A Critical Review by David Hopes, 21 August 2012
Museums and Design Education is the product of a collaborative project between the University of Brighton, the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum, the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), and the Royal College of Art (RCA). With Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) investment, these four partners formed a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning through Design (CETLD) in 2005. This volume was produced two years into this project to ventilate and contextualise research findings, to place CETLD projects ‘in the wider context of other research and teaching experiments’ in order to provide ‘an evidence base for continuing strategic support to develop and sustain long-term and constructive relationships between museums and universities’ and to encourage ‘radical dialogue’ between museums and the HE sector.
Since many of the fourteen essays focus on CETLD research projects, the majority of authors are employees of partner organisations (principally the University of Brighton, and the V&A Museum) with backgrounds ranging from art and design education, architecture, museology, and curatorship. Two of the last essays in the book are written by experts in information and media technology. All three editors are involved in the CETLD project: Beth Cook and Catherine Speight are CETLD Research Fellows, both with museology postgraduate degrees and research interests in visitor engagement and learning (respectively). The third editor, Rebecca Reynolds, is CETLD Higher Education Officer. Reynolds also has an MA in Museum Studies and her work involves the production of resources at the V&A Museum for HE students. Of the sixteen authors, only three are detailed as having publishing histories.
The book generally succeeds in placing CETLD projects in the wider context of other research and teaching experiments, and is unique in its focus on museums and design learning at HE level. The opening essay by Kate Arnold-Forster and Catherine Speight usefully sets out the political context for collaboration and areas of possible ‘convergence’ between museums and the HE sector. In contrast, Speight’s solo essay, ‘Museums and Higher Education: A New Specialist Service?’ discusses the historiography of museums and Higher Education, looking back to what she describes as ‘traditional academic audiences’ in a somewhat nostalgic and unsubstantiated view of the origins of museums. Equally vague is Speight’s use of the word ‘decode’ in reference to how students create meaning in the gallery. More enlightening is Speight’s identification of key dichotomies (such as specialist research / general commentary) found within museums although this may have been more revealing if it had been reflected back on universities to expose comparable tensions in Higher Education. Speight’s tracing of fault lines within and between museums and the HE sector is used as a way of discursively approaching the CETLD Baseline Research Programme carried out in 2006 to analyse design students’ patterns of exploration in the V&A Museum. Findings from the Programme are discussed with reference to the work of, among others, Fisher, Bourdieu, Darbel and Schnapper, adding context to a significant piece of action research and paving the way for other research into a much neglected area of learning in museums for HE students.
In another way, drawing on the experience of an Australian museum-HE partnership, Geoffrey Caban and Carol Scott’s joint essay, ‘Design Learning in an Australian Museum: A Partnership Project Between the Powerhouse Museum and the University of Technology, Sydney’, bolsters and contextualises the CETLD projects. Caban and Scott’s ‘spirit of enquiry’ shares the same focus on learning styles and meaning-making in the gallery as the CETLD projects but their employment of Falk’s ‘Personal Meaning Mapping Methodology’ and use of references other than the rather narrow range of literature repeatedly cited by the other CETLD Project contributors (most frequently Anderson, (1997) and Hooper Greenhill (1992, 1994, and 1999) ) does much to illuminate not only their own project findings but the discussion around constructivist and independent learning running throughout the book.
In showcasing CETLD projects, Museums and Design Education: Looking to Learn, Learning to See does provide an ‘evidence base’ for the development of long-term and constructive relationships between museums and universities. But the different ways that data from projects have been presented and used does not make this entirely clear despite the rather weak conclusions to most essays pointing to the need for further research and greater collaboration. Indeed, the value of new research carried out by CETLD is diluted by a series of summaries which return to the same questions, ‘Much remains to investigate’ and ‘Developing technology in museums for HE design students requires us to ask how HE students use museums’ disappointingly rounding off Rebecca Reynolds essay, ‘How Can Technology Support Design Students’ Learning in Museums?’. This highlights the issue-based approach of many of the essays which disregard the true value of project findings in an effort to point to the bigger picture resulting in conclusions which can be trite and circular.
