INNOVATIVE TEACHING FOR EUROPEAN MUSEUM STRATEGIES

web site: www.anisa.it/items.htm

Report From APECV - Portugal

1. Presence of art and art history teaching in Portuguese national educational

system

The Portuguese educational system is divided in Basic and Secondary

Education, as follows:
Basic:
1. Pre-school (3-5years old)
2. 1st cycle (6-9/10)
3. 2nd cycle (10-11/12)
4. 3rd cycle (12-13/14)
Secondary:
5. Secondary (14-17/18 years old)
Art education is compulsory in the curriculum from pre-school until the end of
the third cycle. In pre-school and first cycle, history of arts approaches may be
integrated in the dimension of artistic expressions. In the second cycle history of arts
approaches may be integrated in the subject of Visual and Technological Education
and, in the third cycle, in Visual Education or optional subjects like Studio Art that
some schools may offer. But it is very much up to the teachers to include knowledge
and understanding of history of art in their teaching strategies and educational
projects.

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 In Secondary school (14-17/18 years old) art education is an optional choice
for those who want to attend art courses in universities or a enter in a vocational path
(professional courses). In the Secondary art courses History of Culture and Arts is an
optional subject (6 hours per week during two years). History of Art contents might
also be included in the art appreciation component of Studio Art, Multimedia and
Drawing Subjects, but in a very superficial way.

Usually the Textbooks in Portuguese, History, and Philosophy have many

reproductions of art works. And the subject of History in Basic Education (1st, 2nd
and 3rd cycles) can include some knowledge and facts about History of Art.

2. Present relationship between schools and museums in the context of

educational purposes
Because school students are a great percentage of visitors, museums usually
provide special activities for schools, in their annual plans. The great majority of the
activities are guided and oriented tours adapted to the different age levels. In many
cases the visits are complemented by written texts and workshops. The workshops are
intended to have playful-pedagogical characteristics, such a plastic art production,
games and experimenting with traditional art materials and technologies. Museums
also celebrate special dates. Some museums also launch contests for students.
Many museums in Portugal are playing a pioneer role in the proposed
activities they offer for schools. The Contemporary Art Museum Graça Morais offers
well designed playful visits for students and public conversations with contemporary
artists. Museu Berardo, for example, like many others provide thematic visits, spaces
for conversation and debate, games and workshops, furthermore the educational
services provide to schools continuity by helping students and teachers to develop
works after the visits.

Te objectives of the museum activities are related to the promotion of the

museum collections, taking into account, in some degree, public interests such as
cultural heritage education, civic education, awareness of cultural patrimony and

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natural resources. The activities intend to engage the public in dialogue through
games and ‘hands on’ experiences (Eça et al 2008). Some national and city museums
reveal concerns with the democratisation of culture by promoting events to receive the
visitors in a more inclusive way. Art museums reveal a commitment to promote direct
contact of visitors with art works and are engaged with aesthetical appreciation tasks
and some art criticism activities, they often look for establishing stronger relationships
with schools.

Partnerships between museums and schools are always one direction

relationships. Museums design and supervise the activities and teachers and schools
are invited to participate, for example the rich educational programmes for schools of
the foundation Serralves (Leite & Victorino, 2009). There are also some described
examples of activities designed by schools and teachers (Eça & Morais, 2011) and in
that case the museum offers the space to perform them. We seldom find activities
designed by teachers and museums together in a peer relationship.
Museums going to schools is not a common strategy. Few museums have such
practices, maybe because they lack human resources. Some museums use outsourcing
strategies in the design of pedagogical and advertising material for schools, and the
impact being increasing visits to the museum.

The Ministry of Education started a new art education programme for schools
in infant school and primary school level in 2010/2011, a number of 5000 children are
esteemed to be involved. The programme intents to reinforce museum –schools
partnership involving children, teachers and families. It is too soon to evaluate results,
but we are looking forward to observe its development.
Another top-down activity was launched in 2006 by the Ministry of Education
and the Ministry of Culture to promote awareness of national museums collections.
The most recent title of the activity is ‘My school adopts a museum, a palace, a
monument...’. The activity is a contest for schools. Students with the help of their
teachers submit written, visual or multimedia work about objects from the museum
collection.

