Recently, the “Museum Journey for Middle School Students· Ancient China” research series, jointly developed by the National Museum of China and Beijing No. 4 Middle School, was published in Beijing, which can be described as the latest achievement of using museum resources to carry out primary and secondary school education and teaching.
In recent years, museums have received great attention to the educational function of young people. In 2019, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage launched the first batch of demonstration projects for museums on campus, and selected Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Shaanxi, and Chongqing as the first batch of pilot projects for museums to enter campuses, and carried out fruitful practical exploration. In 2020, the Ministry of Education and the State Administration of Cultural Heritage issued the “Opinions on the Use of Museum Resources to Carry out Primary and Secondary Education and Teaching” (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”) to further promote the establishment and improvement of the museum-school cooperation mechanism. Under this opportunity, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage continued to organize and carry out the second batch of demonstration projects for museums on campus. In the process of policy guidance, institutional guarantee and practical exploration, a large number of distinctive and generalizable cases have emerged in the use of museum resources to carry out primary and secondary school education and teaching, and valuable experience has been accumulated.
Take advantage of your strengths and tap into resources
In order to promote the effective connection between museum resources and school education, and stimulate students’ interest and initiative in learning, the design of museum-school cooperation courses in various regions presents a diversified development trend from content to form.
The “Museum Journey for Middle School Students· Ancient China” research series is written by the experienced first-line gold medal docents of the Social Education Department of the National Museum and the outstanding teachers of Beijing No. 4 Middle School, which lasted five years and was carefully debated by experts and scholars in the fields of literature and education. This series of books is not only for Beijing No. 4 Middle School, but is a popular science book with research and demonstration significance developed for middle school students and teachers across the country. The book series revolves around the 64 cultural relics carefully selected in the basic exhibition of “Ancient China” of the National Museum, telling history with objects and evidence, fully absorbing the latest academic research results, and connecting the historical footprints of the evolution of Chinese civilization through the representative cultural relics with the most characteristics of the times.
Ma Jinglin, principal of Beijing No. 4 Middle School, said that since the cooperation with the National Museum in 2016, 20 teachers from 11 disciplines in Beijing No. 4 Middle School have voluntarily joined the project and presented 64 cultural relics in the form of courses to students. Over the past few years, the teachers have actively participated in the training, independently learned the knowledge of history and cultural relics, devoted themselves to designing lesson plans, and took students into museums to see objects and read history. “For a few years now, the museum program has been very popular with middle and high school students.” He said.
Beijing No. 8 Middle School and the Capital Museum have officially signed a strategic development agreement on museum-school cooperation, and jointly designed ten interdisciplinary courses for students to choose from, such as “The Art of Curating”, “The Soul of Ancient Architecture-Mortise and Twin”, “Bo’ Enlightenment English”, “Traditional Craft Practice of Cultural Relics Protection” and “Central Axis Strategy”.etc., which are deeply loved by students. In the process of curriculum design and implementation, the museum project team has had many exchanges with teachers of various disciplines in the school to continuously improve the form and content of the course.
Zhou Yang, deputy director of the China National Silk Museum, undertook the Silk Road Culture Demonstration Project on Campus, and said: “The ‘structured’ model of the school curriculum is used to reorganize the museum’s scattered learning resources, so that students can learn cultural and museum knowledge more systematically, and avoid the learning method of ‘looking at the flowers and flowers’ and the learning effect of ‘seeing and forgetting’.” ”
Relying on the museum’s collection resources, the Shaanxi History Museum has created a series of original education courses for young people, such as “Zhou, Qin, Han and Tang Dynasty”, “Shaanxi Boxing Classroom”, “Ancient Inventions Hidden in the Museum”, “Silk Road Building a Bridge of Communication” series of courses, etc. In view of the characteristics of the museum-school cooperation course, Bu Yan, director of the social education department of the Shaanxi History Museum, said: “Compared with the on-campus course, in the museum-school cooperation course, students can observe and learn the actual cultural relics, and the information obtained by students is more impressive than reading written materials. ”
The High School Affiliated to Capital Normal University incorporates the “Knowledge” course into the school curriculum system, combining “going out” and “inviting in”, and arranges half a day every week for students to walk into various venues, involving visits, expert lectures, exchanges and discussions, practical operations, after-class displays and other links. Teacher Liu Fangfang, who presided over the related project, said: “This kind of inquiry-based learning and practical teaching method that combines library and school, multidisciplinary can supplement and improve the subject content learned in class, and comprehensively develop students’ core literacy.” ”
Understand the needs and be targeted
During the interview, the reporter learned that the museum and the school understand each other’s needs, which is an important factor for both sides to build a win-win situation.
