Embracing Individualism and Encouraging Personal Style in Gallery Teaching

ABSTRACT

Museum educators often focus on the diverse profiles and learning needs of museum visitors, but do not always consider the multidimensionality of their own gallery educator corps in the design of trainings and professional development. By embracing individualism and encouraging personal style in gallery teaching, museums can foster confidence amongst gallery educators and stronger, more authentic visitor engagement during tours. This article outlines specific strategies for encouraging personal style in gallery educator training while still meeting institutional gallery teaching goals.

KEYWORDS:

• Gallery teaching
• personal style
• art museums
• museum education
• training

As an educator, I often reflect on my own formative years as a student and which learning experiences—both positive and negative—stand out in my memories. Nearly all of the positive moments can be credited to individual teachers and their distinct teaching styles. In my own work, training gallery educators in art museums, I frequently consider how gallery educator training can promote more authentic learning environments during museum tours by encouraging personal style. By doing this, I consider each individual’s own personality without the expectation that everyone adheres to a standardized mold.

Museum educators are keenly aware of and attuned to the variability of our audiences. This awareness of differences can be traced back as early as 1910 to Mary Bronson Hartt’s essay, “Docentry: A New Profession.” She wrote: “The problem is to give to each (museum visitor) what he wants, and besides that the very best he can be made to take, to show him enough and not too much, to gauge his knowledge so as neither to tell him what he already understands nor to overshoot his comprehension. It requires nice judgment, swift discrimination, tact. People are so deliciously different.”¹

While we often discuss the need to provide a variety of learning experiences to accommodate the multidimensionality and diversity of our visitors, we too often fail to consider how this multidimensionality and diversity is reflected in our own staffing and volunteers. By encouraging the expression of personal style in gallery teaching, museums and museum visitors can benefit from more authentic teaching, more confident gallery educators, and enhanced social learning experiences for all involved.

From “averagarian” to individualistic

In The End of Average: Unlocking Our Potential by Embracing What Makes Us Different, author Todd Rose explores the historical and present-day understandings of averages and uses a variety of evidence-based examples to prove that the use of averages is not scientifically or mathematically correct, arguing that no one is, in fact, “average.” Rose is the director of the Mind, Brain, and Education program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he also leads the Laboratory for the Science of Individuality.

In his book, Rose discusses how schools and businesses specifically have failed in their design around a fictional average person: “We all feel the weight of our one-dimensional thinking that has become so pervasive in our averagarian culture: a standardized education system that ceaselessly sorts and ranks us; a workplace that hires us based on these educational rankings, then frequently imposes new rankings at every annual performance review; a society that doles out rewards, esteem, and adoration according to our professional ranking.”²

Arguing instead for a societal focus on individualism, Rose asks us to celebrate the uniqueness of each individual. By structuring our training and evaluation of gallery educators to focus on the individual and their personal style, museum educators can avoid falling into the “averagarian” trap of sameness.

Defining personal style

When considering the word “style,” an artist’s distinct aesthetic or an individual’s fashion sensibility might come to mind. The dictionary defines “style” as “a distinctive manner or custom of behaving or conducting oneself.”³ In a study of teaching style implications in a formal education setting, researchers used “style” to “refer to a cluster of personal attributes and characteristics that function to create and convey an interpersonal social context within which instruction and cognitive processing between partners may occur. The personal characteristics may be verbal (including what a person says as well as how it is said, such as tone of voice, phrasing, and pacing) and non-verbal qualities (e.g. eye contact and facial expression).”⁴

More specific to gallery teaching, The Good Guide: A Sourcebook for Interpreters, Docents, and Tour Guides says, “‘Style’ may be defined as the manner in which our personality and behavior affect the tour. The way in which we communicate, how we appear to the visitor, and the ‘body language’ we use influence the success of a tour.”⁵ When I asked one of the gallery educators I work with at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA), she said “For me, personal style means being yourself, not performing. Being honest.”⁶

