Tag: Week 1

Article: Monk, D. F. (2013) John Dewey and Adult Learning in Museums. Adult Learning Journal, 24:2, pp.63-71. https://doi.org/10.1177/1045159513477842

 

Dewy’s philosophy is widespread and has great influence on the study of learning at every stage of life. This article aims to explore the links between adult education Museum learning and to explore why there is not more integration between museums and adult education. Monk describes an experience he had when visiting Vietnam which involve physical interaction with the environment to refine a unique and memorable learning experience. He draws parallels to the ability of museums to provide a similar enrichment for learning by focusing on “social personal and physical interactions that combine to create learning experiences for adults.” (p.64). This experiential nature is something that museums could excel in yet many do not engage the learner in this manner.

John Dewey – experiential learning

Dewey’s philosophy of education is defined as “an explicit formulation of the problems of the formation of right mental and moral habitudes in respect to the difficulties of contemporary social life.”¹

In Dewey’s view, education should provide everything an individual needs in terms of knowledge to live a good life and contribute to society. While traditional teaching followed a passive absorption model where the teacher simply poured knowledge into passive empty vessels, Dewey felt that schools should develop active participation the students so that they became better able to relate to each other and society, and took on a more active role in their own learning (p.65).

The experiential nature of learning was very important to Dewey, especially with regards to the prior knowledge and experience the individual brings to the learning table. Education is a process where the individual builds on previous experiences especially when the learner is an adult and can bring a rich variety of personal experience to the learning environment. For all learners, according to Dewey, learning only happens when the learner understands what they are learning, why they’re learning it, and how it interacts with their past experiences(p.65).

The educator should be less of a didactic knowledge dispenser and more over facilitator or guide who enables the learner to reflect on the new knowledge and skills they are gaining and how these will relate not only to the learners prior experience but to future situations also.

Dewey, Adult Education and Museums

Dewey was critical of museums where knowledge is imparted in the “empty vessel” manner as the simple conveyance of facts is unengaging for visitors and does not encourage them in meaning-making. Museums should consider the previous experience that visitors bring to the exhibits and should work with the learners in an interactive process between visitor and exhibition. Several theorists have drawn upon Dewey’s work to explore adult education and Monk describes some of these viewpoints in this article.

E.W. Taylor writes that the informal learning experience by adults in museums is of an incidental, unplanned, an unconscious manner, undertaken while visitors wander around. This style of informal learning takes place where visitors are encouraged to approach and engage with exhibits by themselves, and requires a layout which captures attention and communicates with the visitor directly. An ill-defined or badly thought out path through cases and exhibits will not encourage informal learning and will turn visitors off.²

The combination of physical interaction with objects and reflecting and thinking about said objects encourages interpretation and development of meaning in a way that Julie would certainly approve of and is one of the strengths that museums can bring to the educational experience. Museums offer unique learning environments to adults as, generally speaking, visitors have the option to come and go as they please and interact on their own terms rather than in a formal and prescribed manner. The standard method of teaching deployed in the classroom is rarely appropriate for adult learners (this andragogy approach will be covered in a future post looking at the work of Knowles) (p.66-67).

Dewey and his theory of education emphasises that visitors should have some kind of space to reflect on their experience and to consider the links between the exhibit and their own lives both past, present, and future. Also, learner participation and feedback is important.

This article by Monk details several theorists on pages 66 to 70 who have drawn upon Dewey in their own work. For the sake of brevity in this post I will not go into detail on each one but future posts will consider their input and contribution to the theories of learning.