The field of adult learning has had a long history in exploring museums and similar cultural institutions as site of informal and non-formal learning; places where visitors can engage with exhibits, collections, and experts for a variety of purposes. As a scholar and practitioner I have dedicated my work to understanding how museums foster adult learning and how these institutions can continue to adapt and expand to meet new challenges facing their communities, their visitors, and society.

Today, many in the US face “social and technological developments that force us further and further apart into a chaotic assemblage of fractured individual existences” (Preskill & Brookfield, 2009, p. 199). As Lopes and Thomas (2006) call on adult educators to create pedagogical spaces that render visible privilege and its ramifications within all aspects of society, and take up these difficult issues, some within the field see museums as one answer to such a demand. In particular museums can seek out ways to facilitate public discourse through a deeper understanding of public pedagogy and social movement learning.

Public pedagogy (Sandlin, Schultz, & Burdick, 2010) includes processes, types, and sites of education and learning occurring outside formal educational institutions and includes popular culture and media, as well as public spaces and cultural institutions. Public pedagogy also encompasses prevailing discourses including public policy, public intellectualism and social activism. In museums, public pedagogy includes creating reflective spaces or what can be called ‘transitional spaces’ that challenge individuals to confront the ambivalence that comes from encounters with diversity (Biesta 2004; Ellsworth 2005; Masschelein 2010).

Along with public pedagogy, social movement learning is a concept important to creating museums as spaces for discourse. Exemplified through a focus on, and expand of democracy in society (Edelson, 1999; Roy, 2014), social movement learning supports people to more fully participate and provide access to information and ideas in order to make decisions (Brookfield & Holst, 2011). Founded in social justice, (Russo, 2014), social movement learning calls for ideas of disrupting and subverting conditions that promote marginalization and exclusionary processes (Gewirtz, 1998). A key aspect of social movement learning is finding ways to bring people together. Museums can act as sites where alternative information can be shared, and collaboration and engagement are fostered to build solidarity. These cultural institutions can also facilitate dialogues through their exhibitions and social movement learning events that require adults to engage effectively in an active and equal dialogue with those in positions of power (Russo, 2014). Although the adoption of such a mission and educational identity by museums is slow, pressure is growing to establish the museum as a “unique place in civil society to further the cause of social change” (Clover, 2015, p. 301).

Museums can use public discourse to address issues that affect visitors at individual and societal levels and foster social movements that can shape the communities these visitors inhabit. Given the potential of public pedagogy and social movement learning to inform how museums facilitate visitor engagement in discourse, it is important to create opportunities for museum educator to learn how such concepts can be translated and applied to practice. To begin, this work group can address questions such as, how do museums foster public and civic discourse through their educational programming and outreach for adults? And, what do museum staff and volunteers see as their role in fostering discourse?

~ Robin Grenier, University of Connecticut

Discussion

1 comment
  1. Lyra Monteiro says:

    Thanks for introducing me to the concept of social movement learning. It sounds like an excellent fit for informal education contexts–I look forward to learning more!

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