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 The teachers’ in-service training courses, contests and students’ exhibitions
promoted by the Art Teachers Association APECV are also worth to mention. The
national annual contests focus on the visual interpretation of one Portuguese artist
work. APECV programme Arts Education and Community initiated in 2009, is a pilot
programme to increase the interest of art teachers in working with museums. In 2010
a B-learning course at Museu Soares dos Reis used visual culture to approach art
works in the museum collection. In 2011 one more traditional learning course at
Museu de Arte Antiga uses art sketchbooks to approach the museum collection.

3. Activities for teachers within the context of museums

Portuguese museums, foundations and cultural centres have many activities
targeting school students and families. For example Museu da Imagem; Museu José
Malhoa; Museu Berardo; Tesouro-Museu da Sé de Braga; Museu Convento dos Lóios
– Santa Maria da Feira; Museu da Água Lisboa; Museu Municipal de Montijo;
MUDE Museu do Design e da Moda; Museu de Santa Maria de Lamas; Museu
Geológico; Museu da Cerâmica; Centro Português de Fotografia Porto; Museu de
Arqueologia e Numismática de Vila Real; Museu do Pão; Museu dos Transportes e
Comunicações; Museu Movel Açores; Museu Grao Vasco; Museu da Marioneta;
Museu do Papel; Museu de Portimão; Casa das Histórias; and Culturgest. We must,
here, refer to the excellent work done in the Gulbenkian Foundation: Descobrir
Programa Gulbenkian Educação para a Cultura but we cannot forget that smaller
institutions are also conducting excellent educational projects.

Very few cultural institutions offer programmes for teachers and when they
exist it is more about promoting their activities rather than asking advices to teachers.
This is not surprisingly since the educational discourses and agendas of teachers and
museum educators are extremely differentiated. Usually the museums propose their
planned activities for schools and teachers, and if they want, teachers integrate them
in their curriculum practice at a school or department planning level. We are inclined
to think that the relationship between museums and schools could have better
educational impact with joint planning activities assured by team work between
museum educators and school teachers.

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4. Listing Relational Problems

Even though museums assume an educational attitude, there are many

problems in the communication with schools. The information sent to schools seldom
arrive to teachers in time, teachers time planning is very different from museums time
planning. And in certain cases the target teachers don’t receive it, schools are big
institutions with many teachers and post and mailing is not always delivered.
Museums complain about teachers who do not require the visits in time, and in
that case they cannot provide assistance. They also refer that sometimes the teacher
who organised the visit is not the accompanying teacher for the visit and this may
raise some disruption. There are complains about expected numbers and real numbers
of students and problems of teachers and students’ punctuality in the visits as well as
complains about inappropriate student behaviour during the visits. And of course the
problems of excessive numbers of students and reduced time available for the visits,
because when teachers move students they need to move them in large groups in order
to fill buses and they need to move fast.

So, all this together results in lack of motivation to make visits for teachers
and on a decrease of visits quality for museum educators. Museums and schools agree
that the preparation of the plans for the annual activities is always made in a short
period of time, not enabling designing the educational programmes in advance.
Schools departments are sometimes inflexible in their curriculum planning and
museums information is not always received during the planning calendars. So this
makes a very difficult relationship and many schools are not interested in opening up
their activities to museums.

However, In the small scale questionnaire to museums, used to write this

report, from the twenty five replies some respondents said not having problems of the
kind. Some museums have great demands from schools, and they don’t have
resources to answer to such demands. So they limit the number of visits to maintain
the quality of reception. A meaningful number of respondents described interesting
practices for schools and refer they don’t have difficulties in the relationship with
schools.

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4. Use of ICT
The Museums who had digital technological equipment use it to make
multimedia projections to complement the exhibitions. In the workshops they use it as
tools for art production or to project videos and animations.

