Mafalda and museum educators. Strategies for teaching creation from Childhood Visual Culture

Authors

  • Amparo Alonso-Sanz Universitat de València

Abstract

This research takes childrenʼs visual culture as a reference to deal with an educational problem – namely, the creative design of didactic activities with an artistic content– through intersections and interactions with aspects of gender as well as social and cultural criticism. A theoretical framework serves as the basis to present the interest and relevance of Mafalda as a visual culture character: for its international significance; for having been previously used with pedagogical aims, for being a forerunner of criticism focused on the educational system, for being known by everyone who forms part of the formal and informal educational system, and for offering a transversal treatment of gender issues. Based on generativist pedagogy, an attempt is made to alter the practice of 25 museum educators in the city of Buenos Aires using a creativity encouragement strategy. The structure consists of three stages: [1] previous reflection on the study object, the way in which certain artistic contents were conventionally learnt; [2] inspiration through ʻcreative visualizationʼ with Mafalda comic strips by Quino; and [3] proposal of creative alternatives for the context of informal teaching. The outcome of this experience is a set of 8 proposals for action in museums, which modify the traditional way to transmit artistic contents to the public and can be confirmed as creative knowledge alternatives. The conclusions highlight the extent to which childrenʼs visual culture is useful for didactic design strategies as triggers of creative thinking.

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Published

2015-07-23