ABSTRACT
Most museums today still collect, classify, and order in much the same way that they did in the 18th century. They use their exhibitions and displays to develop narratives about the way things are to be understood. The usefulness of cognitive dissonance was developed into a theory of art by Morse Peckham. Museum education has traditionally been a very practical field that rarely articulates the theories underlying its practice. Ideas coming out of anthropology and rhetoric, for example, have invigorated educational theory with a neo-pragmatist approach that sees learners as belonging to particular cultures or discourse communities. In the real everyday work of museum education, theories such as constructivism and neo-pragmatism should be welcomed, debated, experimented with. For in the end, theories are useful not only insofar as they justify practice, but rather as they reform, improve, and invigorate it.