Art education professor Melinda M. Mayer notes that gallery educators “need to be true to themselves and their individual style of communication. Active, caring conversations can be facilitated by educators who are dynamic and outgoing or subtle and reflective.”⁷ Successful and enriching learning experiences can occur with gallery educators who are theatrical and overly animated just as they can be with educators who are more serene in their approach. The key is being authentically true to the style that is uniquely you. Taking note from formal education research into authenticity in education: “To be truly authentic, teachers should enact such behaviors only so far as their personality and demeanor naturally allow.”⁸ Personal style is not definitive. It can change over time and requires that an educator adopt a growth mindset in order to continually reflect and make shifts.⁹

The benefits of authentic gallery teaching

Learning is a social experience, and museum tours capitalize on this.¹⁰ Gallery educator-led tours allow for human contact and increased physical, emotional, and intellectual comfort in the museum space. As informal learning research specialists John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking note in The Museum Experience, “Many visitors find museums uncomfortable places to visit. Museums need to develop programming that encourages socializing, for there is strong evidence that this creates a personal comfort zone that enables visitors to learn.”¹¹ By encouraging personal style and authenticity, we are fostering human connectedness and tapping into the social nature of learning. And museum visitors are not the only ones who benefit from this social learning. Gallery educators, too, learn through these social interactions, making the act of gallery teaching that much more rewarding.

There are numerous other benefits to the individual gallery educators when their managers encourage and emphasize personal style and authenticity. These gallery educators will be more personally invested and motivated in their teaching and will have more buy-in. An ICA gallery educator succinctly described this when she told me, “Even though you are employed by the institution, you’re supported to be yourself. You are a part of the institution, not just someone reading a piece of paper.”¹²

Feeling valued by the museum for whom they work or volunteer can also translate to more confident gallery educators. And confidence in turn brings about positive interactions with visitors, as witnessed by art education professor Teri Evans-Palmer: “On past museum tours with my students, I have observed how readily they blossom in the company of docents who are authentically, passionately themselves.”¹³

Encouraging personal style in practice

How can museum educators encourage personal style in gallery teaching amongst volunteer or staff gallery educators? At the ICA, an art museum that provides access to contemporary visual and performing arts for local and international audiences at two different sites on Boston’s harbor, I manage and train volunteer tour guides and seasonal contract gallery educators. I approach personal style in gallery teaching with these ICA educators’ initial training and as part of ongoing training and evaluation through a variety of methods.

Recognizing gallery educators as individual learners

Celebrating individualism begins with initial gallery educator training by recognizing gallery educators as learners and then considering learner variability in the design and facilitation of trainings.¹⁴ Classes reflect Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which focuses on the uniqueness of the individual learner through its basic principles:

1. Provide multiple means of engagement

2. Provide multiple means of representation

3. Provide multiple means of action and expression.¹⁵

Individual class meetings combine more didactic sessions with small group and pair activities or workshopping in the museum galleries. Training content is available in multiple modes for class members. A web-based platform that all gallery educators have access to contains text, audio, images, videos, and links to external content for self-paced learning outside of class. Curator and artist-led exhibition trainings are also audio recorded and uploaded to this site.

Shared authority and peer learning

At the ICA, we emphasize shared learning in our tours, and I also design trainings with shared authority in mind. I continually encourage gallery educators to share their own experiences and knowledge with each other during class discussions.

One example of this is a class activity I developed called “What happens during a museum tour?” On the first day of their initial training, I split gallery educators into small groups or pairs and give each group two sets of sticky notes, each set a different color. On the sticky notes, I ask them to write and/or draw what happens during a museum tour: on the first color, they answer what the gallery educator does during the tour; and on the second color, they answer what the visitor/group participant does during the tour. I give them a time limit of 2 minutes and encourage them to answer the question as many times as possible, using a new sticky note for each answer. Since most come to this training without any experience with gallery teaching, new gallery educators are drawing on personal museum visit memories as well as assumptions about museum tours during this activity.

After the 2-minute time limit, I give them a second direction: arrange each color group of sticky notes in order of importance. This instruction is intentionally vague to allow for creative arrangements (i.e. not necessarily a linear formation), as well as variations in interpretations of what is considered “important.” We then come back together as a full group and share responses, sparking a lively conversation about museum tours and framing cooperative dialogue for future classes.

