Museum Schools and Museum-school partnerships: Learning and Skill Development beyond the Traditional Curriculum (2016)

Undergraduate: Anne Mazza

Faculty Advisor: Patrick Akos
Department: Anthropology

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In the past 20 years, the partnerships between museums and schools have increased in various degrees of involvement to create a system on intersection of formal and informal education. This intersection has created a different type of school -- museum school -- where curriculum and style of learning are created with help from museums. Various studies and research have been conducted to create a spectrum of museum-school partnerships as well as a list of benefits in learning that is predicted to be an outcome of these partnerships. However, there is a lack of sufficient research on the effects of museum schools. In understanding the variety of museum schools and what skills students should development in museum schools, this project explores one of the three North Carolina museum schools, Brooks Magnet Elementary School. Through analysis of the teaching styles and curriculum of this school, this project evaluates the impact of museum schools and museum-school partnerships on positive skill development through museum-based learning and object-based learning, especially in consideration of curriculum development, and will evaluate the success of this partnership with consideration of previous research on museum-school partnerships to current practices of this school.