Development, Test, and Evaluation of New Continuing Education for Museum Staff in Scandinavia. Results from the Nordplus Adult Project "Increased Learning through Social Spaces"

In the Nordplus Adult development project Increased Learning Through Social Spaces (2018- 2022) a collection of examples of social interactions at cultural heritage organisations in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), that contributed to interactivity and learning, was carried out by a joint Scandinavian research group. In addition, the project analysed how cultural heritage organisations actively create social spaces with the intention of promoting learning opportunities and how the organisations evaluate these learning opportunities. Based on the examples collected, a hypothesis was developed on how various elements can create social interactivity and learning. By departing from research literature such as museum studies (Falk & Dierking 2013) and lifelong learning (Jarvis 2017), combined with the British planning and evaluation tool Generic Learning Outcomes (GLO) (Graham 2013), the research group developed a basis for a new continuing education for museum staff on the topic. The new education was developed during the project period and was tested and evaluated in September 2021 in Östersund, Sweden, on museum staff from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In this contribution, we analyse the development of the continuing education for museum staff in Scandinavia and present the results of the test and evaluation. The evaluation of the continuing education consisted of both an electronic survey distributed to the course participants before and after the test course. In addition, the evaluation consisted of observations, during the test course, discussion with the course participants during the course and a concluding evaluation based on the GLO evaluation tool. By departing from practice, the Scandinavian research group will implicitly seek to answer the symposia question related to what the societal challenges are and how these looks like from the perspective of heritage institutions. The research group will seek to answer the question related to what possibilities that are generated for heritage institutions. Finally, the research group answers the question of how adult education and learning related to heritage institutions might develop because of these challenges and possibilities, by for example, engaging in new professional development or through the development of new professions related to the heritage organisations.