class to a museum may be easier, and more valuable to your students than you ever ... examine how these sites make sense of the past (Trofanenko, 2006).
We need to talk: Improving dialogue between social studies teachers and museum educators Cory Wright-Maley, St. Mary’s University Robin Grenier, University of Connecticut Alan S. Marcus, University of Connecticut Abstract Researchers have argued for increased collaboration between teachers and museum educators to improve the outcomes of museum education on students; however, significant gaps in understanding between the two remain impediments to effective collaboration. We surveyed 51 museum educators, conducted in-depth interviews with 10 of these respondents and analyzed the data using an inductive lens. In this paper we use a composite dialogue between a museum educator and a teacher to present a series of questions teachers should ask of, and information they should provide to, museum educators. Such questions and information can be used to initiate more effective collaborative relationships that may ultimately improve the quality of museum education for our students. We argue that gaps in museum educators‟ understanding about teachers‟ needs, objectives, and concerns regarding museum visits could be bridged if teachers knew what questions to ask and what information to volunteer to museum educators before arranging a museum visit. Key Words: history education, museums, museum education, collaboration, social studies, field trips, secondary history, historical understanding
Published As: Wright-Maley, C., Grenier, R. & Marcus, A. (2013). We need to talk: Improving dialogue between social studies teachers and museum educators. The Social Studies, 104(5), 207-216. doi: 10.1080/00377996.2012.720308
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Research demonstrates that history teachers value museums as a rich source of history that should be a part of the middle and high school classroom, and confirm that their students often learn from their visits to history museums (Marcus, Levine, and Grenier, 2012 ). But as secondary social studies teachers, we often take history museums for granted; they‟ll be there for the students later if we cannot fit them in to our already busy curriculums. It‟s not that we don‟t value museums. We do, and we know they would be valuable for our students too. But the path leading to any museum visit with our class may be so strewn with obstacles that it hardly seems worth all the effort. Whether it is time, testing, busing, permission slips, funding, administrative policy, or the curriculum we have to cover, the effect on our ability to bring our students to museums is the same: relatively few high school students are taken by their teachers to see history museums in spite of the fact that such historical sites are widely available throughout the country and provide great opportunities for learning (Marcus, Stoddard, & Woodward, 2012). Drawing from our original study which determined that inadequate or ineffective collaboration between teachers and museum staff impedes the implementation of effective museum visits (Authors names removed for blind review), this article is written to help social studies teachers collaborate with museum staff. Currently, teachers and museum educators do not always utilize each others‟ strengths to their mutual advantage; however, through effective collaboration with museum educators, it is our belief that teachers can help to ensure that their students‟ visits to museums will lead to more satisfying learning experiences. Bringing your class to a museum may be easier, and more valuable to your students than you ever imagined, but to accomplish this requires that prior to planning your visit, you know the right questions to ask of museum educators and are ready to volunteer information to them in return.1 2
Background Museums represent an important source of history learning that is widely available throughout the United States and abroad. Even those communities without large museums often have “homegrown” community museums or historic sites that can provide “rich opportunities” for learning (Waite & Leavell, 2006, p.89). Museums present openings to complement classroom learning with physical, human, and online resources. They are powerful centers of historical learning, providing unique experiences not available in the classroom, while also offering additional opportunities to learn content covered in the formal curriculum (Lenoir & Laforest, 1986). Here we discuss three specific reasons why teachers should consider visits to museums as an essential component of their history instruction: 1) Museums provide an ideal venue for students to develop the tools of the discipline; 2) Museums provide unique lifelong learning experiences; and 3) Museums provide unique formal and informal learning experiences not available to students in school.
Museums provide venues for developing the tools of the discipline By incorporating museum visits into the traditional history curriculum, teachers can help students to develop a more sophisticated and comprehensive understanding of history including the development of historical thinking skills in an authentic setting. In museums students have the opportunity to manipulate artifacts and documents, investigate buildings, experience recreated spaces, and may be asked to interpret historical evidence (Wineburg, 2001) and draw conclusions about historical agency (Seixas, 1996). Moreover, at these sites, students have access
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to human resources including historians, curators, and educators. Such access and resources are affordances which can enable students to develop an array of social studies related skills including the development of historical empathy and the ability to scrutinize historical narratives (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Marcus & Levine, 2010). Museums provide unique lifelong learning experiences Few students will take formal history classes after leaving high school, but many will continue to learn about history through their visits to museums as well as other venues (Boyd, 1993). While only one in six ever take a U.S. History course after their high school experience (Loewen, 1999), between four and six of every ten people visit a museum at least once a year (Falk & Dierking, 1997). Griffiths & King (2008) reported that in 2006 close to 150 million American adults visited at least one museum (all types of museums, not just history museums) for a total of 701 million physical visits. Another 8 million visited at least one museum online. Moreover, Rosenzweig (2000) found that Americans‟ level of connectedness to museums was higher than that reported for celebrating a holiday, reading a book about the past, or studying history in school. When teachers provide ready access to museums they are better able to equip their students‟ with the experiences and skills necessary to think about historical representation by allowing students to interpret historical evidence presented by museums and by helping students examine how these sites make sense of the past (Trofanenko, 2006). In this way, museums provide teachers with opportunities to critique the historical narratives museums choose to represent, which may include how museums interpret historical evidence, how displays are organized, and what purposes the exhibits serve. Thus, the incorporation of museum visits may
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serve to foster citizens who are more critical of the history they consume while visiting museums throughout their lifetimes.
