, there will be created a bounding between it’s cultural purposes and the traditional didactical methods embraced by the school. In the museum, among the programs/projects, can be used non-formal educational methods such as: workshops, theatres (including shadow theatre), volunteering, games, teamwork for projects, camps, radio shows, online games on museum’s websites, educational training, groups for those with disabilities, afterschool activities, summer/winter school or camps, seminars, carrier perspectives and many others. The programs and projects specialized according to group ages, through a series of conventional methods (exhibitions, editorial production-catalogs, children books, monografies, mini productions which include lines from the museum’s patrimony most important slogans, sold as souvenirs, etc) or less conventional ones (virtual museum IT, projects with the involvement of other educational public or private institutions, organizations from abroad) are meant to come as an answer to the diversified market demands. Such a thing can reach it’s purpose by publishing on sites, specialized didactical offers, giving those interested (youngsters, parents, teachers) all the information needed about the alternatives of formal education. It is advisable for museums to permanently and directly collaborate with the schools and to conclude partnerships with universities, including as a statement the fact that, each institution should have among their license themes, ones which deal with the intense studying and the capitalization of one of the museum’s collections, regardless the university’s main educational field. The cultural patrimony from museums should be present in the teaching curriculum, as well as in the academical one. Individual study themes having as research purpose communication and comparison (a patrimony object, a collection, a museum hosted activity, a professional selected group of people from all the museological institutions) should be found as homework 123
