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E-book The Museum as Experience : Learning, Connection, and Shared Space
Few visitors to art museums walk in expecting to find thirtyplus middle school students acting as their own docents, leading their peers through discussions of what they see and wonder about in works of art from abstract expressionism to wood turn-ings, to sculptures by Rodin. But for close to ten years, we led seventh and eighth grade students through patterned closeviewing and dialogical sharing exercises culminating in small group, kinesthetic responses that have moved parents and college professors alike. This essay will recount the process and products stemming from these patterned, experiential learning activities. Grounded in research on embodied cognition, the phe-nomenology of looking, on teaching with objects, and on multimodal learning, the essay will also detail the manner in which the teachers involved in this project—at both mid-dleschool and college level—prepared students for these visits and how this prepara-tion led to some of the most memorable and meaningful moments in these educators’ and students’ lives.For most visitors, walking into an art museum is an exercise in selfcontrol. We enter a headspace of quiet observation as the works around us “speak,” and we, in turn, listen or walk on.
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