The notion of praxeology as a tool to analyze exhibitions in science mu-seums

The scientific and technological development, the modernization of society and

the redefinition of time and social space arising from globalization imply new educa-

tional requirements, with repercussions both in the interface of education with the world

of work, and in education with the exercise of citizenship.

Over the years, both research and educational practices related to museum edu-

cation have intensified, becoming increasingly a field of knowledge production. In this

way, studies and strategies in these fields have been used in an attempt to provide scien-

tific knowledge in an accessible manner and with quality to visitors of museums

(CAZELLI; MARANDINO; STUDART, 2003).

Museums have, for some time, being thought of as educational institutions and,

since its origin, changed the focus of their performance in the care of the collections to

the attention of the public, (FAYARD, 1999; OUTROS?). Several discussions about the

role and social responsibilities of these institutions emphasized the need of assembling

of didactic and purposeful of exhibitions, what resulted in the expansion of educational

services in museums

From the second half of the twentieth century museums have been recognized as

intrinsically educational institutions and the axis of museum activities migrated from the

conservation - documentation binomial to education-communication binomial (Martins,

2000). This new order transformed the museum exhibit, both point of view as concep-

tual as technical. The exhibits have gained, in addition to existing explanatory panels

and labels, new information media such as photographs, models, dioramas and back-

grounds, diverse sound reinforcement, audio, guides and other media resources, forming

a vast range of languages multisectoral support.

Many researches were done under the influence of certain currents of educa-

tional thought. The idea of learning in museums, so, is not new. For many years, re-

search on museum education sought to produce educational strategies such as: divide

the exhibition spaces for families getting together, facilitating learning (Borun et al

1996); and structure the scientific content of a presentation to make it educationally co-

herent to the visitor (Miles, 1986).

According to Marandino (2004), the transformation of scientific knowledge for

purposes of education and dissemination, can be analyzed in order to understand the

production of new knowledge in these processes. Accordingly, we find in Anthropologi-

cal Theory of the Didactic (ATD), proposed by Chevallard (1991), the theoretical

framework that will identify which knowledge is produced by the museum, through its

educational activities, and that they can or cannot be observed by the visitor, through a

praxeological Organization (OP).

My research aims to characterize the intended and observed praxeology of the

diorama "Amazon Forest" which exhibition is in Museum of Zoology of USP. The

methodology is based on field research and it includes the preparation of a praxeologi-

cal framework from the data obtained by three collection tools: documents about exhibi-

tions and dioramas; interviews with designers and/or responsibles for the exhibition; ob-

servation, description, filming and photography of the dioramas.

The Anthropological Theory of the Didactic, the way it is constituted, is pre-

sented through various notions (levels of didactic codetermination, didactic transposi-

tion, praxeology, epistemological reference model), among them, the notion of praxeol-

ogy was chosen to be used as a theoretical tool of analysis of the intentions and of the

elements related to biodiversity present in the diagram of the Amazon Forest, since the

study of praxeology in museums has been recently developed in order to analyze the

learning environment in museum exhibitions, produce practical principles and theoreti-

cally grounded, with conditions to be applicable to the alignment between the design of

exhibitions and the educational outcomes (Mortensen, 2010).

Therefore, it is expected that the Anthropological Theory of Didactics can con-

tribute, so that important elements of interaction (theory x practice) can be perceived

and considered during the preparation of an exhibition at the Science Museum, with the

intention that the discussion generated can help the museum community to understand,

explain and discuss more deeply the tasks performed and, hence, the techniques in-

volved in the execution of the tasks related to specific contents - in this case, the biodi-

versity - across from an exhibition object.

The relation of ATD with educational practices in science museum

Chevallard (2005) situates the ATD in the field of Anthropology for being, the

Didactic, a human action, so, it must, belong to the field that studies the Mankind (the

human race). In this field of study, Chevallard seeks to describe and to analyze human

activities relating to the production and dissemination of knowledge and mathematical

knowledge in specific and particular contexts of everyday society, through formal and /

or informal education.

Furthermore, the object of study of ATD is the manipulation of knowledge with

didactic intent, and the knowledge, being a human construct, is called by Chevallard as

a work that includes all production of the society. As an example, he cites the school, a

human work that provides the student to be in contact with other works such as: Cur-

riculum of the disciplines of biology, physics, history, mathematics, etc.; didactic mate-

rials; educational programs; among other works, and take ownership of them.

So that, we can also establish as an example of human work, other spaces such

as non-formal education, such as science museums, seeing that they are places where

visitors can live experiences that go beyond the pleasure and the entertainment. Educa-

tional programs and projects are generated at these sites, based on social and cultural

models, in which selections of part of the produced culture are performed in order to

make it accessible to the visitor (Marandino, 2005). This work also proposes the visi-

tor's contact with other works, such as exhibitions, objects, scientific apparatus, guides

and manuals of exhibition, among others.

Marandino (2011) in his free teaching thesis, opens discussion about the object

of study of Didactic and he extends to other educational contexts, not the school, such

as museums, considering, for this, peculiar aspects of the museums from elements such

as: language, place, time and the importance of the objects. The author points out the

idea that exposure is a media, different from school and from other media, even when

they use common communication techniques. These elements compose the pedagogical

specificities of these local and, to the author, they constitute a museum didactic. This

museum didactic is defined by the researcher as follows:

[...] the didactic museum is defined by considering the tension

between the prospect of a general didactics, it holds own knowl-

edge, which are the pedagogical knowledge, referring to a field

of knowledge production in the field of education, and the

prospect of a specific didactic concerning to knowledge of dis-

ciplinary fields, which aggregates specificities of the reference

areas in conjunction with the practices and the knowledge gen-

uinely produced in the teaching and learning processes of these

disciplines (Marandino, 2012: 145).

