School cultural heritage between history and memory: insights into the historical-educational heritage and communication strategies of the Museo de la Educación de la Universidad del País Vasco (Spain)

Abstract

New impulses in the field of history of education, starting with the development of the strand of studies relating to the so-called material culture of schools and the widespread interest in the cultural heritage of schools, as well as the contaminations determined by the blossoming of the new museology, have led to an important development of school and education museums in recent decades. The origins of this particular type of museum can be of the most varied. Some come into being as a result of important university projects and on the basis of accurate historical-educational reconstructions. This is the case of the Museo de la Educación de la Universidad de País Vasco (Meupv), which is presented here. The Spanish museum has its own very specific peculiarity, both in terms of its ability to promote a continuous development of studies in the field, with solid anchorage in the local history of education, and in terms of its ability to address a diversified and therefore also non-specialist public by drawing on multiple channels of communication, according to the recent perspective of the public history of education.