Historic house museums have been the subject of very little structured research. As ideal
learning environments for young children they have the potential to facilitate very special
educational interactions, yet children's experiences in house museums remain relatively
unexplored, with very little professional analysis of the nature, the value or the impact of
school visits. As museums, historic houses are educational institutions, yet with limited
professional expertise and restricted resources as commonplace, many house museums
provide very little in the way of structured educational experiences for schools. This
study aims to increase our understanding of educational encounters in house museums.
Using Falk and Dierking's Interactive Experience Model this thesis explores the personal,
physical and social contexts of young children's visits to house museums. It follows the
progress of children aged 5-8 years, as they participate in class visits to two very
different kinds of house museum. A structured, age-appropriate education program
implemented at Calthorpes' House is compared to the approach taken at Blundells'
Cottage, where a lack of resources and professional expertise has resulted in unstructured
school visits, typical of amateur house museums throughout Australia. The study directly
compares these structured and non-structured museum visits to determine the immediate
and long term value of constructed learning experiences in historic houses. The thesis
concludes that the structure of a school visit has a significant influence on the museum
experience. Research revealed that structured education programs prepare children better
for their visit, allow for more successful interactive experiences on site, encourage
enjoyable social interactions and result in more detailed museum memories. Finally this
thesis outlines implications for house museums as a result of this research and makes
recommendations to assist under-resourced house museums provide more structured,
more informed educational interactions for schools.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218881 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | DeSantis, Lisa, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Resource, Environmental & Heritage Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Lisa DeSantis |
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