Estrategias de mediación en museos de arte

Abstract

Mediation Strategies in art museums Abstract This research focuses on mediation strategies for school-age children in art museums in Israel. The research is devoted to describing the various strategies of mediation in museums emphasizing their educational theoretical foundations delving with: the instructive-didactic education, mediation through discovery, interactive-experiential mediation, constructivist mediation based on dialogue, and experiential activities. The main agents that participate in the museum visits are established and characterized with specific mediation strategies applied in Israeli art museums as the guided tours, the gallery shows, as theatrical mediation, visit utilizing mobile phones, dialogue strategy and circular station strategy. Finally, examination of the value of integrating workshops as part of the visit has been incorporated. The goals of research: define the mediation strategies applied in visits of primary school students in the Israeli art museums and determine the relationship between these strategies and the policies declared by the education departments of museums related to their theoretical foundations. The participants in the study are listed and characterized: the head of the education department in the five museums studied, the educator/mediator, teachers and companions, and the students. The uniqueness of this study methodology is the way each case study was investigated followed by results and the interpretation of each stage. The methodological tools were interviews with heads of department of education, museum publications as brochures, web pages etc. and observations. These studies have been carried out through the analysis of contents guided by a set of metcategories defined a priori. The conclusions show in many cases, the existence of tension in museums between the elitist traditional position and present-day democratic position. The theatrical guided visit, with an enormous interpretative potential, has been used to transmit information and entertainment. The use of telephones or mobile devices based on constructivist paradigms that promote interaction, have demonstrated a creative learning and approach to works of art. In the same way as the rotation in station visit as discovery mediation and the dialogue visit that promotes the active participation of all members of the group and the diversity of approaches. Workshops as experiential mediation often work as a little relevant complement to other strategies, but in the case to be programmed and applied with sufficient time and significant creative processes have proven their value as part of sporadic visits of schoolchildren to the museum. We can deduce that the strategies that respect the place of the child and their ideas, promote the personal expression and stimulate personal choice, encourage thinking and stimulate their choices, have proved to be positive for the processes of visual literacy. When the strategies managed to amuse the students but only transmitted knowledge, they did not achieve meaningful learning successfully. It is important that the policies of museum education departments be consolidated and supported by theoretical foundations and update their pedagogical approaches to avoid contradictions. It follows that adequate training of mediators is necessary. But also, that educational departments are ranked within the museum itself and recognized as the central link to the public. Link that has the potential to generate meanings in front of heterogeneous audiences of the contemporary post museum and maintain its relevance also in the future. Based on the practical needs extracted from the field-work, this study highlights the urgent need for the development of professional training in museum education that goes in accordance to the sociocultural context of the state of Israel.