Museums provide unique learning experiences not available to students in school Research into informal learning, too, may offer important insights into the value of museum education. Dewey (1938) argued that collateral learning was “much more important than” the formal lessons students were learning in shaping their “enduring attitudes” (p. 46). Recent research is beginning to lend credence to his assertion. Increasingly considered an “essential part of innovative and authentic learning in all environments” (Bennett, 2011), informal learning helps students develop knowledge, skills, and understandings beyond those promoted by the school‟s formal curriculum (Livingstone, 1999). For example, museums help students develop ideas, beliefs, and attitudes about public spaces (Nespor, 2000), and also, about their own right and ability to engage civically, in ways that are learned and communicated indirectly through their participatory experience with museums. Just as students will encounter history through museums during their adult lives, they will influence and be influenced by civic and cultural institutions. By exposing students to such institutions and asking them to think critically about them, we better prepare students to participate actively and thoughtfully in society. Thus, museums may be ideal locations for students to develop not only elements of historical understanding, but may serve to cement students‟ enduring interest and participation in history and civil society.
Challenges for Teachers Despite the potential benefits of museum visits, many teachers encounter obstacles that prevent museum visits. The obstacles identified by teachers include logistical impediments, 5
distance away from some sites, lack of district support, and finances. (Authors names removed for blind review) revealed that money and logistics were the most pressing concerns for teachers when considering a field trip to a history museum. Kisiel (2005), too, found that finances were commonly cited as the key reason why teachers were unable to take students on field trips. This may contribute to why 40% of teachers surveyed in one study reported going on zero field trips to history museums during the 2007-2008 school year, and only 4% reported going on three or more such field trips (Authors names removed for blind review).
Challenges for teacher-museum educator collaboration On the other hand, museum educators also struggle to make student visits to their museums live up to its fullest potential. Despite museum educators‟ goals to provide quality historical experiences for students, traditional assumptions about museums may hinder their efforts to do so. Traditionally, museums and their staffs have been viewed as the teachers and those who visit their museums as the learners (Skramstad, 1999). Thus, both teachers and museums may share in the tacit understanding that once the teacher has prepared students for, and brought students to, the museum, learning is in the hands of the museum educator. As such, teachers‟ and museum educators‟ may pursue goals that are at odds with each others‟ larger purposes. This might help to explain why Griffin and Symington (1997) found that many museum visits are only loosely linked to school-based curriculum. This disconnect between teachers and museums led to calls for collaboration between teachers and museum educators (Griffin, 2004; Marcus, 2008). The current state of museum education indicates that the boundaries between museum educators and teachers “need to be
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crossed from both sides” in order to improve the learning experiences of students at museums (Griffin, 2004, S65).
Methods The findings reported in this paper are derived from the qualitative data collected from a larger mixed-methods study which explored museum educators‟ and secondary history teachers‟ practices and beliefs pertinent to history education at museums1. For the purposes of this paper, we draw primarily from the data collected from museum educators. The museum-based participants discussed in this study are museum professionals who work with school groups from history-based museums in (Name of state removed for blind review). Smaller organizations such as town historical societies were also invited to participate. A total of 51 museum professionals representing 43 history-based museums completed an online survey. Following from the survey, we purposefully selected (Patton, 2002) ten participants to interview, reflecting the diversity in the participants‟ years of experience, the type of museum (e.g. living-history, historic home, etc.), geographic location, and the historic time period covered at the museum. Hour-long semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants and focused on how participants perceive the value of museums in the support of students‟ learning and how teachers and museum educators collaborate in order to support student learning. An inductive approach to qualitative free response survey data and interview data were employed to allow patterns and themes to emerge from the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998; Ruona, 2005; Thomas, 2006). Subsequently, salient themes and patterns were identified (Glesne, 1999; Patton, 2002) through the use of constant comparative analysis (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Finally,
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we cleaned the data without changing their intent or meaning in order to improve readability.
