Another Brick in the Wall

Another Brick in the Wall

This week’s readings and class time focused on two main ideas: how the instructional design process should be considered within the context of informal learning environments, and consideration of learning theory in looking at exhibit design.

The readings are here:

Braverman, B. E. (1988). Toward an Instructional Design for Art Exhibitions. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 22(3), 85-96.

Schlenk, G. W., & Shrock, S. A. (1991). The Use of Instructional Development Procedures To Create Exhibits: A Survey of Major American Museums.

The very general synopsis of the Schlenck article is a research question on what kind of instructional design approaches are used by museums in preparing exhibits. Although that isn’t really the thrust of my discussion on this blog post, it should be mentioned that although this research was from almost 20 years ago, it makes the case that most museums make a perfunctory effort to consider instructional design practices and exhibit creation, but it is neither prevalent in or thorough in most cases. Perhaps, it is best to say a lot of it is done like action research — that is “if it feels good it is good”.

As always, I am not just interested in the formal context of the focus of informal learning environments by itself. I’m still driven to explore where the overlap between informal learning environments, and the more formal learning environments which have been most of my professional career. With that in mind, and our conversation around both instructional design theory and upcoming visits to Bishop Museum and the Waikiki Aquarium, have me thinking about the impact of field trips as means of merging the informal environments into our formal schooling.

Probably most powerful in my mind, was when I was teaching astronomy back in the 1990s, I took students on a three day trip to the big Island of Hawaii to visit the active volcano, snorkeling in a Marine sanctuary, and visits to the summit Mauna Kea, which was ostensibly what drove the trip, as I was interested in exposing my students to the greatest astronomical Observatory which was a short flight away. Invariably, at the end of the trip, when I asked the students to summarize what they have learned, many commented on it being the most exciting and motivating experience in their educational career. This always surprised me, as although I knew that the trip had wonderful visceral experiences built into it (swimming in a coral reef, exploring lava tubes, seeing 200 inch telescope’s up close) I hadn’t expected it to be that powerful an experience. It always was in the back of my mind that it was a telling commentary about the stark barren experience that most traditional education exposes inquisitive minds to.
But here is the real problem — whenever a teacher wants to take students out of the traditional school day for experiences that we would deem “authentic” it involves a myriad of paperwork and coordination and apologizing to your professional peers for taking their students away from their seat time in their classes. As a result, over the years, although I have encouraged fellow teachers to explore the opportunities offered by taking students into authentic, informal environments, many do not choose to for the reasons stated above. Easier to conform then to challenge the status quo.

In a recent conversation with an administrator, the question came up about the value of a trip during the school day with the question being “can’t the students to do this on their own after school?”. Although I understood the rationale for the question, I felt the need to explain why experiences in the field a few times a semester can have powerful affective influences on students, and increase their motivation, behavior, and willingness to follow through the more traditional school day.

This came to my mind, because in talking about writing good learning objectives, our class this past week struggled with how to construct good learning objectives in the affective domain. When I took students to the Bishop Museum planetarium, I knew instinctively that the opportunity to see the way the stars look at the planetarium, to get out of their normal routine and interact in a different way, and to approach the subject matter from a different perspective well outweighed the inconvenience of taking them away for three or four hours from their normal routine (my opinion). Of course, by that point in my professional career, I had a adopted the mantra that the job of a good instructor is to be an arsonist lighting fires, not a fireman putting them out.

Which brings up another story from this week. I was at the hospital for a routine procedure, and the laboratory technician that was setting up some tests told me that when he was in ninth grade he was removed from his normal classroom, which he was doing academically fine, because he couldn’t help laughing in class because the word “dingy” had come up as vocablary. His family for years had called him “dingy” because he was the smallest of the family. His language arts teacher asked for him to be removed and put into the lower-level class, because he couldn’t help giggling during class time. As a result, he was put into a class with other failing students, where he said they read third-grade level books like “go dog go”. That singular event determined the rest of this person’s life, as he never had another chance to recover and join the academically challenged students at his school. As we talked during the day, he expressed his love of history, art, and literature. He was well read, historically motivated, and a wonderful interpersonal communicator. Yet, he readily offered that he was not smart, based on his experiences that have led from this demotion when he was 14 years old. Why talk about this? He talked at length about his love of Civil War history in particular, in his fulfilling of a lifetime dream to visit Gettysburg this past summer. His vivid recalling of walking the grounds, thinking of the battles on the hills that he knew so well, and Lincoln’s later visit showed an incredible intellect and passion about understanding the historical and social context of this important event. Yet, when I mentioned to him that I thought he would make a marvelous teacher, he insisted he would never be smart enough to do so, because he had never learned to write, since he was put in a lower-level class. I could imagine for Joshua a different outcome in his life, had he been in a school where visiting real sites that engaged and expanded his learning beyond the classroom walls might have led him down a different path.

After talking to Joshua, I couldn’t help but think of Pink Floyd’s great album “The Wall” which includes the lyrics:

We don’t need no education

We don’t need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it’s just another brick in the wall.

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

In the article by Braverman, he asks the question “…why are learning theories not readily adopted by museum professionals when designing exhibits devoted to art?” (p 86). Braverman also makes the case that there is little research about how art museums and their desire to showcase aesthetic have any ability to evaluate the impact of their exhibits on visitors. In much the same way, traditional classrooms suffer from that same problem of not thinking of the whole child, and how experiences that reach to the aesthetic can engage and transform a learner.
Braverman talks about how the unique experience of the art museum requires this special consideration towards the aesthetic, but taken for a broader perspective, the need to think about affective responses and motivations within all learning is a consideration that all formal and informal learning needs to address better.
Braverman also gives a definition of appreciation (from Kjell S. Johannessen,) “… a skill that is central to the dynamic interaction, or praxis, between art museums in their public.” (Page 88). It reminds me of an old Sidney Harris cartoon. I’ve always found his commentaries on society, science, and their mismatch particularly funny and have shared many with my classes over the years. This graphic says it all to me:

sydney harris but is it beautiful?

sydney harris but is it beautiful?


So, as we continue to explore informal environments, I hope to keep thinking about where the interplay between informal and formal can continue.
To that end, this week our high school principal, who used to teach in the Museum school at New York City (mentioned in my previous blog post) will be talking to the class this week a bit about the use of informal learning spaces in formal education. Stay tuned…
Here’s a question to end our visit for today — if students were not required to come to our schools by law, would they? I don’t mean to confuse this with wondering if students are interested in learning, or whether valuable things are happening within the confines of the bricks and mortar of our traditional schools, but would they choose to come to this environment if they could? Museums and other informal environments every day ask themselves that question, because no one comes to them unwillingly. Perhaps it’s because in an informal learning environment, you’re not treated as another brick in the wall.

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