The Use of Activities and Resources in Archaeological Museums for the Teaching of History in Formal Education

Abstract

The research objectives of this paper are to compare the activities which have been prepared in the design of field trips from the perspective of teachers and museum educators, as well as to describe the use of resources and materials from the point of view of educational agents. The research method is quantitative, based on the study of a descriptive comparative cross-sectional survey. The participants are 442 teachers of early years, primary and secondary education, visiting two archaeological museums with their class groups in order to carry out an activity relating to the subject of history. The data collection tool was the MUSELA© questionnaire. The main results show that 60% of the teachers state that they prepare some kind of activities and 70% use some resources within the design of a field trip to an archaeological museum. On the other hand, 94.4% of the museum educators carry out activities using resources in the museum visit. The main conclusion is that the activities which are most used by teachers and educators in the museum (experimentation and artistic workshops, audio-visual observation and viewing tasks and debates or sharing) and by teachers in the classroom space (audio-visual viewing) do not guarantee research activities, analysis or reflection activities.