Mediation

brief notes about museums and mediation

Ricardo Rubiales | Mxico www.educacionenmuseos.com

e-book about museum education | under creative commons http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/mx/

The concept (and action) of Mediation

We comprehend mediation as an interaction process between one human being and another, where it is a purpose in one of them to look for focusing, selecting and detonating experiences, observations and reections in a frame of reciprocity and listening. By the end of this document and in the context of the museistic work we will call the mediation processes: quality interactions. We comprehend mediation as a theoretic fundament to secure quality interactions with the users in the museum experience. Every human contact between the museums staff and the users must be a quality interaction that conceives an intention, a listening in the reciprocity sense, and focuses in the publics needs, expectancies and searches. The mediators work looks for ltering and selecting, organizing and framing, isolating and relating (previous and new) knowledge, regulating and adapting, motivating and facilitating the construction of meaning and the users interpretation. Is it true that all the curatorial discourses are legible to the different publics? Is it true that everyone involves, comprehends and dialogues with every artistic proposal? Or does the construction of interpretation depend on many factors, which in some situations require (if the person considers it necessary) a mediator?
Ricardo Rubiales 2009

Quality Interactions

intention

reciprocity (listening)

signicance, trascendence, competence

Making Meaning understanding

MEDIATED LEARNING EXPERIENCE

The quality interactions listen to the users, their real needs, questions and interpretations. Mediation opposes to the museums conception as a space where what it is expected of the visitor is to observe and go all over the place, where the conversation, the hypothesis elaboration, the exploration or search of relationships between socio-cultural concepts are not elements to be taken into consideration. From this perspective every visitor is found alone; if he can nd meaning, good for him, if he does not, it is something that does not concern the museum, and that, goes further than adequate conservation and presentation of the museum objects. The reality is that under this conception, the processes that are posterior to the inauguration are not important; the museum work ends when cutting the ribbon, keeping the hall clean and protecting the works from vandalism. On the contrary, the quality interactions provoke questions, look for reections and exploration; they motivate curiosity and allow considering new interpretation horizons. It turns the museum space into an inclusive space considering the different audiences segments and the multiplicity of styles and preferences of each user, they do not generalize the public, they personalize the attention for the users with a person who can listen, give information (if necessary), motivate the approaching and build bridges between the visitor and the museum proposal.

Reuven Feurstein is an israeli developmental, cognitive psychologist. His theor y of Mediated Learning Experience focus on human modiability. The theor y addresses the question, What are the origins of differential cognitive development? This question involves examining the learner and the enviroment (the context in wich the learning experience occurs) It is much more than a simple pedagogical model and entails the shaping of cognitive process as a by product of cultural transmissions Feurstein denes.

Bibliography Mediated Learning Experience (MLE), theorical, psychosocial and learing implications, Reuven Feuerstein, Pnina Klein, Abraham J. Tannenbaum. International Center for Enhancement of Learning, 1991 Rousing minds to life, teaching learning and schooling in social context. Roland Tharp, Roland Gallimore, Cambridge University Press, 1988 Creating and enhancing cognitive modiability: The Feurstein Instrumental Enrichment program. Feurstein R. Falik L. Rand Y. Jerusalem ICELP Press, 2006

Ricardo Rubiales 2009

Mediation occurs between parents and children, grandfathers and grandsons, friends, couples and even between unknown people. In fact, inside the museum there is mediation between visitors groups, to deny the human interactions is to deny the museum as a social space and to conform the experience with art, science and history in a unilateral and autocratic way, limiting and dening, interrupting the publics freedom to get closer in different ways to the museum proposals. To conceive every proposal and discourse as multi-language and accessible to all the public is a meta-ignorance (to ignore what we ignore) the publics reality, its needs and expectancies. There surely are publics who do not need mediation or human interaction in their visit to the museum and in those cases we are certain of their particular needs. It will never be the educative program's intention to fall in a totalizing scheme; it would be incoherent. We look for opening spaces, using multiple tools, different schemes with the reality of the diversity of our visitors, who conceive questions but also silence, rapprochement and distance, motivation and respect. Mediation conceives a whole methodology of bringing together, on the how to relate a group of people, which criterions should be considered in this interaction, beginning with being conscious of an intention on the mediators side and search for reciprocity in the visitors. And which strategies to use so that the conversation and the dialogue with the collections and museum exhibits gives a memorable experience, rich in meanings, built by the public.
Ricardo Rubiales 2009

NOTES
Conclusions of the Second Encounter of the National Progr am of Inter pretation, General Direction of Visual Arts, UNAM, October 2006.
1

We think of interpretation as a series of processes lived by the public, which start from the search for sense; these interpretations construct and d e c o n s t r u c t t h e p e r s o n s information structures, which produce learning, it is for sure that the interchange with another human being boosts and in many cases facilitates these processes.
2

The theory of the mediated learning experience considers 12 criterions: mediation of intentionality and reciprocity; of meaning; of transcendence; of the c a p a b i l i t y fe e l i n g ; o f a u t o regulation; of sharing; of individuation; of the search capacity; mediation of the challenge to novelty and complexity; mediation of change, of the search for alternatives; of the belonging feeling.
3

Ricardo Rubiales Garca-Jurado He started his work on the museum eld in 1994, in the design of hands-on exhibits. He has worked in Papalote Childrens Museum, Science and Technology Museum, the National Art Museum (MUNAL) among others. He participates in the design of ve new museums including Papalote Cuernavaca (a Childrens Museum focused on art) and MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art) His research on the relationship between museum education and space design produces learning physical environments and interpretation strategies that enrich in a signicant way the approach from the public to the exhibit and collections, considering the museum as a social environment. ricrubiales@gmail.com www.educacionenmuseos.com