Educational value of visiting the museum in a lower educational standard programme

Museums are not only buildings that preserve important national artifacts, but they also have an educational role. Curators, museum pedagogues and teachers are now being increasingly aware of this and for this reason offer various programs for different age groups of visitors. However, when designing educational programs, museum workers often "overlook" students with special needs who attend special school. Therefore, in empirical part of this master thesis, I participated with a teacher and five students from the 8th grade of a special school in a museum program. In my research I was interested in many aspects starting with how the selected museum in Gorenjska region designs museum programs for students with special needs, what is the course and quality of the chosen program, what is the course of planning a visit to the museum with a teacher and museum pedagogue and what is the opinion of a teacher in special school and museum pedagogue on the educational value of visiting a museum. I came to the conclusions through a case study - by observing the program, interviews with the teacher and the museum pedagogue, and with the questionnaires that I distributed to the students. Research has shown that the selected museum program for students attending special schools is not specially designed. It was only adjusted to the special needs of the students. Despite that, I evaluate the program positively. The activities in the program were systematic and related with the teaching content and the special needs of the students. For achievement of effective cooperation of museums and special schools, both the museum pedagogue and teacher emphasize, the importance of exchanging important information, such as special needs, the number of students and the teaching content. The teacher's plan for the guided visit of the museum included the number of students, the route and the guide. The museum pedagogue plans programs in accordance with the curricula. Research also shows that all participants in the research (students, teacher and museum pedagogue) experienced a visit to the museum positively. The museum pedagogue and teacher placed a great importance on another pedagogue, interdisciplinary and direct experience with museum objects when learning in the museum. The students pointed out, that they had learned a lot and that after visiting the museum they better understand the teaching content. With my master's thesis I want to give new insights to understanding the value of visiting the museum for students in special schools, which is a less researched topic in Slovenia and also contribute to the development of museum and school education of students with special needs