The Museum Education Department as Training Ground for Scholar-Educators

ABSTRACT

Museum education departments hold great potential to train content specialists to be scholar-educators. This article offers as a case study a doctoral support fellowship at the Museum of the City of New York that fosters the ability of historians-in-training to communicate with a wide range of audiences and deepens the connections between contemporary scholarship and the content that the museum delivers to visitors. The fellowship uses three strategies to transform scholars into effective teachers: mentorship, guided reflective practice, and training in museum education fundamentals. What results is a mutually advantageous partnership. Emerging scholars provide the museum with diverse perspectives and an immediate connection to contemporary scholarly debates. They, in turn, learn how to engage and communicate effectively, strengthening their future work in academia or as public history professionals. While the program is designed for PhD candidates, the three strategies can benefit the professional development of museum educators more broadly.

KEYWORDS:

• Public history
• mentorship
• reflective practice
• staff training
• professional development

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank her colleagues at the Museum of the City of New York, in particular former Vice President for Education Franny Kent, Director of Education EY Zipris, Deputy Director and Chief Curator Dr. Sarah Henry, and the entire team of the Frederick A.O. Schwarz Education Center, as well as Whitney W. Donhauser, Ronay Menschel Director and President, for her support and guidance of this program. In addition, for their feedback on this article she would like to thank this journal’s editor-in-chief, Cynthia Robinson, and former Fellows Katie Uva and Jesse Bayker.

Most of all, she extends her deepest gratitude to the Fellows – Amy, Ayasha, Ben, Chris, Craig, Dominique, Ella, Jesse, Katie, Louie, Marika, and Minju – for their passion, hard work, and willingness to be a part of this grand experiment.

The Museum of the City of New York is grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which supports the Predoctoral Fellowship Program in History Education featured in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

About the author

Maeve Montalvo is an Associate Manager, Education at the Museum of the City of New York. There she manages the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in History Education, professional learning programs, and the annual Teaching Social Activism Conference. A teacher of teachers, she has experience at art, historic house, and history museums and has presented at the annual conferences of AAM, MANY, and NYCMER. She received her Masters of Science in Leadership in Museum Education from Bank Street College and a BA in American Studies from Smith College.

Notes

1. Katie Uva, Reflection #5: Looking Back, June 2016.

2. Dominique Jean-Louis, Reflection #5: Looking Back, June 2016.

3. Marika Plater, Reflection #5: Looking Back, June 2018.

4. Essay topics: The first essay, assigned before the program begins, asks fellows to assess their experience with museums and teaching; in the second, they reflect on the first few months of training in museum education, identifying specific teaching techniques they want to put into practice; in the third, they set their personal goals as educators; the fourth – midway – asks them to reflect on their progress toward those goals; the fifth asks them to focus on audience needs and how they as an educator could design a program to meet those needs; the sixth encourages them to reflect on their growth and key takeaways from the year; and the seventh asks them to look ahead and reflect on how this experience will shape their goals and future professional plans.

5. Benjamin Serby, Reflection #5: Looking Back, June 2017.

6. While there is an endless and ever-growing wealth of training resources to draw from, here is a selection of readings I have found useful for beginning museum educators, with thanks to the many mentors and colleagues who have in turn shared these with me: Weil, “From Being about Something to Being for Somebody”; Taylor, “Cultural Institutions and Adult Learning”; Reeves, “Psychological Development”; hooks, Teaching Critical Thinking; Black, “Embedding Civil Engagement in Museums”; Mooney, Theories of Childhood; Wood, Yardsticks; McRainey, and Russick, eds., Connecting Kids to History with Museum Exhibitions; Johnson et al., The Museum Educator's Manual; Bolton and Delderfield, Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development.

7. See, as one source for further exploration on the use of scaffolding in education, The Glossary of Education Reform, “Scaffolding.”

8. CIRCE, “Abstract Binary Oppositions.”

9. For a description of the VTS questions and model, see: Murawski, “Openthink.” For research about VTS, see: Visual Thinking Strategies, “Research and Theory.”

10. Jesse Baker, Reflection #5: Looking Back, June 2018.