In this sense, to support the anthropological concepts of ATD, Chevallard (2006)

developed a concept of the theory, which name had already been used by others (eg,

von Mises, 1949): the praxeology. The use of this word contains, etymologically, the

size of the practice and the theory. All uses of it seem to imply the amalgamation of the

practice and of the theoretical discourse, or the relationship between the taught knowl-

edge and that one of reference. Chevallard seems to use this word to create a more re-

fined entity to incorporate it to the ATD.

As indicated Chevallard (2005), the teaching should be defined as the science of

dissemination of knowledge in a social group. The nature of knowledge can certainly be

expressed in terms of "bodies" of knowledge: if we do, the didactic then becomes the

scientific study of how bodies of knowledge seep through human groups. This is essen-

tially the formulation Chevallard used in the context of theory of didactic transposition.

However, to go beyond the concept developed in this theory, it is necessary to get an al-

most primordial question, which is: the knowledge transformation which should be

studied is the knowledge of what? In other words, what is the object of this knowledge?

The answer to this question Chevallard is formulated in terms of the notion of

praxeology, which the author describes as follows:

Some dictionaries define praxeology as the study of human ac-

tion and conduct. Up to a point, this is not foreign to the use I

will make of that key word of the anthropological approach to

didactics – provided we include in “praxeology” the study, not

only of what people do, and how they do it, but also of what

they think, and how they do so. In that sense, didactics includes

praxeology, or at least some part of it, because the knowledge

percolating through society is about human ways of doing and

thinking: the didactics of mathematics, for example, is bound to

accommodate a “praxeology of mathematics”, that is, a scien-

tific description and analysis of what we, human beings, do and

think when we “do mathematics” (CHEVALLARD, 2005: 3).

What Chevallard (2005) calls praxeology is, somehow, the basic unit by which

to analyze human action. After all, what exactly is a praxeology? We can rely on the et-

ymology of the word to guide us: praxeology used to analyze the human being into two

main interrelated components On the one hand, praxis, i.e. the practical part, and on the

other hand, the logos. "Logos" is a Greek word, since pre-Socratic times, has been con-

stantly used to refer to human thought and reasoning - particularly about the cosmos.

To complete this thought, we know that, in the anthropological approach, all

forms of human activity should result in a set of praxeologys. A simple example from

everyday life, which can exemplify this relationship, is brought by Chevallard (2005) as

follows: how each person blow their nose can generate a praxeology which will vary ac-

cording to culture with which each person is located, as well as gait also composes a

praxeology which may well vary according to gender, the environment in which it is,

and so on. That is, as the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), Chevallard

compares the praxeology to a "social idiosyncrasy", i.e., an organized way of doing and

thinking that was created within a given society - people do not walk, much less, its

blow their nose in the same way around the world.

Another point that we can establish on the concept of praxeology is based on the

previous thought and refers to a generalization of the concept of "body of knowledge".

For most praxeologys of ordinary life are denied the status of "body of knowledge" -

would accept that blowing your nose or walking in a park means bring some "body of

knowledge" properly learned. In general, describes human action without asking if peo-

ple generally regard it as "real" bodies of knowledge or just as a simple know-how, or

even as a "natural" gift. For example, most people think that breathing is natural and not

something learned in the culture in which it operates. However, this practice implies a

"body of knowledge" learned.

One last note about praxeology, concerns the need to be open to change, adapta-

tion and improvement of the didactic process. We can then define that the praxeology

arises as a tool of ATD, and it describes the study of the structure of the simplest human

activity, or better, it is a man made organization, that, in biological language, means that

it is the human action over the environment. The translated meaning is: practice

grounded in knowledge from Greek praxis (practice, action) and logos (fundamentals,

knowledge).

In this sense, we will use praxeology as a tool for analysis of the study in the

production and comprehension of a museum object. In other words, from the descrip-

tion of praxeology proposed by those responsible for producing the diorama of praxeol-

ogy and understood by visitors will be able to answer the central question of this re-

search: how is the process of teaching (and apprehension), so the didactic process, from

an exhibition object - the diorama biodiversity - in an exhibition of science museum?

We believe that, based on the ATD, in particular, the notion of praxeology, the

theoretical perspective is potentially important to express both scientific (biological) as

didactic / museographic intentions of dioramas. At this work, we are considering the

museografical organization as didactics, due to having objects in space / time in order to

teach and disseminate through the exhibits.

After identifying the intended praxeology, it is possible to characterize in an ob-

jective manner, biological and educational purposes involved in drawing such objects to

teach and disseminate the museums. The qualitative analysis will identify the theory and

the technology of the diorama in the context of their exposure, and also the identifica-

tion of tasks and techniques proposed, constituting the praxeological framework of the

object in analysis. The results may contribute to the comprehension of the educational

role of the objects in science museums, and to the development of processes for produc-

ing exhibitions.

The aspects mentioned above show that the proposed research considers the An-

thropological Theory of the Didactic an important tool for uncovering the theoretical -

practical structure of expositive activities present in Museums, because it makes possi-

ble to identify the tasks (praxis) proposed for the exhibition object, correlating them

with a body of conceptual knowledge that maintains its implementation (logos). This is

important because by identifying tasks that involve the object of the exhibition, in the

case of the diorama "Amazon Rainforest" with the elaboration of a framework intended

praxeology, it will be possible to characterize in an objective manner, the purposes in-

volved in drafting such an object to teach and publish in science museums. Based on

this identification it will be possible to provide information for possible reformulations

of the objects presented in exhibitions at science museums, making its discourse closest

to the initially intentions, intended by the organizers of the exhibition, and better under-

stood by the visitor discourse.

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