From the Editor-in-Chief

Over the years, people have asked me if I could direct them to museum education literature that explicitly describes museum teaching strategies. I’ve always found it hard to come up with more than a few suggestions. There is a fair amount of literature about the exhibition development processes, and excellent articles about program and exhibition evaluation, but not all that much on what a museum educator does when actually teaching in the museum. Although the how-to, on-the-floor literature about museum pedagogy is sparse, there are some notable exceptions. Here are some of the ones on my bookshelf. It is an incomplete list – please add to it!

Literature about teaching in art museums is the most prevalent. Teaching in the Art Museum provides a deep dive. Authors Rika Burnham, Head of Education at the Frick Collection, and Elliott Kai-Kee, Education Specialist for Gallery Teaching at The J. Paul Getty, thoughtfully examine the technique of facilitated dialogue, showing how to embed it in discussions of history, theory and philosophy. Their focus is on interpreting art with visitors, so it may not be as useful for museum educators in science or history museums.

Olga Hubbard, associate professor at Columbia’s Teachers’ College and former museum educator, provides another deep exploration of teaching and learning about art in her book, Art Museum Education. She breaks dialogic teaching strategies into three categories: the predetermined dialogue, the interpretive dialogue, and the open dialogue, and then shows how the three approaches can be interwoven. Hubbard gets at the complexity of interpretive dialogic teaching and shows how museum educators can help visitors make their own meanings, and also how to grapple with ideas put forth by others. Hubbard bolsters practice with theory to help museum educators understand their audiences.

Many people know about Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), the technique developed by museum educator Philip Yenawine and cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen. First used in art museums, it is now used by museum educators in all types of museums. Kabir Singh, currently Associate Educator of Family Programs at the Skirball Cultural Center, reflects on the uses of VTS with various audiences, and describes specific teaching strategies, in “As Conversations Unravel: A Reflection on Learning to Teach Adult Audiences Using Experience from School, Teacher, and Family Programs.” Harvard’s Project Zero is another source for art teaching techniques, many of which can be adapted for use beyond art.

One of my favorite art museum teaching articles is by Ray Williams, now Director of Education and Academic Affairs at the Blanton Museum of Art. In “Honoring the Personal Response,” Williams introduces a simple but highly flexible and adaptable gallery teaching technique that invites participants to make and share personal meaning. In “Moving Museum Experiences,” Shelley Kruger Weisberg, now chair of the Virginia Commission for the Arts, also focuses on meaning-making, but through kinesthetic activities that help visitors see and make sense of art through embodied learning.

I’ve found it harder to find books and articles that detail specific teaching strategies at non-art museums. In a 2004 article, Lisa Falk, now Head of Community Engagement at the Arizona State Museum, described and analyzed a literacy program in an anthropological museum. The program’s purpose was to teach students to learn how to develop an understanding of native culture by “reading” Native American art. Falk assessed what worked and what didn’t in a straightforward way that would make it possible for someone else to develop a similar program.

History museum educators of my generation will probably remember David Weitzman’s My Backyard History Book, with its activity ideas easily adaptable to museum teaching. Those who teach in history museums today probably use material culture analysis teaching strategies derived from the work of art historian Jules David Prown who, in the 1980s, proposed a methodology for identifying and extracting evidence from objects. More recently, a group of historians distilled decades of material culture analysis approaches into a useful handout, “Twenty Questions to Ask an Object.”

Those who teach in museums almost always use their voices to communicate with visitors, but in history museums – particularly historic sites and living history museums – as well as in outdoor environments, talking is called “interpretation.” Professor of communication psychology Sam Ham provided early guidance in thematic interpretive teaching in his 1992 book, Environmental Interpretation. His practical, how-to advice about how to organize and communicate ideas and information was picked up many museum professionals and by the National Park Service, which went on to develop national standards of interpretation.¹