Dialogic Format Because the purpose of this paper is to empower teachers to initiate more effective collaborative relationships with museums and museum educators, we chose to diverge from the format of a traditional findings section. Instead we have chosen to present our findings in the form of a dialogue between a fictional teacher and an archetypical museum educator (e.g. Bochner & Ellis, 2002). The use of an archetype as a character in the dialogue allowed us to construct a “composite example” in order to help “provide a narrative sense of the average participant” (Hill, Knox, Thompson, Williams, Hess, & Ladany, 2005, p. 204). There are a number of reasons why we consider this unconventional presentation to be the most appropriate format to describe our findings. First, as Bochner, Ellis, and Tillman-Healy (1998) point out, the goals of social scientific writing should be to communicate with the reader (see also Bochner & Waugh, 1995). Second, given that our main objective is to challenge teachers to consider how they might engage with museum educators to make museum education more effective for their students, we believe that a composite dialogue serves a dual purpose: accessibility and reproducibility (on the part of the practitioner). In relation to the first, dialogue can help to situate the meaning of a story for readers (Ellis & Bochner, 1996). It is our intention to situate the reader in the context of a conversation, one in which we are asking the teacher to imagine himself or herself participating. It may also be more effective than traditional forms of data reporting for generating “synergistic insights” (Frentz and Hocker 2010, p. 621) because by modeling a conversation, the author can help to make the content more accessible to, and elucidate meaning for, readers. With regard to the
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second point, dialogue represents a means to “[generating] social and personal knowledge” (Ibid). As such, it is our hope that we may scaffold for teachers the process for initiating effective collaborative conversations with museum educators by modeling such a conversation. Through the use of this model conversation, it is our goal to make the information more accessible to the reader, and to help teachers to become more comfortable initiating conversations with museum educators. To further support this scaffolding, the key questions for teachers to ask museum educators, and crucial information to provide to museum educators have been put in bold, italicized font (see Table 1). Table 1. Questions to ask and contextual information to provide museum educators Questions to Ask Museum Educators (1) Is there anything you can do to help me with the cost of the visit to your site?
Information to Provide Museum Educators (1) Explaining what you hope your students will be able to take away from their visit to the museum with specific objectives. (2) Explain your students‟ specific learning needs.
(2) Do you offer alternatives to museum visits?
(3) Provide the museum with a clear picture of what students have learned prior to, and will learn following, the museum visit.
(3) Would you be willing to collaborate to create a program specific to my class‟s needs?
(4) Make clear to the museum who is in charge of making field trip related decisions for you and your school.
Within the conversation, any dialogue in quotes are data taken directly from participants words during the interviews and from answers provided by participants in the free response section of the survey. The remainder of the dialogue is a composite of the data written to tie together the common themes that emerged from our data (Hycner, 1999). To improve the 9
trustworthiness of this account the dialogue was member checked for plausibility by participants (Mienczakowski 1994)2.
Scene Kent, a social studies teacher, has recently been encouraged to include museum visits in his curriculum by a mentor, but he still has some reservations about doing so. Susan, a veteran museum educator has agreed to answer some questions for him about planning for museum visits. Kent told Susan earlier that he wants to clarify some questions and to address some of the concerns he has about what museums and museum educators can offer. He wants to know what is entailed in planning a visit, and what sort of information museums need him to provide in return in order to ensure a successful experience for his students. The conversation begins as Kent asks his first question.
