During the second week of this CFE I have been thinking about a new kind of connection or use I would give to museums as a destination for a school field trip. I had mentioned in my first reflection that the Royal BC Museum is very much in tune with the purpose and goals of the new curriculum by becoming actively involved in the generation of knowledge through inquiry. Over the course of the last few days, I have actually thought of the Museum itself as a source of inquiry through the content of its galleries. I will refer in particular to the Natural History gallery. The Natural History gallery is divided into six sections, and the first one is focused on the Ice Age (Pleistocene epoch). Identified as “A Changing Past” in the museum maps, its very first introduces one of the “big ideas” of this gallery: change is the only constant in the natural history of BC. This section is followed prompt by “A Changing Present”, a section dedicated to present day climate change, its causes and consequences. It includes information about weather, climate, the greenhouse effect and the impact that human activity today is having on the world’s climate. It also presents major climate changes not caused by humans such as the 1815 eruption of the Tambora volcano, located in Indonesia, or the climate changes that happen every thousands of years because of corresponding changes in the Earth’s orbit and orientation to the sun.

I mention all of these facts because they help me describe a realization that I wasn’t aware of before being at a museum for a sustained period of time: museums provide us with the unique opportunity of getting the whole picture of a topic, a theme or an idea. Being reminded that climate has changed throughout the history of the planet and that it is not an effect due exclusively to human activity has also helped me understand this natural phenomenon better and given me a more balanced and comprehensive approach for teaching it. By this I mean that it will allow me to go beyond a simplistic view of humans as the only “culprits” of drastic changes in the natural world, while still acknowledging that we do have a huge responsibility in doing the most we can to prevent the changes that our activities can bring upon all living and non-living things in the planet.

I will elaborate now on the idea of museums as a source of inquiry, particularly in relation to field trips. In my school experience, field trips usually have come at the end of a unit or at the end of the school year, a “fun” activity meant to wrap up the topic that has been studied.  Due to the fact that museums can provide us with the holistic view of a theme, illustrating how different disciplines contribute to our knowledge of it – in this particular case, especially mathematics and science- I am now thinking of field trips as the activity to start the unit by inciting the inquiry questions with which the students will generate their knowledge. An example of those possible questions are ones that I have asked myself while studying the gallery over the last couple of days: if human activity hasn’t been the only cause of climate change, why could the changes we are indeed causing be far more reaching and definitive than on previous occasions? How are present day changes different to previous ones? What explains the difference?

As I write this reflection, I wonder about the kind of questions the students could ask; of course, I expect their questions to be related to their cognitive and emotional development. Regardless, I remain very excited about this new way of seeing museums as “inquiry hubs”. Knowledge is meant to generate knowledge, an idea I see as a defining feature of the new curriculum, and one that is made physically tangible in places such as the Royal BC Museum.