Teaching through objects and collections: The case of Strängnäs Secondary Grammar School and school museum 1830-1960

Abstract

This paper aims to introduce educational history to multimodal studies by combining a source-oriented approach with multimodal social semiotics. We trace the role of objects and collections in teaching and learning, and focus on Strängnäs Secondary Grammar School in Sweden 1830-1960 as a case example. Closely examining original documents, remaining physical objects, and examples of their situated use as represented in photographs and drawings, the paper provides a nuanced perspective on how object-based pedagogy was applied. It traces how objects and artefacts were incorporated into the school’s collections, by the actions of different actors, in processes of recontextualisation and framing. The activity types that we use as examples, include: drawing lessons in art, weapons practice in physical education, plant collecting in botany, and map exercises in history. These examples show how objects and their meaning potential were used in teaching and learning, and how they realized certain discourses of schooling. Based on our examples, we can see how educational discourses such as progressivism came to have different impact in different subjects. While an authoritarian and national discourse prevailed in art and physical education, a scientific and progressive discourse seem to have been established in botany and history. By combining multimodality with historical research, we can understand meaning-making within a larger context of sociocultural practices and sociopolitical forces.

Learning Sciences from the Past: Recovery, Study, and Cataloging of a Historical Natural History School Museum

“…The Mineralogical Cabinet prospered since the first half of the 20th century thanks to the work of Piarist Fathers such as Adolfo Brattina (1852-1935), who held practical classes in mineralogical analysis, especially on silica minerals and quartz mineralogical associations with sulfides and sulfosalts [129] (p. 19) using the specimens kept in the cabinet. This brief overview thus outlined how Collegio Nazareno's geo-mineralogical collections were used in teaching and learning activities within a more extensive background of scientific and sociocultural practices [130]. After the mid-1950s, the geo-mineralogical collections lost their role as a learning tool and gradually became disused, thus leading to the progressive decay of the specimens' conservation state.…”