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Towards sensibilities of caring with and for museum objects in a university context

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-01-20, 12:05 authored by Ana Baeza Ruiz
Within the prevalent logic of the neoliberal university, teaching and learning are subject to academic audits, performance indicators and quality assurance measures. These impact on the relationships between educators and students, placing an emphasis on self- over collective interests, aspirational mobility, and a culture of ‘speed’ and productivity that leaves little time for reflection. The effects of this are perhaps even more acutely felt in former polytechnic (post-92) universities, where the focus lies on employability, the creative industries, and vocational training. In this context, what does it entail to bring care into the learning environments? This paper considers the activist potential of embodied pedagogies to generate ways of knowing that confront discourses of neoliberal education. Drawing on object-based pedagogic practice with students in face-to-face sessions at the Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture (Middlesex University), the paper considers how such encounters might generate radical practices of care. How might the museum formulate arguments which challenge institutional expectations to perform in the knowledge-based economy? To what extent might these spaces open possibilities for an alternative “commons” beyond neoliberal logics?

History

School

  • Social Sciences and Humanities

Department

  • International Relations, Politics and History

Published in

Journal of Museum Education

Volume

47

Issue

4

Pages

486 - 500

Publisher

Informa UK

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Rights holder

© The Author(s)

Publisher statement

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Acceptance date

2022-11-10

Publication date

2023-01-05

Copyright date

2022

ISSN

1059-8650

eISSN

2051-6169

Language

  • en

Depositor

Dr Ana Baeza Ruiz. Deposit date: 19 January 2023

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