Kent: My main concern is that my instructional time is pretty limited. I have a lot I need to do with my students, so I want to make sure that what my students are learning at the museum or from you is complimenting what I‟m teaching them in class. And, students need to be engaged emotionally and intellectually. Too many see field trips as a day off. They expect a “Ferris Bueller” experience (e.g. boring and irrelevant). It seems as though teachers and museum staff working together is the best way to bridge the real classroom and the museum experience. Would you be willing to collaborate to create a program specific to my class‟s needs? Susan: Yes, absolutely! Regardless of whether you intend to visit the museum or have someone from the museum visit your classroom, I would be happy to collaborate with you to create a program that meets your needs. Frankly, I wish more teachers would approach me about
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co-planning an experience for their students. Sometimes I feel lost about how to reach teachers, particularly high school teachers. All of my colleagues have told me that they are open to working with teachers to create specialized programs or to adapt existing ones to meet teachers‟ needs. I wish more teachers knew this. I‟d like to tell them: “Here‟s the deal – we will do whatever you want to do. We are familiar with what the social studies curriculum looks like in all the grade levels. And what we‟d like to do is figure out how we can help you based on your goals and objectives. And if you think what you need is not what we do, just ask.” If you know what you want to get out of a museum visit, we are here to help you to do just that. Kent: That‟s good to know. I think teachers are similarly unsure about how to approach museum staff beyond the logistics of scheduling. Some of this may be a lack of knowledge about what museum staff do or unfamiliarity with the museum itself or the content covered at a museum. And, of course, there is the ever present time pressures – how to make time to collaborate with museum staff while planning curriculum, calling parents, attending endless meetings, coaching, etc. So what advice can you give to teachers about how to approach museums as a teaching tool? Susan: Well, some of my colleagues feel like teachers sometimes underestimate the scope of their museum‟s relevance. One of my colleagues, for example, said that the way teachers seem to think about his art museum is a real “stigma”. He said that “when we send our stuff out to teachers, they‟ll say, „Oh I‟ll get this to the art teacher‟.… so I try to encourage them to give it to a homeroom teacher or a history, or social studies teacher, or a language arts teacher only because we‟re more than an art site. The art‟s very important, but I don‟t want it to kind of default to the art teacher because it‟s not just that.”
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I am sure that some of our museums might seem overly specific, or maybe they seem like they are only tangentially connected to your curriculum. But they may be able to speak to the themes of your unit, or help students to answer your essential questions in different ways. Take for instance a museum that specializes in plumbing.* Even though you‟re probably not studying plumbing with your class, the museum educator can probably talk to your class about the technological, social, and demographic transformation of America at the turn of the century. In other words, even though the museum is billed as a plumbing museum, “it's bigger than the [plumbing]”. Also, most museums have archives with materials not on display and many are willing to provide materials above and beyond what is currently part of their exhibits. This could be an opportunity to design a field trip experience and let students work with raw artifacts. Kent: So these museums have more potential for meeting the needs of my class than meets the eye. But, how willing are they to develop a specific program with me? Susan: I feel secure in saying that my colleagues and I are open to creating just such a program for you. Let me give you an example: One of my colleagues told me how a Montessori school didn‟t want the program they were offering; they wanted to visit her museum‟s “Civil Rights exhibit…but they also wanted [the program] to be art-focused, [and] they also wanted to hear a little bit of history. So, I mean, Civil Rights is obviously a topic with roots in history, and a very important topic. And the art side of things, we hadn‟t really worked with the Civil Rights exhibit because it was a temporary exhibit. So those are the times when we‟ll…design this…and let‟s get these kids in here because we want them to come and we want them to have a good experience.” Of course, it can take some time to develop a quality program in collaboration with you. “To be able to reflect and think in a scholarly way and bring out my teacher skill sets in order to *
The specifics of this example have been changed to maintain the confidentiality of the participant
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design, say a new AP program, I need a large block of time to (a) think it through, and then (b) actually put the materials together so that it‟s serviceable over a long period of time. And then I‟ve gotta teach it to other people because I‟m not gonna always be the one standing there to actually direct the program.” Smaller venues may be able to put something together more quickly than large and very busy museums, but we don‟t want to just slap something together for you. So make sure that you give us ample time to work with you on it. The reality is that without visitors, particularly school groups, museums can‟t exist for very long so we really want to meet our visitor‟s needs. Like you, museum staff are not in it for the money! We really care about the learning experiences of students, take pride in their work, and feel enormous satisfaction when students are engaged. Kent: Okay. So that addresses my main area of concern, but you should also know that my school doesn‟t have a lot of funding for field trips. This is especially true for social studies since it is not part of the No Child Left Beyond standards. As a department we are last in line to receive funds. So even if you can work with me on a program, I‟m not even sure I can make a field trip to a museum happen. Is there anything you can do to help me with the cost of the visit to your site? Susan: Yes. We know that although some schools are blessed with budgets or financial support from parents that allow field trips to happen with relative ease,, many schools like yours are strapped financially. I understand the impact that financial concerns play into the decision making of teachers when considering a field trip, and we are often able, or at least willing, to help defray the costs of the museum visit. It never hurts to ask! Many museums set aside funds specifically for schools with high numbers of students on free and reduced lunch. So you should keep that in mind before you decide that your school or your students cannot afford to visit.
