Educating Students in a University Museum Environment: the Adler Museum of Medicine, Facoulty of Health Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Abstract

Museums are now very much part of the mainstream of education and are no longer regarded as peripheral to education. They increasingly serve in South Africa as formal partners in education at primary and secondary level. University museums particularly have a formal role to play in tertiary education, with most university collections having been established to further the teaching of a faculty or school. The Adler Museum of Medicine plays an important educational role within the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (Wits) and is also increasingly used by schools. As the curricula for South African schools were changed after the first democratic  election in 1994, and outcome-based education implemented in this country, more and more educators established contact with museums in particular learning areas of the curricula. In South Africa, there are three areas of the school syllabi which this particular Museum can directly address: great discoveries, technological advances and traditional healing and indigenous knowledge.