For example, Guan Zhanxiu, director of the Office for the Coordinated Development and Promotion of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Museum, revealed: “In recent years, a lot of cultural and museum content has been added to the entrance examination, so the teaching and research department is very supportive of the project of museums entering the campus to improve the level of students’ cultural and museum literacy, and we will also promote the cooperation between museum education and teaching and research departments.” ”
Li Fei, director of the Guizhou Provincial Museum, also said: “There is a need to establish a positive feedback mechanism between museums and schools, which will not only help improve the teaching quality of school courses, but also enable museums to understand social and educational needs and strengthen their own construction.” During the exhibition “Peaceful World: The Unification of Qin”, the Guizhou Provincial Museum cooperated with the Guiyang Municipal Education Bureau and convened more than 500 middle school history teachers to carry out on-site teaching and research exchanges in history disciplines many times. After the teaching and research activities, the museum distributed a questionnaire on “The Impact of Museum Exhibitions on History Classrooms” to the history teachers, which provided important information for the next direction of museum-school cooperation.
.Compared with the cultural resources and services that students in urban areas have, young people in suburban areas have less access to museum education. The reporter learned that more and more museums are aware of this and have begun to try to balance museum educational resources. The two batches of museum-campus demonstration projects organized by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage have gradually expanded their coverage, and various practices of museum-school cooperation are also committed to actively building an equalized and wide-coverage museum education network. The social and educational activities of the Guo Shoujing Memorial Hall, a small and micro museum in Xicheng District, Beijing, not only serve primary and secondary school students in the district, but also actively promote cooperation with schools in Fangshan and Changping suburbs. With the help of Internet live broadcast technology, the “Take Rural Children to the Museum” live public welfare class cooperated with many well-known museums in China, such as the National Museum of China, the Capital Museum, the Shanghai Museum, the Nanjing Museum, and the Shaanxi History Museum, to carry out a series of “cloud museum” online live classes, breaking through the limitations of space, so that more rural children can understand the cultural relics in the museum and bathe in the rain and dew of museum education.
Learn from each other’s strengths and cultivate “tinder”
Museums have content resources and lack educational talents; The school has educational experience and lacks knowledge. Cooperation between the two sides to learn from each other’s strengths has become an inevitable way for museum education.
The Nanjing Museum has focused on the “Seed Teacher Training Program” to improve the operability and promotion of museum-school cooperation. The institute trains primary and secondary school teachers in a “one-to-many” format to expand the coverage of the museum’s curriculum. Under the framework of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage’s Grand Canal Culture Demonstration Project, the Nanjing Museum, together with education experts and 33 museums along the Grand Canal, has jointly created a textbook on Grand Canal culture for students of different ages. Zheng Jing, Director of the Office of the Nanjing Museum and Director of the Grand Canal Museum in Yangzhou, China, said: “We want to keep the museum curriculum in schools and encourage schools to carry out personalized teaching, so that it can be normalized. The research team established the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Museum Campus Demonstration Project has accumulated experience in research and practice, compiled the “Coordinated Development of Museums and Schools – Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Museum Campus Demonstration Project Guide”, and developed 12 theme teaching content based on regional history, starting from the “Yanzhao Culture” linked by blood for 3,000 years, providing a professional “information package” for the school’s teaching, and providing guidance on theoretical methods, demonstration projects, and practical operations to the majority of primary and secondary schools.
Multi-party participation is also a new form of museum-school cooperation. For example, the Silk Road Culture Campus Demonstration Project takes Silk Road culture as the core of the project, and unites six museums, including Shaanxi History Museum, Gansu Provincial Museum, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region Museum, Inner Mongolia Museum, China Port Museum, and Guizhou Provincial Museum, representing the starting point of the Silk Road, the Desert Oasis Silk Road, the Grassland Silk Road, the Maritime Silk Road and the Southwest Silk Road..Achievement sharing to achieve optimal allocation of resources. China National Silk Museum has introduced social forces, and its brand social and educational activities – popular science sericulture activities, under the premise of adhering to public welfare and popular science, this year joined hands with enterprises to promote the activities to more than 80 schools in 16 provinces across the country. For another example, the High School Affiliated to Beijing Jiaotong University cooperated with the private holiday museum team to carry out the “Campus Museum of the Cat Curator”, and developed a “Natural Science Popularization Series Course”, which was well received by middle school students with videos and experiential teaching aids. The participation of social forces has provided new ideas and ways for the use of museum resources for primary and secondary education, which is conducive to the formation of replicable, easy to promote, and productized educational services.
(Reporter Li Yun, correspondent of this newspaper Su Xiaotong)