Hands and Minds on History: Transferring Best Practice in Object-based Learning from the UK Museum Education Sector to Australian Schoolrooms (original) (raw)
Object-Based Learning -Theory Meets Practice in Schools
Knowledgeable Objects Symposium AMaGA, 2023
This paper brings together academic theory on how and why learning history through objects works with insights from theory-into-practice in the context NSW history classrooms. Incorporating research from Dr Staats' doctoral research into 'haptic (hands-on) history' his son, Mr Staats, draws on his own experience as a new graduate teacher on how to implement this pedagogy in classrooms in SouthWestern Sydney. The presentation includes practical tools for best-practice in setting up and delivering object-based learning experiences for diverse student audiences in order to achieve maximum engagement and develop historical thinking.
Object-based learning and the pedagogical value of historical-educational collections
Il Nodo. Per una Pedagogia della Persona, 2024
Historical collections of school materials have great pedagogical potential from many perspectives. On the one hand, museums of educational heritage allow us to learn about the development of school practices, habits, and culture. On the other hand, due to their intrinsic nature as evocative and social objects, musealised school objects offer excellent opportunities for effective OBL or object-based learning. OBL is an active learning approach that is enhanced by interaction with material objects and allows for the active engagement of all participants, regardless of their prior knowledge or learning preferences. It also facilitates the acquisition of both curricular knowledge and transversal skills such as observing, describing, investigating, inferring, discussing, listening, critical thinking and empathy. Finally, it helps to link history with the present.
Back to the Future?: Emergent Visions for Object-Based Teaching in and beyond the Classroom
Museum Anthropology, 2015
This article introduces a special issue of Museum Anthropology devoted to innovative strategies for teaching with objects. Although a century ago anthropology, museums, and objects were intimately entwined, trends in many museology and anthropology courses have drifted toward focusing on ideas and people rather than objects. The contributors to this special issue have cultivated new pedagogical approaches that complement or realign literaturefocused classroom canons that can distance students from the very objects under study. In keeping with recent theoretical approaches to objects that highlight the sensory dimensions of material culture, many of the articles in this special issue examine the challenges and potential rewards when educators foster physical engagement with objects in and beyond the classroom. Taken together, the articles also underscore how object-based teaching can yield new theoretical and practical insights, enhance the social relevance of classroom activities, and facilitate meaningful benefits for local communities. [material culture, praxis, pedagogy, embodied practices, object-based teaching] museu m anthropolog y
This article introduces a special issue of Museum Anthropology devoted to innovative strategies for teaching with objects. Although a century ago anthropology, museums, and objects were intimately entwined, trends in many museology and anthropology courses have drifted toward focusing on ideas and people rather than objects. The contributors to this special issue have cultivated new pedagogical approaches that complement or realign literaturefocused classroom canons that can distance students from the very objects under study. In keeping with recent theoretical approaches to objects that highlight the sensory dimensions of material culture, many of the articles in this special issue examine the challenges and potential rewards when educators foster physical engagement with objects in and beyond the classroom. Taken together, the articles also underscore how object-based teaching can yield new theoretical and practical insights, enhance the social relevance of classroom activities, and facilitate meaningful benefits for local communities. [material culture, praxis, pedagogy, embodied practices, object-based teaching] museu m anthropolog y
Object Lessons: Teachers, Historians, Narratives and Inquiry
This paper focuses on the museum education aspects of a programme designed to improve the teaching of American history in some New York City public schools. The U.S. Department of Education's Teaching American History Grant programme awarded nearly $1 million to a 3-year collaboration between the New-York Historical Society, the Alternative Schools, and Queens College. During three Summers Institutes held each year, historians, history educators, and teachers worked with materials in the New-York Historical Society. One historian interrogated Washington's field cot to get at issues of managing a democratic army and the nature of liberty through the questions and imaginings of teachers. A second historian conducted a walking tour of the collection focusing on three objects, used more as illustrations of his stories rather than inquiry lessons. A university history educator had teachers look at what they learned was a cockroach trap to investigate objects, and also to think ...
