The Ideological-Identity Dimension in a Multicultural Museum Education Project

Abstract

The Multicultural Museum Project addresses two major challenges of multicultural education: first, improving intercultural relations (particularly between the majority and minorities); second, the respect, appreciation and legitimization of minority cultures. The Interactive Jewish Museum of Chile, on which this article is based, was conceived as a project taking into consideration these two components. This article contains an account of a research describing some aspects of this model's development process, as perceived from the perspectives of different educational visions and conceptions of those who took part in it. Throughout the article we describe the theoretical and methodological assumptions that formed the basis for the development and consolidation of the Interactive Museum project, as well as the first results of the analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with some of its actors. A preliminary analysis of the data allowed us to identify three museal profiles in the development of the educational model: the academic-educational profile, the artistic- multimedial profile, and the ethno-cultural profile. Our findings suggest that, in both the developed museum education model and the educational concept of the museum, the ideological-identity dimension plays a prominent role.