Participatory Action Research in a Contemporary Art Museum: Findings from a Researcher/Practitioner Partnership (original) (raw)

The role of education in the art museum has taken on new dimensions as their education departments are faced with a broader and larger public audience than ever before. This paper documents education practice at a contemporary art museum. The paper delineates an interpretive inquiry through which a group of museum educators sought to understand their practice. The paper explains that this inquiry seeks to document the role that a participatory action researcher played in the effort to study the phenomenon of educators collaboratively developing an understanding about practice in a contemporary art museum. It states that the researcher and collaborators developed a framework for discussion. The model presented indicates the range of issues that emerged for these museum educators. The author worked as an intern and a participatory action researcher with 12 educators and one coordinator over a 4-month period as they developed curricula for four different exhibits and delivered school and adult visits in the context of six different exhibits overall. The paper presents findings as they relate to the growth of this community of practice and discusses the challenges and merits of participatory action research as a methodology for this particular setting. It outlines the backdrop to the study, the argumentative features of the article, and culminates in the formal statement of the problem and questions addressed by this investigation. Includes two figures. (Contains 31 references.) (BT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.