The First Brown Bag of the Year! New Starts, and New Strategies
Brown
Bag 5th
October 2011
“New
Wine Should Be Put Into A New Wineskin”
The
Science Communication Policy and new Movements in Japan
Reiji
Takayasu
Science
Communication Expert, Foundation of Japanese Science Museums
It’s
that time of year again, and I’m back in the world of the Attic,
bearing New and Wonderful treats from the Box of Brown Bag Delights!
I hope you look forward to this semester – we’ve lots of
wonderful things in store for you, and I hope you’ll enjoy reading
them as much as we shall enjoy listening to them.
It
is an honour, then, to introduce our first brave speaker of the term.
Reiji Takayasu, of the National
Museum of Nature and Science
in Tokyo, and Vice President of the Japanese Museum Management
Association, (JMMA) was a delight. There are not many Brown Bag
sessions where the speaker brings the audience gifts – we each
received a toy from the Museum – but I fear that a precedent for
such presents may now have been set! Mr. Takayasu seemed hugely
pleased to be here – so it is nice to be able to say that we were
incredibly pleased to have him, and given that our own Professor
Knell considers his institution ‘one of the best natural history
and science museums in the world,’ we are truly honoured.
Well,
now I’ve stopped admiring my new stag beetle and his little stand,
it’s time to get on with the serious academic part of this post.
At
the heart of this Brown Bag lay a fascinating discussion of the
processes, role and value of ‘Science Communication,’ and the
ways in which museums such as Mr. Takayasu’s can contribute to its
facilitation. The changing social and economic situation of Japan, in
the current world climate, and because of the recent
devastating tsunami,
has lead to changes in the attitudes towards science communication,
and the need for its development. The policy for science
communication in Japan has its origins in the 1960s, and since that
time it has developed and changed in a number of significant ways. In
1996, a ‘Basic Plan’ for a higher standard in science education
was produced, and increasing financial support was given to the field
from this point on. In 1999, the UNESCO Conference, ‘Science
for the 21st
Century: A New Commitment’
proved a turning point in the history of science communication in
Japan. Four key themes raised in that conference, (Science for
knowledge, knowledge for progress; Science for peace; Science for
development; and Science in Society and Science for Society) proved
seminal, and have lead to the adoption of policies geared towards
literacy and communication, towards dialogic and public facing
approaches. Events such as the Science
Agora in
Tokyo, which has been held since 2006, are superb examples of the
ways in which the Japanese government and scientific industries are
attempting to reach out to as broad a public as possible.
What,
then, is the role of museums in fostering ‘Science and Museum
Literacy’? It cannot be a small one – in Japan
there are over 8000 museums,
and whilst the majority of these are local authority History Museums,
a significant number are either dedicated to science, or have
scientific elements in their makeup – zoos, botanical gardens and
aquariums, for instance, make up a great part of this segment. The
role of the museum as facilitator of lifelong learning and education
is increasingly understood across the world – the work of Eilean
Hooper-Greenhill,
who was invited to speak to the Japanese museum community in 2003,
has been especially influential in the development of JMMA’s
increasing focus upon their communication policies, particularly in
regard to science.
Sadly,
sciences are often seen as difficult, as exclusionary, and as
subjects hard to communicate. The popularity of science, science
courses and lessons, as well as museums, took something of a downturn
in Japan. This is due in no little part to its teaching methods,
which had, over time, become didactic and transmissive. It became
important, then, that scientific institutions, and those involved in
the development of public scientific literacy, looked to other
disciplines for inspiration – and the increasingly popular world of
arts education, which uses interactive and constructivist approaches
to teaching and learning, proved to be hugely inspirational.
Combining,
then, the dialogic and multilogic approaches of arts education with
the educational possibilities of museums as espoused by
Hooper-Greenhill, Hein, and others, it became possible for new models
of communication to be developed. The Museum of Nature and Science
has proved to be a fertile testing ground, and one of their main
goals is to ‘Design effective exhibitions and to facilitate
audience learning that contributes to the public science literacy.’
In fact, their
mission
itself states that their purpose is ‘to deepen the public
appreciation of the earth, life, science and technology, and to
encourage people to think about how humankind, the natural world, and
science and technology should best relate to each other.’ For an
institution to have such an aim is inherently indicative of the
importance of communication, and concomitantly of the importance of a
holistic approach to the phenomena of the world – natural and
cultural.
To
achieve this, the Museum has set itself a number of goals, and has
implemented a variety of schemes in order to further its aims.
Considering the communication activities within the institutions and
display spaces, the importance of lifelong learning, and the
evaluation and theorization of the system and the plan have been set
up as the points towards which they must direct their attention. But
how, practically speaking, is this rather wonderful philosophy to be
made concrete? How is science communication to be improved in order
to heighten public interest and awareness?
In
partnership with an astonishing 67 universities across Japan, the
museum has developed the Science Communicator Practical Training Programmes.
Twice every year, individuals go through a series of classes and
tasks, including fundraising and running an engaging ‘Science Café’
for the public, to gain a qualification as an accredited Science
Communicator. By the end of this process, they should be able to
communicate science and scientific concepts in a responsive, and
socially and politically aware way. Thus it is that the NMNS has been
able to make a huge leap forward in the development of science
literacy – in the public and in its personnel - and has thus
contributed to the future of science in Japan. It’s pretty safe to
say, I think, that such a model has relevance the world over.
For
people who find science intimidating, it’s critical to have someone
to communicate it to you well and without being patronising. The same
is true, really, for all forms of human existence which we, as museum
builders, educators, artists, teachers, contribute to. One of the
most important things I think we can all learn from a philosophy
which seems prevalent in Japan is that of the holistic nature of
worldly relations. No one part of human existence is independent from
another – nature, culture, art, engineering, chemistry, biology,
poetry and sculpture are all part of this wonderful thing we call the
perceivable universe, and to segment them into independent and
unrelated parts shows a painful shortsightedness. Understanding the
complex, configurational, immersive and interpenetrative nature of
phenomena lets us become literate, lets us play, and thus lets us
communicate, in languages of being which are richer and more strange
than we could have hoped to imagine.
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