In 2000, Connor Prairie took interpretation to a new interactive and conversational level, in which the interpreter’s message was shaped by visitors’ interests, rather than driven by predetermined messages. The museum made this change by first investing in visitor research and then by deputizing front-line interpreters to shape the new ways they interacted with the public. The museum published a book and DVD/CD-ROM called “Opening Doors,” and hosted a website that described the study, explained the new approach, and provided examples of interpreter training and interpreter/visitor interactions. Unfortunately, the website no longer exists, and the project has been reduced to a minimal amount of information on the museum’s website.²

My bookshelf has few resources about on-the-floor teaching strategies used in informal science environments. But one that stands out is a good one indeed. Josh Gutwill and Sue Allen of the Exploratorium published a book that details how to ask a “juicy question;” that is, a question that sparks curiosity and inquiry. It is a technique that can be used across museum disciplines, but it also supports the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for K -12 classrooms³ that American science museums have collectively embraced. These museums have produced an impressive amount of literature and professional development programs aimed at supporting and improving NGSS-aligned science teaching and learning. This focus has perhaps taken attention away from documenting the in-the-weeds level of teaching techniques that occur in the halls of these museums.

Finally, in terms of specific sources, a number of guest-edited sections of JME contain teaching ideas and strategies. Although not described in enough detail to serve as complete models, it would be possible for an educator to construct similar programs to ones described in the guest-edited collection of “New Intersections for History.” Likewise, ideas for teaching young learners in museums can be found in the guest-edited section of JME’s issue on “Early Learning,” and in “Beyond Teachers: Relevance and Value in Professional Development Programs in Museums.” Check them out.

My list of go-to sources for museum teaching techniques is personal and idiosyncratic. Another person’s list might be entirely different. But this brings us to the crux of a problem: It is really hard to find out about museum teaching strategies. Most of us learn teaching techniques on the job, from workshops, colleagues, or from our own teachers, and not from written descriptions. Our individualized approach often means that we are quite parochial – staying close to our disciplines, our regions, our networks – and unaware of other worlds that could be of value to us. Yet these worlds, and their resources, are vitally important to our growth as museum educators, and to the quality of museum visitors’ experiences.

Museum educators need to do a better job of capturing exactly what occurs when interacting with visitors. We should devise field-wide written curriculum or lesson plan formats that include outcomes, key ideas, intended audiences, teaching sequence (or techniques) and a description of the museum resources that provide the content focus. We should include the contingency plans we lay out when we don’t know our audiences in advance, and pay attention to recording the ways in which we build in the flexibility so necessary to teach in an informal learning environment. Our written records should include planning notes and assessments, as well as connections to theories.

One of the joys of both visiting museums and working in museums is that each museum is different and unique. We don’t want to clone museums, and we don’t want to create formulaic, cookie-cutter approaches to on-the-floor teaching. But we do need to increase the size of the pool from which we pull ideas and techniques, perhaps by linking all the separate little ponds into one connected waterway, and also by taking responsibility to add our own ideas and techniques to the pedagogy pool.

Thanks to those authors in this issue – and to all who responded to the 2018 call for papers – for your willingness to contribute to our collective knowledge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Joy Kubarek, Lynn Baum, David Bowles, Tara Young and Warren Leon for reading drafts and making suggestions.

About the editor

Cynthia Robinson is the director of museum studies and senior lecturer at Tufts University, where she specializes in museum education. She spent 25 years working in and with museums and has extensive experience in developing programs, curricula and exhibitions, as well as in museum management and administration. Cynthia received the 2017 John Cotton Dana Award for Leadership, presented by the Education Committee of the American Alliance of Museums. The award recognizes individuals outside the field of museum education who exhibit outstanding leadership and promote the educational responsibility and capacity of museums. It has only been awarded 9 times in the past 32 years.

Notes

1 National Park Service Common Learning Portal, “Interpretation and Education.” Accessed September 22, 2018. https://mylearning.nps.gov/program-areas/career-development/iande/.

2 See “Opening doors to provide families with acres and acres of common ground.” Accessed September 22, 2018. http://www.connerprairie.org/about-conner-prairie/driven-by-our-mission/our-mission-at-work.

3 “Next Generation Science Standards For States, By States.” Accessed September 22, 2018. http://www.nextgenscience.org/.