Establishing Historical Significance in Wereldmuseum Amsterdam: Our Colonial Inheritance as Transformative Experience

This chapter examines how educational and display strategies in museums and heritage sites can contribute to the cognitive and affective dimensions of transformative learning. In a case study of the exhibition Our colonial inheritance and its accompanying educational program in Wereldmuseum Amsterdam, De Bruijn and Savenije focus on the skill of reasoning about attributions of historical significance, as conceptualized in the field of history education research, to analyze the interplay between these dimensions. They show how various strategies (e.g. the use of contemporary artworks, links between the past and the present, and an interactive exhibit) foster affective and/or cognitive engagement that help(s) students in reasoning about how people, including themselves, (have) attribute(d) historical significance to events, people, and developments through time. Concluding that the (moral) message the museum wants to communicate can hinder an open discussion about different attributions of historical significance, De Bruijn and Savenije also reflect on the challenges of learning this skill in the context of sensitive heritage. They argue that the embodied learning experience provided by museums and heritage sites can work as a powerful starting point for learning to reason about historical significance and transformative learning that can be developed further over time.