Are workbooks and task sheets needed for participants in museum education and if so what kind?
MúzeumCafé 43.
According to Ágnes Kissné Kovács, museum education specialist at the Göcsej Museum, such resources are necessary both for pupils and those organising the sessions, though not for every occasion, theme and age group. Such auxiliary materials and resources are for realising the goals of museum education, for achieving deeper knowledge.
Csilla Tóthné Timár-Geng, deputy head of the Lajos Bárdos Dual Language Primary and Secondary School, answers “yes” to the question.
Emese Joó, museum education officer at the Museum of Ethnography, believes there is no need for either simple task sheets or more complex workbooks. These are fundamentally alien to the museum. Their use hampers, misleads and is harmful, both in the short and the long run. Task sheets mislead both pupils and teachers because they imperceptibly turn the museum into a school and the exhibition into a teaching material. From a strategic perspective they harm the museum since they conceal from the Z generation – which speaks the visual language and which represents the potential museum visitors of the future – the real world of the museum and with this impede the matching of the increased visual demand on offer in museums, and the coming together of the digital generation and museums. Task sheets make the physical presence of the museum education specialist superfluous and that gives the appearance that they can be replaced.
According to Tóth Kálmán, museum education officer at the Savaria Museum, the task sheet is an effective means for interpreting a collection. Moreover, some types of tender applications require the museum education materials to be attached. But it also quite often happens that a workbook produced under pressure turns out to be unsuitable in practice.