School-educational programs in Georgian museums

Abstract

In the half second of XX century museums came to the conclusion that their work required such changes that would enhance the social activity of the museum. Therefore, the modern museums are more concerned about expanding and developing communityoriented programs, which is a major aspect of museum activity today. The existence of educational programs facilitates the museum to become an informal cultural and educational center where the community will not only be able to look at museum collections, but also study their history, culture, and their multilateralism through interpretation of collections, etc. As a rule, educational programs which are targeted on schoolchildren are tend to have a particular importance among all the socio-oriented programs in contemporary museums, since statistics show that schoolchildren are the majority of museum visitors.

The international practice demonstrates that modern museums are oriented to link their educational programs to school education, and in co-operation with the school system, to further strengthen their role as an institution with an informal educational function. Nowadays there are many museums in Georgia (Georgian National museum, State Silk Museum, Georgian State Museum of Folk and Applied Art, Georgian State Museum of theatre, Music, Cinema and Choreography – Art Palace and etc.) Which have been successfully implementing a variety of educational programs for adolescents, however, the methodology for elaborating school education programs and the practice of adapting to the national curriculum does not exist in reality of our country while the international practice shows that it’s essential these types of programs to be linked to the National Curriculum, be complied with its standards and criteria in order to facilitate the development of programs envisaged by the National Curriculum.

Our goal is to prepare a model of school educational programs and methodological recommendations based on the scientific research and cultural analysis of school education programs’ specifications and directions, which will be a guide in the museums of Georgia for their implementation and further development. At the initial stage of the study, we reviewed Georgian and foreign methodological publications, in which the current trends and directions in the development of educational programs of modern museums are analyzed. In the first chapter of the work, we discussed the purpose and the role of community-oriented programs in the educational activities of museums.

We also reviewed the historical dynamics of educational activities, including its both, traditional and modern methods. The second chapter represents the examination of Georgian and foreign educational programs. We have selected several educational programs from Georgia, Europe and the USA museums. We discussed the context, goals and principles of their planning and presented a comparative analysis of museums’ educational programs of Georgia and foreign countries, and highlighted the importance of educational direction in the activities of Georgian museums.

Full text: PDF, 82 pages. The full text is available in Georgian. Open the paper