Zitten we op één lijn? een studie naar de bijdrage van culturele instellingen aan doorlopende leerlijnen cultuuronderwijs in de basisschool

Are cultural institutions and primary schools aligned?

A theater group performing in a primary school, or a visit with class to a museum is no exception in the Netherlands. Twenty-five years of cultural educational policy by the government has resulted in cultural institutions feeling responsible for culture education in school. The government requests cultural institutions to collaborate with primary school, to connect to their questions and to offer high quality cultural education and an integrated culture education curriculum. But are cultural institutions capable of doing this?
PhD student Fianne Konings used the culture theory of Barend van Heusden, professor Culture and Cognition at the RuG, as a theoretical framework to answer the questions: Can cultural institutions contribute to an integrated culture education curriculum? If so, how?
The answer is ambiguous. Yes, they can contribute, but not all institutions actually do this and if so, their contribution could be larger in most cases. Cultural institutions could be of more meaning to culture education if they make use of a theoretical fundament and a more systematic design- and evaluation process when developing culture education. The use of a theory of culture, a design theory and educational quality criteria should make it possible for cultural institutions, together with schools, to contribute more effectively to the development of the cultural consciousness of children. The thesis ‘Are we aligned?’ presents a number of instruments which can help cultural institutions and primary schools to get better aligned when developing an integrated culture education curriculum for primary school pupils.