New gallery educators are also each paired with a more veteran gallery educator as a mentor. These peer-to-peer learning exchanges continue to cultivate and model shared authority. Mentors are empowered to share their own refined expertise with the new gallery educators, and new gallery educators add their own unique perspectives, including their personal and professional experiences prior to joining the museum.

Shadowing (but not copying)

All new gallery educators at the ICA shadow at least three different tours. This assignment allows for these gallery educators to better understand logistical implications for planning and leading a tour, but even more so the shadowing opportunities give the gallery educators first-hand experience with a variety of gallery teaching styles. After each time shadowing a tour, new gallery educators reflect on the experience in writing and verbally in class. This exercise is not a critique of the gallery educator who was leading the tour, but a deliberation on how their own tours might function similarly or differently and what they learned or observed about group engagement.

When shadowing is not accompanied by critical reflection on personal style differences, there is a danger of new gallery educators attempting to duplicate their peers’ styles. I have witnessed this result in inauthenticity and a false sense of failure. Museum educator Christine M. Castle noted this after a year-long study of gallery educators: “Shadowing was felt to be successful only when it was accompanied by focused discussions among the (gallery educators) involved. Without this reasoned approach, it was tempting for many new (gallery educators) to simply duplicate the style of the practitioner whom they first shadowed.” Castle continues her explanation, citing one gallery educator who told her: “I can’t work the way she does [anymore] … I did at the beginning. I almost sounded like her because that was how I learned.”¹⁶

Self-reflection and active listening

Self-reflection throughout gallery educator training is essential. At the ICA “reflection” appears in our mission statement: “The Institute of Contemporary Art strives to share the pleasures of reflection, inspiration, provocation, and imagination that contemporary art offers through public access to art, artists, and the creative process.”¹⁷ I continually encourage gallery educators to think about their audiences, to think about what is and is not working well during their tours, but even more so to think about their own learning and development.

When leading training sessions for new gallery educators, I incorporate in-gallery modeling of different gallery teaching methods. After these sessions, we always take time to reflect as a group and consider how my teaching made them feel as learners (i.e. supported, frustrated, etc.). Dissecting in this safe space not only models gallery teaching but also models how I, too, am continually self-reflective in my own gallery teaching practice.

As the training facilitator, I am committed to actively listening to all gallery educators. A skill that we promote during museum tours, it is also essential for museum educators facilitating trainings to actively listen to gallery educators and provide sincere and authentic answers whenever possible. This intentional practice allows me to better understand the variability of perspectives of our gallery educators and also demonstrates how we value each gallery educator as an individual.

Emphasizing personal style with intentionality

One of the most noticeable ways I incorporate an encouragement of personal style in gallery educator training is by intentionally and regularly verbalizing its importance. I am careful not to be definitive when describing specific methods for engaging visitors during tours. Rather, I give concrete examples or options for what has worked well for me or what I have observed other gallery educators do successfully.

For example, during a training session focused on group management, we workshop different scenarios that can occur during school group tours. In small groups, we discuss what to do when one student is dominating the conversation, when students are not being responsive and seem unengaged or when a chaperone is paying more attention to a cell phone than to students. Rather than prescribe a singular correct way to manage these situations, gallery educators share ways in which they might respond. I share examples of methods that might work, but allowing for flexibility for the gallery educator. Choice is key.

Encouraging personal styles while meeting institutional teaching goals

Encouraging personal style is not permission for a museum’s gallery educators to facilitate tours in whatever manner they choose. The gallery teaching philosophy at the ICA states “ICA educators strive to engage museum visitors of all ages in meaning-making by facilitating conversations in the museum galleries that allow for personal connections, encourage close looking at the artworks on view, and foster critical thinking.”¹⁸ Our guiding principles for gallery teaching are:

• Gallery teaching is inquiry-based, visitor-centered, participatory, and cooperative.

• Gallery teaching encourages reflection, critical thinking, and dialogue.

• Gallery teaching is dynamic rather than scripted.

• Meaning is co-created with visitors; visitors can learn as much from each other as they can from ICA staff or volunteers.

