I conducted a qualitative multi-case study exploring an alternative
educational system called the museum school. I have defined a museum school
as " . . . a school that is collaboratively designed and implemented through
a partnership between a school district and at least one museum in order
to implement 'museum learning' (Takahisa & Chaluisan, 1995) with at
least one of the following three application activities: object creation,
exhibit creation, and museum creation" (King, 1998, p. iv). Though these
new educational models represent exciting advances in educational change,
instructional design, educational psychology, and in museum education reform,
I found a dearth in the literature and research on this topic. In fact,
there is litte agreement on exactly what a museum school is, and few people
outside of these schools are familiar with the phenomenon.
To build the knowledge base, I created a typology of museum school models, by examining four museum schools. The research study used an emergent design with cyclical activities of literature review, data collection, data analysis, and synthesis. I visited four museum schools for aproximately five days each, interviewed 32 participants, and implemented a follow-up survey.
Findings for this study included the definition of the term "museum school," the Museum/School Partnership Continuum depicting diverse forms of partnership (ranging from field trips to museum leanrning units to the museum school), and the Museum Learning and Partnership Structure Continua--both of which portray museum school models. These continua were intended not only to help people describe current programming, but also to guide the future design of museum learning educational systems. Findings also indicated that the four museum schools I studied strive to create research apprenticeship, knowledge-building communities, and to provide students with ownership over their learning. I hypothesized that as the intensity of collaboration increases, so does the amount of systemic change required for implementation.
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