The pertinence of museums and how they educate students are central to any discussion of their educational role, function and effectiveness. The University of Western Ontario has been exploring how best to integrate museum education into the training and professional development of student history teachers in the context of the ‘Ontario, Canadian and World Studies’ curriculum. Students have experienced two widely contrasting museums in the City of London [Ontario], the Jury Museum and the Royal Canadian Regimental museum. The two museums reflect diametrically contrasting cultural, social and community orientations and interests. The Jury Museum is based upon the Jury family’s private collection of anthropological and archaeological artifacts that encapsulates an interest in local heritage that extends from prehistoric times. In contrast, the Royal Canadian Regimental museum reflects the institutional and collective identity of an organization with a clear identity, role and purpose embodied in an historical continuum. The paper explores the relative educational role and value that these two museums can play in terms of the wider educational agenda: both substantively in terms of knowledge transfer and syntactically vis à vis educational experience and learning.
"I Touch, Therefore I Am": Object-Based Learning in History
"Cognito, ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am), coined by philosopher René Descartes, encapsulates the importance of thinking and skepticism in classroom learning, especially for history as a subject. But aside from conventional textual, oral and visual sources, the significance of tactile sensation in one's awareness of existence and learning process is often overlooked. As an important medium through which we communicate ideas and form opinion, objects could play an important role in this process. In this article, I will discuss and reflect on how objects could help the learning and teaching of history in a secondary school classroom setting in what theorists term ‘object-based learning’ (OBL). I argue that the experience of touching or feeling physical sensations is fundamental to our understanding of ourselves and our surroundings. Just as Descartes argued that thinking is inseparable from existence, I suggest that the act of touching or feeling is equally essential to our sense of being. As a mode of education which involves the active integration of objects into the learning environment, I therefore propose that we encourage and facilitate pupils to think through objects: “Palpo, ergo sum” (I touch, therefore I am).
Sharing European Histories, 2021
WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE STRATEGY? The strategy is primarily aimed at teaching the transnationality of history. Revealing how a multitude of people are involved in knowledge construction and the musealisation of objects humanizes the process of building knowledge and encourages students to engage with history from perspectives of difference and diversity (e.g., political and religious). Facilitating analysis of historical and multicultural roots of museum objects encourages the confrontation of dominant, state narratives of history and could help to overcome divisions between countries and cultures. Close analysis of objects allows us to draw historical attention away from military and political events that often dominate classrooms, and toward social and cultural history instead. OVERVIEW OF THE STRATEGY This strategy encourages students to become familiar with “hidden” and interconnected histories through the analysis of objects showcased in museums – who created them, who owned them, and where they were used and kept. It underlines the internationality of state histories by confronting them with the transnationality of museum objects. Students will be asked to consider questions and complete tasks related to museum objects. Chosen museum objects will have descriptions (existing or provided) able to be used in an analysis which leads to periodization, understanding of the environment in which the object functioned, and understanding of the roles of those involved with the object. Students will then consider influences, responsibilities, relations, and exchanges between actors at local, institutional, and international levels and within the continent and between the continent and other parts of the world that will contextualize the object historically and politically .
Why Objects Matter in Higher Education
2022
Integrating artifacts into the curriculum can increase students' confidence when working with historical fragments. This article provides insight into what happened when students engaged with authentic historical artifacts for the purposes of learning for the first time. It draws from a range of qualitative data collected during a twoyear period while teaching an undergraduate New Zealand history course. Students described learning how to read such objects and gaining skills in how to synthesize information highlighting both the short-and long-term pedagogical benefits stemming from object-based learning (OBL). While OBL needs specialist collections staff to work alongside the teacher, the article closes with encouraging comments about how OBL caters for different age groups, interests, and learning contexts.
Museum and Education: Object-Based Learning
This paper examining the field of museum studies and developments in museum education, It introduces contemporary issues and practice in museum and gallery education and seeks to relate museum education theory to personal practice. The paper investigates on how museum is used as an educational institution, strategies for teaching and learning from material culture and the formation of museum collections. Also, looking at museum and education in general and particularly chose Royal Regalia Museum as part of this study.