What happens when you take the museum “out” of the museum and digitally place it in a different context such as a secondary classroom? What are the challenges when museum staff is not present to disseminate the relevant information? Within the last decades, museums have increasingly taken in the new digital media, which today provide them with opportunities to reach their audiences in new ways. Yet, even though a vast number of museum (education) resources are now offered online, still little research is found in this field, a gap this paper seeks to bridge. Thus, with the point of departure in Leo Vygotsky’s Activity Theory/CHAT Theory as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, the paper investigates how Danish secondary school students (15-19 years old) and their teachers perceive and use digital museum learning resources from the two Danish museums Natural History Museum of Denmark and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. More concretely, the paper will explore the challenges surrounding the students’ and the teachers’ use of the learning resources by using examples from the gathered data, which include interviews with the students and the teachers and video observations in the classrooms. So far, the data shows that the students are facing challenges regarding what can be named ‘the abstract museum’ as they find it difficult to understand the significance of the digital learning resources coming from the museum, especially when the museum is not physically present in the classroom. Furthermore, there seems to be a historical, educational paradox regarding the constructivist paradigm, as the museums’ digital learning offers might not after all offer a diverse and constructivist learning outside of the museum itself. Including these two points, the paper will touch on a series of challenges both the museums and schools involved experience when a museum is ‘beyond control’.