Beth Cook and Catherine Speight’s essay, ‘Bridging Perspectives – Approaches to Learning in Museums and Universities’ scratches the surface of similarities and differences in museum and HE pedagogies but is useful in setting out some of the main theories underwriting current thinking on the strengths and weaknesses of each. It is especially insightful in two areas. It points to the grey areas between pedagogical practice (as opposed to theory) in museums and the HE sector, questioning the ‘active’ nature of gallery education and the value of deep / surface learning paradigms in analysing the HE student in each environment (museum and lecture hall). Secondly, it draws attention to the difficulties of assessing efficacy of learning, particularly in the museum environment. Attempts to extend and deepen these lines of thinking to consider real ways of ‘bridging perspectives’ does however fall short of the book’s overall aim of generating ‘radical dialogue’ between museums and the HE sector. Instead, the authors opt tepidly for a call for the student and both institutions to develop ‘Greater understanding’.
In terms of promoting a ‘radical dialogue’ between sectors, a conversation between an academic and curator at the heart of the book epitomises both the promise and the failure of Museums and Design Education to kick-start genuinely far-reaching discussions on the future of HE learning in museums. An edited transcript of a conversation in the V&A’s Cast Courts between Chris Rose, Principal Lecturer in 3D Design at the University of Brighton, and Norbert Jopek, Sculpture Curator at the V&A, highlights the similarities and differences in approach between the two practitioners. This should have been the focus of research and commentary per se to radicalise discussions on collaboration by examining factors (made manifest in language) which influence the shape and dynamism of partnership. Instead, three paragraphs prosaically describe the context of the discussion and a concluding paragraph merely states, ‘There may be resonances with points made in other chapters about interpretation and understanding of objects in the museum and HE sectors’ . This represents a lost opportunity to get underneath the surface of a recurring question, i.e. to what extent do practitioner perspectives help or hinder greater student use of museum collections?
Language as a signifier of these perspectives is abundant not only in this essay but throughout the book and reveals a number of biases among contributors. Written from the perspective of a PhD student in fashion and textile design education, Torunn KjØlberg’s essay, ‘Museums and Material Knowledge: The V&A as Source in Fashion and Textile Design Research’ betrays a scepticism about museums in her weighted use of language. She summarises the sorts of artefacts found in museums saying, ‘There are objects on display and objects hidden in storage, objects for sale and objects taken for granted’ . She goes on to say that ‘For design students who must learn not to take objects for granted, museums are important for gaining material knowledge’ . There are numerous examples of sententious language throughout the book. For example, the co-authored essay, ‘The Virtual Museum’, by Mark Carnall and Beth Cook which shows signs of the tensions created when practitioners come together in a reflective capacity.
Carnall and Cook’s essay is the third of four pieces at the end of the book which again fails to live up to the description of ‘radical dialogue’. The editors have included four essays which involve digital technologies either as a way of compensating for the extent to which this is omitted from the other essays or in an attempt to future-proof the book. Rebecca Reynolds’ essay, ‘Learning Paths: Museum-Based Learning Materials for Design Students’ deals with mobile learning environments advocating critical use of technologies, supporting Diane Laurillard’s view that pedagogy should be in the driving seat. A second essay by Patrick Letschka and Jill Seddon deals with a project empowering students as creative practitioners by encouraging them to capture and reflect on their own creative process. This also connects well with a concept developed by Bruns and explained by Reynolds in the preceding essay, the notion of the ‘produser’ , learners who actively author content rather than just make use of it. The other two essays sit oddly with the rest of the collection because none of these deal with design education, which is the presiding theme and raison d'être for the book. Instead they focus on computer games and Second Life technology and the potential of each to fit pedagogically with the work of museums and the HE sector. As an exercise in either stretching the debate or signposting the future these two essays fail to reach the mark since they do not connect to themes issuing from or surrounding the CETLD’s own research and are written in an awkward, unscholarly style.
Overall, the book’s efforts to integrate the work of the CETLD in the context of other research and teaching experiments must be considered a strength. This is achieved by looking beyond the Centre’s own projects to reflect on the significance of its findings earning them validity and potential, especially in conceptualising the museum experience from the student perspective (done most effectively by Jos Boys in 'Creative Differences: Deconstructing the Conceptual Learning Spaces of Higher Education and Museums' pp. 43-60). However, the fact that many of the essays were written by individuals closely involved in the CETLD project renders the collection an unevenness and subjectivity. This is made plain in a number of weak conclusions which reiterate the aim of each essay and point towards a continuation of the work of the Centre without actually moving the debate into more radical territory. This partially undermines its ability to act as an evidence base to support ‘long term and constructive relationships between museums and universities’ but the worthiness of each project is apparent despite the variety of ways data are presented and interpreted. Nevertheless, Museums and Design Education is a welcome addition to an overlooked area of research and makes a valuable contribution to understanding the theory and practice of design learning in the museum.
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