In North America, art museums have rendered services to elementary schools since the
early 1900s. Although the scope and number of these services have expanded in the past several
decades, the nature of the art museum-elementary school collaborative relationship can be
problematic, and even counterproductive to the enhancement of quality of art education. There
are some crucial issues related to the nature of and factors underlying collaboration among
elementary schools and art museums, that need to be carefully considered in order for these
efforts to be successful and fruitful.
Since the relationship between attitudes and behavior is reciprocal, the attitudes of art
museum educators in regard to art museum-elementary school collaboration are crucial to the
quality and effectiveness of any collaborative endeavors and directly impact art museums'
contribution to elementary art education. Therefore, this study explores art museum educators'
attitudes in regard to art museum-elementary school collaboration. The present investigation is
the only study of its kind in Canada to date.
From the fall of 1997 to the spring of 1998, I conducted a survey of art museum
educators in the province of British Columbia, Canada as well as interviews involving nine
informants working in two art museums. Moreover, in order to meaningfully interpret the
interview data, I observed the informants' daily routines in these galleries and collected
documents related to the two study sites. This mixed method design was used to study BC art
museum educators' attitudes in regard to art museum-elementary school collaboration relative to
six specific issues: 1) models of art museum/gallery-school collaboration; 2) pedagogy and
methods of art museum/gallery programs for elementary schools; 3) art museum/gallery
programs and resources for elementary school teachers; 4) elementary school teacher
participation in school-oriented art museum education; 5) content of art museum/gallery
programs for elementary schools; and 6) linkage of art museum/gallery school programs and
elementary school curricula.
The results of this study suggest important implications to the future of collaborative
endeavors bringing together elementary schools and art museums by highlighting issues related
to the dynamics of the art museum educator - elementary school teacher relationships,
professional knowledge and expertise, and curriculum links that strongly impact on such
partnerships. They also provide guidance for future related research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/10159 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Liu, Wan-Chen |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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