A Preliminary Study On British Museum Education

Comparing with the western developed countries, especially the United Kingdom, the educational function of China's museums has far from being fully exploited. This paper makes a descriptive research with the theme of british museum education in a literature studing way. By intruducing the history of british museum education, summaring its theories, approaches and practices, outlining the types and professional organizations of it briefly, as well as discussing several inspiritions of british museum education simply, we can find the clear gap of museum education in existence between the UK and China, by which we hope to promote the development of museum education in China at large.This paper consists of seven parts.Chapter one, the discussion of the basic concepts. In this chapter the conceptions of education, museum education and museum learning were introduced, and the relations between them were also discussed.Chapter two, the brief history of british museum education. In this chapter the history of british museum eduction can be divided into three periods:"before 1900s" period, "1900-1945" period, and "after 1945" period. The history after 1945 is generallized into three aspects: the birth and development of museum educational profession, the establishment of museum educational organizations, the foundation of the publications and the publishment of monographs and reports, and the enlargement and the indepth of the specialized fields.Chapter three, the current situation of museum education in the United Kingdom. First, introduce the current situation of british museums by using the figures of the total number, the classification and the local distribution instance of british museums; second, introduce the visit instance of british museums; third, introduce the free-open instance of british museums; four, introduce the staff instance of british museums;finally, almost all the museum eduational types either indirection or direct in british museums were summarized.Chapter four, museum eductional organizations in the United Kingdom. Almost all the organizations in relation of museum education in the United Kingdom were intruduced in this Chapter. All these organizations are engaged in the museum educational research. Each type of insititution/organisation carries out a different type of research related to its mission and tradition. They all have contributed to our current understanding of museum learning in particular and also, more broadly, of the role museums can play in people's lives.Chapter five, the british museum educational theories and approaches. In this chapter three kinds of museum educational theories were intruduced: educational theory, hermeneutics, the communication theory. And this chapter also introduces some major approaches which involves with these theories, but never related to the specific methods.Chapter six, the inspirition of british museum education. Comparing museum education between the UK and China, we can find six kinds of gaps in existence: changing the understanding of the museum educational concepts; establishing a professional platform for museum educator, and promoting the museum educational theories; paying more attention on museum educational undertaking for the government; increasing the diversities of the museum educational activities; enhancing cultivating of the museum educational professionalists; making more closer cooperate with schools.The conclusion. In this chapter we first point out the insufficiencies of the museum education in China through the introduction of british museum education, in the hopes of promoting the development of museum education in China at large. And then put forward a question on the origin of the british museum education, which was expected to be studied in the near future.