• Gallery teaching incorporates relevant contextual information about an artwork to deepen the visitors’ understanding and push the dialogue further.

Gallery educators receive individual evaluations and are never compared to peers. Just like UDL assessment, the evaluations are formative, meaning they are part of the learning and development process and not an end goal in themselves.¹⁹

The gallery educators are essential to the evaluation process. Evaluations involve a simple rubric listing skills and methods practiced in training. The process is transparent, and I share the rubric with all gallery educators in advance. A staff member observes a tour and afterwards meets with the gallery educator one-on-one to discuss observations and the gallery educator’s own reflections on the tour. The results are not quantified, and the entire process is discussed as fluid and ongoing. Because I recognize that I have my own unconscious biases about gallery teaching, I include other staff on the tours and listen carefully to their observations.

Embracing jaggedness

Museum education colleagues have written many articles, blog posts, and books specific to gallery teaching methodologies in the past two decades, and it has been refreshing to see a renewed field-wide focus on the in-gallery exchanges between our gallery educators and visitors through professional development opportunities, research, and more experimental opportunities such as the Gallery Teaching Marathon and Museum Mashups.²⁰ Diversity in personal gallery teaching styles already exists, but the next step is harnessing this and encouraging it amongst our various corps of gallery educators. As museum educator and co-author of Teaching in the Art Museum: Interpretation as Experience Rika Burnham so eloquently writes: “Through all of this, we each find our own way. And our differing points of view and teaching styles are, in many ways, a shared strength.”²¹

Todd Rose notes: “When we are able to appreciate the jaggedness of other people’s talents—the jagged profile of our children, our employees, our students—we are more likely to recognize their untapped potential, to show them how to use their strengths, and to identify and help them improve their weaknesses … ”²² By embracing the “jaggedness,” or unique profiles, of our individual gallery educators, we are promoting authentic social learning experiences for educators and visitors – a true win-win scenario for us all.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the author

Amy Briggs Kemeza is the Tour Programs Manager at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston. She previously held positions at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Danforth Museum. She serves on the planning committee for the Greater Boston Museum Educators Roundtable and recently finished a 2-year term as the Director of the Museum Education Division for the Massachusetts Art Education Association. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Emory University and M.A. in Museum Education from Tufts University.

Notes

1. Hartt, “Docentry,” 705.

2. Rose, The End of Average, 190.

3. “Style,” Merriam-Webster.com, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/style.

4. Coldren and Hively, “Interpersonal Teaching Style and Student Impression Formation,” 94.

5. Grinder and McCoy, The Good Guide, 188.

6. Interview #1 with ICA Summer Educator, August 29, 2018.

7. Mayer, “Scintillating Conversations in Art Museums,” 193.

8. Taylor & Francis, “‘Authentic’ teachers are better at engaging with their students.”

9. There are many resources that can further explain “growth mindset,” including www.mindsetworks.com.

10. For more information about learning and the social context, see the “Interactive Experience Model” developed by John H. Falk and Lynn Dierking as outlined in their book The Museum Experience.

11. Falk and Dierking, The Museum Experience, 157.

12. Interview #2 with ICA Summer Educator, August 29, 2018.

13. Evans-Palmer, “Raising Docent Confidence in Engaging Students on School Tours,” 371.

14. For a more in-depth look at gallery educators as adult learners, see Kimberly H. McCray’s “Gallery Educators as Adult Learners,” 10–21.

15. CAST, “Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2,”

16. Castle, “Blending Pedagogy and Content,” 125.

17. “Mission,” The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, https://www.icaboston.org/about/mission.

18. “Gallery Teaching at the ICA,” internal handout, 2018.

19. Meyer et al., Universal Design for Learning: Theory and Practice, 139.

20. Murawski, “Gallery Teaching Marathon in San Diego.” Oleniczak, “Museum Mashup: How We Did It + Triad Reflections.” Ropeik, “Reflections on a Museum Experiment,”

21. Burnham and Kai-Kee, Teaching in the Art Museum, 5.

22. Rose, The End of Average, 97.