Something more than a decade ago the universities began to introduce postgraduate masters courses in museology; however few courses focus this specialisation on heritage education. The Masters in Museums: Education and Communication, created in 1989 with the aim of training professionals in this field, is amongst the first courses of its kind introduced by Spanish universities. It is based on the innovative idea that museums are more than repositories for objects but are places of communication that must stimulate interest and pique curiosity. In the same year the Quebec Children's Museum opened its doors, a museum that saw the visitor, and not a particular collection, as its primary objective.
The museum educator, a concept that took shape earlier in Canada and the United States, is someone equipped with a museological training that enables them to find out about the content of the museum and the way it works. The educator's mission, so relevant in view of their role as a link with society, is to establish proposals for improving the acquisition of knowledge. The task of education in a museum is complementary to what is imparted in centres of education and fundamental in improving the intellectual development of the person. For this reason, museum professionals work towards the creation of resources directed at transmitting the aims, contents and intentions of the museum.

The work of the museum educator goes beyond the preparation of educational materials; it could be considered the link between those that produce knowledge and the public.

Nowadays it is accepted that a museum has a mission to spread knowledge and develop strategies to improve visitors' understanding, whatever their age or educational background. Museums have moved from the traditional notion of simple observation to participation. Museums of childhood and science are those that have best understood this new dimension, not limiting themselves to theoretical explanations but, rather, satisfying the expectations of the public by coming up with entertaining ways of relating the museum's contents to social, historical and natural reality. In this way there are increasing numbers of centres offering interactive and virtual experiences with the aim of boosting the museum's educational value, whether it is a visit to a Palaeolithic cave, a rainforest, or designing a house on a computer after visiting an exhibition about town planning.
Museums of childhood and science offer possibilities for interaction, multi-sensory exploration and let children touch exhibits, which inspires them to participate. In museums like these, under the slogan “ not touching the exhibits is forbidden”, the concept of inaccessibility disappears. Certainly, the Brooklyn Children's Museum was a pioneer in this aspect, emerging at the end of the 19 th century with the idea of teaching children to think for themselves through their own personal experience. Seventy years later the San Francisco Exploratorium opened its doors. It was the idea of the physicist Oppenheimer who was concerned about the cognitive development of children and finding ways to get them to explore and understand science. mNACTEC has the same orientation, based in the former Aymerich i Amat factory where it has developed a playful and hands-on approach to industrialisation and the introduction of technology in Catalonia .
Universities have to maintain their commitment to training educators that help museums to continue being suitable and relevant, to be stimulating, informal learning tools and alternatives to standard education centres. Similarly, museums must appreciate the need to include museum educators on their staff.