Recent Changes in Museum Education with Regard to Museum-School Partnerships and Discipline-Based Art Education.

Abstract

The presence and development of Discipline based Art Education (DBAE) has altered the priorities and practices of art museums which have collaborated with the Getty Regional In stitutes. The results of this study suggest that the majority of art museums affiliated with the Getty Regional Institutes: (1) em phasize art education as a disciplinary foun dation for art museum education programs and practices (2) have a higher percentage of ongoing museum-school partnerships with schools in their communities and (3) are more involved with the development of se quential educational materials for ongoing programs for students, in comparison with non-Getty affiliated art museums. Since the climate and concerns of art ed ucation have changed during the past de cade, altering the content and methods of teaching and learning about art in schools across the country, art museums have assumed a more central role in curricu lum planning, developing educational ma terials, and providing services to schools. Teaching and learning from orig inal works of art have become central to curricula in art education (Clark, Day, & Greer, 1987). How some of these changes in art education have affected the museum education profession in pur pose, in practice and in kind, however, is largely unknown. This article will focus on a comparison between Getty affiliated and non-Getty affiliated museums to ex amine if and how DBAE has influenced contemporary art museum education programs and practices. Additionally, it will compare some of the ways in which Getty affiliated museums differ from art museums not involved with the Getty Re gional Institutes. This comparison will be demonstrated in two ways: by compar ing past practices with current practices of museum education and by comparing responses to survey questions from par ticipants from Getty and non-Getty affil iated museums. Description of Research Problem and Methodology In 1984, The Getty Center for Education in the Arts commissioned Elliot Eisner and Stephen M. Dobbs to conduct a study to evaluate museum education policy and practices, through an examination of views and insights derived from leading American art museum educators and art museum directors. The findings of their report were based on an analysis of re sponses to interview questions from 38 participants representing 20 large to medium scale American art museums in 11 states. The final document, known as the The Uncertain Profession, was pub lished (Eisner & Dobbs, 1986) in 1986. In 1994,1 completed a follow-up study to The Uncertain Profession (Williams, 1994), examining changes that had oc curred during the past decade, as well as identifying the current state of the mu seum education profession, and examin ing whether contemporary theories and practices in art education, including DBAE,1 have had any effect on current theories, practices, and policies of art museum education. This article is struc tured around three of the 20 generaliza tions from The Uncertain Profession (Generalizations 8, 14, and 17), ger mane to the topic of museum-school partnerships. These generalizations fo cus on the parent discipline of the muse um education profession, professional VISUAL ARTS RESEARCH ? 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 83 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Thu, 01 Sep 2016 05:33:11 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms preparation for the field, professional organizations, networking, professional development for museum educators, re lationships between art education and museum education, museum education programs and activities, and collabora tions between museums and schools. A survey instrument was constructed for my study to investigate trends, at tributes, attitudes, beliefs, and behav iors of museum education directors and museum directors at the same 20 Amer ican art museums that had participated in The Uncertain Profession, in addition to selected art museums working in con junction with the Getty Regional Insti tutes. Two correlated surveys were de vised: one for museum education directors and the other for museum di rectors. The contents of the two sur veys, which included multiple choice questions, ranking of information, and open-ended responses, were nearly identical. The surveys were evaluated by experts in museum education, art educa tion and educational evaluation, and were pilot tested by museum educators and di rectors from art museums across the

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