A Toy Museum in Education: Evaluation of Ankara University Toy Museum’s Training Activities

The toy presents a little discovered image of a culture. In addition to being an important object of nostalgia, it is also considered as a research and study subject. The rapidly increasing number of toy museums has also gained importance in transferring economic, sociological, social, and cultural characteristics of the toy. Toy museums have responsibilities such as protecting toys that are threatened with extinction during the rapid change in technology, conducting research on childhood and history of education, raising awareness of history, helping to establish intergenerational communication, and emphasizing the importance of toys in child development. Toy Museums develop educational activities for different ages and interest groups based on their collections. Effective use of collections in museums and the presentation of available resources for visitors with fun, attractive, and different learning methods is one of the characteristics of museum education. Learning from the object, which is one of the basic concepts of museum education, can provide an experience with real objects. The Ankara University Toy Museum can be used as an educational laboratory for courses in preschool, primary, and secondary school education programs within the context of its current collection. The museum can be visited with an appointment with a guide. Search and find activities through collection themes etc. are accompanied by the museum guides and educators. In this study, the evaluation of the design processes of the education booklets of the Toy Museum is determined. The booklets include museum guided tours, and structured educational activities like "before the museum, museum practice, and post museum" activities. Museum booklets have an evaluation section that enables the student to receive feedback where they are expected to make a sustainable contribution to the promotion of the museum. In this context, this paper evaluates the effectiveness of preschool, primary, and secondary school education books that were prepared for the toy museum in line with the feedback of students participating in museum education by establishing a link between the curriculum and the museum collection. Keywords: museum, toy museum, children’s culture, museum education, museum booklet