Chapter Three was a TON of Information...Let's Break It Down!

What I really love about using a blog as a format for articulating my thoughts is that its format is entirely dependent upon how I experience, digest, and ponder Dewey's theories. As chapter 3 was such a rich section of writing, I will spend the next couple of posts pulling from this section, evaluating certain points in a concentrated fashion, and will tie things back to what we museum educators need to think about. Let's begin with the following quotation:

"A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth. Above all, they should know how to utilize the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile" (40).

Lately, I've been researching an artist called Charles Sandison for my internship at the Denver Art Museum. Sandison is a digital artist known for his moving projections made out of words that seem to disintegrate the architectural forms they are projected upon. As I've been thinking about Dewey's acknowledgement of the influence of educator-molded environments on the education of students, my mind has turned time and time again to what the little words in Sandison's projections do. Every so often in his moving projections, two words come together and upon contact change into a word that describes the combination that just took place. Examples are as follows: blue + yellow= green OR I + you = we. The interesting part of his work is that not every word combines with another word. The environment must be just right, meaning that the location of the words and the words themselves need to hold a specific meaning for this transformation to occur. I know that this is stretching things a little bit, but I see parallels to what Dewey is talking about in the above-mentioned quote. Yes, there is this dynamic between external and internal conditions, and this dynamic--in order to be educational--can only happen under certain conditions of the environment (speaking broadly).

As museum educators, having an understanding of the responsibility we have towards our visitors' learning processes is paramount. First, we must know that we have the ability to foster an environment through which our patrons can grow. We must know what that environment looks like! Lastly, we must take the action steps to physically perform this "conditioning of experience." Not an easy task.

What first jumps into my mind when I think about tailoring the environment for our visitors is listening to their needs. Audience evaluations (including observations) are one of the key ways in which museum educators can a) learn who our visitors are b) learn how they learn c) adapt the educational materials being presented in a manner conducive to these findings. What I find so fascinating about Dewey is that he stresses the physicality of his theories; we must not just know something but we must then DO it. If we do these things, perhaps we can create within our museums that magical moment when individual interest, abilities, and needs combine with our thoughtfully constructed learning environments to create what I call "Sandisons," instances of transformation, which in this case is continued motivation to learn.