The Role of Museums in Education

Today, much attention has been paid to museum education all over the worlddue to its unique features that afford for learning, but this issue is ignored in Iran’s educational system. Thus,the present paper aims at scrutinizing the principle reasons for ignorance of the role of museums in Iran’s educational system. Methodologically employing an analytic-inductive approach, this paper will answer to the following two questions:1- Why museum education is pivotal in formal and even non-formal education¿
2- Why Iran’s educational system ignores it?Regarding the first question , it should be noted that because of significantcharacteristics of museum education such as implied/ experimental learning, not imposing learning to learner, simultaneous involvement of visitor’s cognitive and affective aspects in addition to employing 5 senses, museum education is an appropriate ground for learning and therefore plays a pivotal role in educational systems. Further, the functions of which illuminate its importance and necessity are as such: helping to shape cultural identity followed by national solidarity and coherence, helping to ecological education and thus havingcontribution to resolving ecological issues, helping to peace education and critical thinking by discussion about what are seen in museums, teaching various sciences, developing positive social behaviors, and finally developing the concept of self and individual identity. As far as the second question is concerned, two reasons should be noted: Iran’s educational system has ignored museum educational system because oflack ofproperunderstandingof theconcept of education and having a traditional perspective to aims, roles and functions of museum education. At the end,some suggestions havebeen proposed to take advantage ofthe capacities ofmuseumsandmuseumeducation.