Six Themes in the History of Art Museum Education by Melanie L. Buffington

This chapter explores six important themes in museum education:
1. experimenting and responding to society
2. educating to improve society
3. delivering appropriate content
4. meeting school curricula and collaborating with teachers
5. improving practice with theory and research
6. developing and implementing emerging technologies

Experimenting and responding to society
In the second half of the 19th Century museums start to experiment with didactic labels, public lectures, schoolprograms, and educational exhibitions.

Educating to improve society
Museums start to develop educational programs that allow contemporary social trends. Also the educational offerings for adults start to grow. Because of the growing amount of leisure time for the middle class museums offer ways to spend time like gallery talks, lecture series and classes for this particular target group. Museums used exhibitions to teach about good taste. Museums who did this are Victoria and Albert (london) and The Toledo (Ohio).

Delivering appropriate content
At the beginning of the 20th Century museum educators believed that the goal of education was to improve society. During this time you see that the educational programs focused on delivering correct information about museum objects and their philosophy. Relating to school curriculum was not a priority during this time.

Meeting school curricula and collaborating with teachers
As the field grew teachers and museum educators started working more closely to make museum experiences more meaningful for students. A lot of research has been done to explore the ways museums and schools work together. Not all museums use the knowledge of teachers out of the field but use curriculum guidelines when developing museum programs.

Improving practice with theory and research
Before the 1970s little research has been done on museum education. After this time not much changed until 1992 when The Amarican Association of Museums published Excellence and equity: education and the public demension of museum. After this museum educators started communicating about ways of learning in a museum.

Developing and implementing emerging technologies
More and more programs are being developed that use interactive devices or the internet. Research on this subject is just developing.

Book: P. Villeneuve (2007). From Periphery to Center Art Museum Education in the 21th Century. National Art Education Association.