Hidden in plain sight: museum educators’ role in teacher professional development

ABSTRACT

This article reports on Year 2 of a three-year project to assess historic site-based teacher professional development programs. The intended focus was assessing pre–post Q-sorts and interviews of 29 teachers regarding how they see their work at historic sites affecting their professional development. However, data analysis revealed exceptionally large shifts in teacher experiences both from previous year’s administrations and in-year pre–post administrations. These shifts were attributable to programmatic changes museum educators (MEs) made, instigated by the first rounds of evaluation, rather than changes in teachers’ stances. Thus, this article reports on the changes that MEs made in the program between Y1 and Y2 and the critical role that MEs play in supporting teachers’ professional development and the ways in which their understanding/misunderstanding of teachers’ needs drive programming. Herein the authors examine the influence of the assessment process on MEs’ evolving understanding of their roles as teacher educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Historic sites
• Q-methodology
• museum educators
• teacher educators
• historical thinking

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In the Y1 study, Baron et al. (2019a) followed 29 classroom social studies teachers from across the United States. Four factors were identified from the Q-sort results and interviews. Researchers identified four factors, based on the prompt ‘Professional development at historic sites affects my development as a teacher by … ’: Factor 1: Historical Pedagogical Content Knowledge (23% pre/26% post); Factor 2: Monticello Focus, Learning from experts (13 pre/10% post); Factor 3: Monticello – Learning from Peers/Colleagues Focus (30% pre/36% post); and Factor 4: Focus on Relevance (relating history to current situations).

2. Participant numbers for Y2 begin at 30 to distinguish them from Y1 participants.

3. Participant 41 withdrew from the study.

4. All participant names were anonymized.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute for Museum and Library Services [45.312].

Notes on contributors

Christine Baron

Christine Baron is the Principal Investigator for the Assessing Teacher Learning at Historic Sites project and an Assistant Professor in Social Studies and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Sherri Sklarwitz

Sherri Sklarwitz is the Associate Director of Student Programs at Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, Tufts University.

Nicholas Coddington

Nicholas Coddington is a Doctoral Candidate in the Social Studies and Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University.