Collaboration Between Museum And School

Lifelong learning environment brought about by information explosion, witnessed that learning space had went beyond school and other formal educational facilities, and further expanded to the extent that learning can happens anywhere. The arrival of digital era, meanwhile, extends it to an unlimited condition, which unavoidably changes the traditional idea of education. With the deepening of educational reform, more and more shortcomings of schooling education outstands and becomes prominent in front of people whose willingness to go out from schools is getting stronger when their confidence and trust are gradually undermined. At the same time, socialistic cultural development increases the investment on museum, leading to the museum education walking into the spotlight. Under this background, the collaboration between museum and school (CMS) cannot be held down anymore. Therefore, how to use it to educate students has been the key topic of this thesis. Then, this thesis was written in four parts logically, according to the structure of "clarifying topic-raising questions-analyzing questions-resolving questions".First part, topic clarifying. CMS is an educational activity for which school and museum work together to fulfill common educational purposes, whose educational meaning originates from the pursuing of morality, generality and multi-culture. Both China and western counties narrated a story of how it emancipate knowledge privilege from aristocracy to common people, and then work for a multi-value society where people is in harmony with nature and people. CMS in essence is a complicated educational programme, with five characteristics of openness, clear theme, objectivity, curriculum-related system, and object-based diversity. They also intend to build up an "asymmetric systematic partnership" to fulfill caring for people and their relation. From the perspective of structure, epistemology interpret aim, process and result respectively as early term direction of value (open meaning and comprehensive free development), midterm arrangement of activity (ways of collaboration and ways of activity) and later term evaluation of effect ("teacher", student and curriculum).Museum’s intrinsic educational function brings up four evidences to certify the collaborative possibility between school and museum, including object is knowledge, visiting is learning, interaction is education, and museum is educational space. Within the interconnected net of many names, the ambiguousness of CMS was clarified as well. First, from the boundary of attributes, it is defined as educational activity. Second, from the boundary of rights, it is interpreted as "school directs, museum cooperates". Third, from the boundary of category, it is attributed to "formal education with the characteristics of informal education". Besides, educational and cultural institutions set up a sound politic environment for CMS to encourage students to walk out from schools and citizen to walk into museums. At last, this thesis sought out a theory called Generic Learning Outcomes (GLO) for CMS, which generated by Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and Research Center of Museum and Gallery. This theory copes with basic function, operational function, emotional function, creative function and life function from "knowledge and understanding", "skills", "attitudes and values", "enjoyment, inspiration and creativity", and "activity, behavior and progression".Second part, questions raising. The thesis compared the history of CMS in China and UK, and revealed the problem of form exceeding essence, which means the answers for "why start CMS" (morality-oriented, humanity-deprived, administrative dominance, funds lacking), "How start CMS" (casual action, simple forms, enthusiasm lacking) and "How evaluate the effect of CMS" (evaluation lacking, overlooking, government indifference) are inappropriate. Based on this analysis, writer tried to introduce the educational perspective to translate realistic problems to academic topics, embracing the confusion of educational aims, process and evaluation. This thesis is to deal with the three questions to fulfill the meaning of "promote the grow-up of students better". Third part, question analyzing. The thesis describes the real condition of CMS from fact, value and GLO with the tools of questionnaire and in-depth interview. Then, the study brought four questions to the light. First, the attitudes of student, teacher, school and museum are inappropriate; second, the designing of CMS aims, CMS methods and CMS tools is unscientific; third, the implement of CMS project and CMS activity is random; fourth, the relationship of CMS is vague.Bearing this condition in mind, writer picked up four representative cases in China and UK, and tried to explore the reasons that cause previous problems with a comparative way. First, from the site of activity, observe if CMS establishes relation with curriculum, and reflect on the contingency of collaboration caused by administrative dominance and random of plan caused by curriculum neglecting. Second, from the site of implement, observe if CMS is an educational activity, and reflect on justifiability and rationality of role. Third, from the site of evaluation, observe if there are scientific and feasible assessing consciousness and patterns, and reflect on assessing content and models. Fourth, from the site of teacher-training, observe if build up a sound platform, and reflect on the definition and connotation of teacher-training. Fourth, questions resolving. Based on the context and questions in China, the thesis advanced the theory of GLO synergetic structure of CMS, referring to a theoretic system of effectively combining museum resources system and school teaching system, with the core of five contents of GLO, and the structure of "aims-process-results". In connotation, it shares the five values of GLO. In mechanism, it borrows the principles of synergetics of synergetic effect, servo principle and self-organization. In characteristics, it expresses purpose, openness and democracy. The structure is consisted of aims (meaning, aims, standard designing), process (physical involvement, emotional involvement, intellectual involvement, social intercourse involvement), results (what evaluates, how to evaluate, after evaluation) and support platform (the setup of teacher training system of schools, the exploit and use of digital resources of museums), all of which are striving to resolve the problems of educational aims, the noninvolvement of learning and teaching, the inappropriate evaluation and the powerlessness of support system. In addition, this study tries to transfer the metaphysical theory to practical experience from museum school and digital museum, as well as designs a plan to give direction for CMS. In a word, CMS opens three windows for learning:first, the window of grow up for free development; second, the window of caring for compassion; third, the window of life for humanity.