A case study on the museum education course related to the acquisition of cultural heritage awareness

Cultural heritage is a set of important pieces of evidence that gives information about the sciences, arts, and cultures of past societies. Preserving these pieces of evidence and ensuring their future continuity in a healthy way without losing their characteristics will be possible with the acquisition of cultural heritage awareness by societies. Museums, which ensure the preservation of cultural heritage, also carry out many applications and joint projects with various institutions in order to create cultural heritage awareness. Informal applications based on the voluntariness of educational institutions carried out with museums have later become formal by entering the curriculum of educational institutions. This study was carried out with the participation of 4th-grade students of the Painting Department receiving the museum education course. In the study, objectives related to the acquisition of cultural heritage awareness were determined within the scope of the Museum Education Course (MEC). In this study, in which a case study model was applied within the perspective of a qualitative research approach, four main themes and a total of twenty sub-themes formed by them were reached. Within the framework of the findings in the study, it can be said that students have become more effective in the subjects that are covered in the MEC, they have experienced before, heard, connected with their own lives, and they have made an in-depth interpretation of the subjects. Within the scope of the MEC, it was concluded that students gained different perspectives and realized that the ordinary things in their lives are actually a whole of material and spiritual values bearing the traces of the ancient civilizations that lived in those lands, thus gaining a richer perspective. Keywords: Cultural Heritage, Cultural Heritage Awareness, Museum Education