School: Questions About Museums, Culture and Justice to Explorer in Your Classroom

Museums are public resources that can offer rich extensions to classroom educational experiences, from tours through botanical gardens to searching for family records in the archives of a local historical society. With clarity and a touch of humor, Quinn presents ideas and examples of ways that teachers can use museums to support student exploration while also teaching for social justice. Topics include disability and welcoming all bodies, celebrating queer people’s lives and histories, settler colonialism and decolonization, fair workplaces, Indigenous knowledge, and much more. This practical resource invites classroom teachers to rethink how and why they are bringing students to museums and suggests projects for creating rich museum-based learning opportunities across an array of subject areas. With a foreward by Kevin K. Kumashiro. Published 2020, Teachers College Press ISBN:9780807763438
Dimensions: 5 X 8," 112 pages
Materials: Softcover book

 

Therese Quinn
(University Village)

Therese Quinn is an Associate Professor and Director of the Museum and Exhibition Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She earned her doctoral degree in Curriculum Studies at UIC’s College of Education in 2001 with an arts-based qualitative study using museums and exhibit development strategies to explore the experiences of non-dominant group users of mainstream museums. Drawing on her work as an exhibit researcher, developer, and evaluator for the Field Museum of Natural History, the Chicago Children’s Museum, Museums in the Parks, and more, she teaches courses exploring the histories and pedagogical practices of museums and exhibitions. She writes about the arts and cultural institutions as sites for democratic engagement and justice work; contributes a regular column to Yliopisto, the magazine of the University of Helsinki; and is a founding member of Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education (CReATE).