Almost all the museums have an Internet site or a blog, a few have a
newsletter where they promote their activities and collection. The blogs are mainly
managed by educational services. Some internet sites have interactive games related
to the collection and history of the museum. Virtual tours are not very often provided,
however there are some, for example Museu Grão Vasco. A few provide information
to prepare further visits for teachers and students, in some cases visitors must login
and registration in the site is required. Interactive platforms are not used at all, but
social networks such as Facebook start to be very popular to advertise and
disseminate museum information. Touch screen, PDAs and video guides are seldom
used in museums and audio guides are only available in very few, this requires
financial resources the great majority of national and city museums do not have.
An innovative project with ICT is running in the Calouste Gulbenkian
foundation, through the Programme Education for Culture – Discovery, it is the
Mobile Lab, an interactive mobile laboratory allowing to establish connections
between sound, gesture and images, for example creating musical notations from
drawings and body movements.

5. Conclusions
We acknowledged some problems in the relationship between schools and
museums. Schools have bureaucratic procedures causing teachers lack of motivation
to go with students to museums, they also lack efficient reception of information
received from museums. However, there are many teachers who despite the
difficulties promote students encounters with museum collections. They have to
overcome a long list of constrains to have the visit approved by the school, plan a day
programme, manage the travel details, obtain the parents’ permissions and put fifty

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pupils in a bus to spend eight hours accompanying them, with all the accrued
responsibility and without any professional reward. Teachers who are volunteers to
have such extra responsibilities and extra work must be credited and their effort might
not be minimised.

In their side the great majority of museums struggle with lack of resources and
bureaucracies. The economical crisis and political lack of interest for culture have
several consequences in museum activities for schools. However they should make an
effort to refine their practices, they seem to be very closed to the community, special
to schools. Furthermore museum educators and teachers seem not be interested in
dialogical relationships. Joint actions should be implemented, in a way that teachers
and museum educators could learn from each other in a really peer relationship. Such
actions could easily be conducted through professional training courses for both parts.
Teachers voices should be make more visible as Ricard Huerta (2011) pointed out in
his recent book ‘Maestros y Museos’. And in the other side museum educators should
be valued by their employers as important elements in museum life.

Such measures could increase educators and teachers skills and confidence in
the planning and managing activities with museum resources. And as a medium term
impact increase students motivation and students cultural awareness.

However, we need to acknowledge that there are many good practices of

relationship between Portuguese museums and schools, namely those involving
students contests which include large numbers of pupils, a benefit for museum
entrances levels, and, a benefit for students who acquire new knowledge through
museum collections.

In terms of ICT in Museums, we observe a growing generalisation of the new

technologies and internet use especially in relation to mailing lists, newsletters and
social networks to advertise the public.

February, 2011-02-15, Teresa Eça & Marta Ornelas (APECV)

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References
Barriga, Sara; Silva, Susana Gomes da (Coord.), (2007), Serviços Educativos na
Cultura, col. Públicos, Sete Pés, Porto.
Eça, T & Morais, E. (2011) Evocação de Grão Vasco. Imaginar 53.
Eça, Teresa.; Reis, R.; Silva, Susana Gomes, Barriga, Sara (2008) Diálogos Entre
Espacios Culturales y Educativos: Por una mediación participada. In: Ricard Huerta,
(Ed) Mentes sensibles. Investigar en educación y en museos. Universitat de València:
PUV.
Huerta, R. (2010). Maestros y Museos. Universitat de València: PUV.
Leite, E. and Victorino, S. (2008). Serralves : Projectos com Escolas. Fundação de
Serralves.

Acknowledgments
Our thanks to the following museums and educational services who collaborated in
the questionnaire to inform this report:

Museu da Imagem
Museu José Malhoa
Museu Berardo
Tesouro-Museu da Sé de Braga
Museu Convento dos Lóios – Santa Maria da Feira
Descobrir Programa Gulbenkian Educação para a Cultura
Museu da Água Lisboa
Museu Municipal de Montijo
MUDE Museu do Design e da Moda
Museu de Santa Maria de Lamas
Museu Geológico
Museu Arqueológico do Carmo
Museu da Cerâmica - Caldas da Rainha
Centro Português de Fotografia Porto
Museu de Arqueologia e Numismática de Vila Real
Museu do Pão
Museu dos Transportes e Comunicações
Museu Movel Açores
Museu Grao Vasco
Museu da Marioneta
Museu do Papel
Museu de Portimão