어린이와 함께 경험을 디자인하는 에듀케이터: 의도한 경험과 의도하지 않은 경험

Abstract

In an art museum or other museums, the educator is a curatorial employee who plans and executes the institution’s educational programs, whereby he is responsible for communicating with visitors and delivering the institution’s mission in effective ways. As he continues working at museums, the educator meets more new visitors, encounters a wide range of experiences, and his expertise is further developed during the process. In this article, I have described various experiences I shared with visitors as an educator and examined their significances. The main focus was on experiences with children — visitors who are brilliantly diverse. Accounting from my experience, I gained much more knowledge from unintended situations rather than the intended ones. I began working as an educator because I was confident that I could deliver information and teach something to others, but instead, the job itself gave me more new knowledge and gratification and gave me the power to push through the stress and difficulties I face at work. The direction of an educator’s practice is determined by what he learns and discovers through his participants and the enlightenments from on-site experiences. In other words, an educator’s values and preferences are chiseled and shaped by the experiences he has shared with visitors. But on the actual site of education, the experiences do not always flow in the directions intended in advance. Unintended experiences provide the foundation for discovering new directions and attempting new practices. To the educator, any experience can become nourishment and a chance to develop himself, whether intended or not. The year 2020 has hit us with an unforeseeable pandemic and forced us to spend many hours in isolated, remote settings. But the circumstances we experience now are perhaps the chances to prepare for the new, forthcoming era. Museum and art museum education is currently happening on various platforms and uses diverse channels to communicate with participants. The future will bring us opportunities to meet more participants from a much bigger span of diversity. And we must prepare for the new age, research and develop alternative communication methods for the brilliantly-diverse children as well as other visitors.