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Kent: Wow, I had no idea! That‟s good to know. It reminds me of the film Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise when he is yelling “show me the money!” Can you tell me a little bit more about how you are able to do this? Susan: Sure. There are a number of possibilities for you and your students. First, museums often have special admission fees for visiting classes. For example, at one of my colleague‟s museum the entrance fee for students visiting with their class is only $1.50 per person. Second, museums sometimes have pre-existing scholarships to help bring students from schools to the museums that cover admission and/or buses; this is particularly true for urban schools. Third, although a particular museum may not have any funds currently, some of my colleagues and I have written grants with teachers in the past, and would be open to doing so with you in order to procure funds for a visit that you are planning. This last option obviously requires some additional time, but by planning ahead, this could be a good option for you if funding is a problem for your school. Finally, one option I sometimes give teachers is to pilot a new program; I think of it as part of my relationship building with teachers and it is mutually beneficial. Kent: Can you explain what you mean by piloting a new program? Susan: Well, let me give you an example. I might say to a teacher: “I have a new program, can we get your students to test it out for me.” I don‟t mind offering a free field trip because it helps me out too, “because I need feedback”. So it is worthwhile to ask if there is a program your class might pilot for the museum. You get free admission and I get much needed feedback about how well (or not) something is working.
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Kent: Great, thanks. That gives me several funding options to consider. What if I cannot bring my class to the museum either because of funding or for other reasons? Do you offer alternatives to museum visits that draw on your museum‟s resoruces? Susan: I do, in fact and so do many of my colleagues. Some museum staff facilitate outreach programs where we visit your classroom. Once we are there, we‟ll run a museum program for your class as best we can. We can sometimes bring artifacts, resources, and activities for your students that they would not otherwise have access to, as well as provide expertise in our museum‟s area of focus. Alternatively, some museum staff role play as historical characters helping to recreate some of the museum experience in the classroom. Personally this is one of my favorite outreach activities. Students are always so engaged and I get to leave the 21st century behind for a little while. My favorite part is when a cell phone rings and I pretend to have no idea what a phone is or what it does. Admittedly visiting a classroom isn‟t our first choice, because there‟s just “something about being there” that cements the experience for students. We would, of course, prefer to have them come to the museum, but we know that that is not always possible and we aim to provide meaningful experiences through visits to schools. Kent: I didn‟t know that was an option. There are times museum staff have expertise with specific content that I‟m not as familiar with, so if a museum visit is not possible, a museum outreach program would allow me to take advantage of what museum staff can offer. This is great! Susan: You should know that not every museum offers this option, but it certainly is worth asking about. “I see less people coming to museums; I see a drop in visits. So I don't know whether that means we're going to be going to the classroom more”. But, “that‟s one of the things that we really focused on this past year is building our after school programming and in
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creating those occasions that we can bring the program to the classroom.” And who knows, maybe by asking them, it might be enough to get a museum to start offering classroom visits as an option. Kent: Are there ever times when a classroom visit is preferred or is more pedagogically sound? Susan: I definitely prefer that you come to me. “I'm a strong believer in the power of actually visiting a site to make history come alive.” I think that “there‟s something about the environmental nature of [some museums]” that enables museums “to connect kids with the past.” It‟s not that we can‟t do some of that in the classroom, but actually coming to the site is important. “It's the experience of [it]...you've got to be there” to get that. That being said, we find students take our classroom visits very seriously, probably because they are in their academic environment. We almost always get a very positive reaction – not that we have some magical potion to all of the sudden make students love history – but maybe it is something about having a new person visiting and using hands-on activities that engages students. Kent: That‟s a good point, and I agree that coming to the museum is a better plan if I can make it work, but that may not always be possible for me. Susan: I understand. For teachers who can‟t come into the museum and when a museum staff visit is not possible or feasible, museum educators sometimes have travelling trunks and museum kits that help to bring some of the museum‟s artifacts to your classroom. It‟s not quite the same as a museum visit, but this option is an alternative when a visit just isn‟t possible for you. Most of the artifacts are reproductions and the teacher can use lessons that accompany the kits or create their own. Frankly, I think most teachers do a better job with the kids than we could because you know your goals and your students. I should also add that we also do
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professional development with teachers so that they are better able to make use of the resources we offer, both at the museum and in the classroom. Museums offer one-day workshops, summer programs, and more for teachers. Many of these focus on the historical content at a museum and a few also address pedagogy. Kent: This is very exciting. I guess I just never explored all of the possibilities. I don‟t want to cut back on on-site visits with my students, but I will definitely look into bringing museum staff and/or museum kits to my classroom. Thanks so much! I think that covers my big questions, but is there anything museum educators need from me in order to make sure my students have a meaningful museum experience? Susan: That is a great question and one I wished teachers asked more often. There are a number of things museum educators need to know that would help us do a better job including your learning goals, your students‟ specific needs, what you're doing in your classroom before and after you visit us, and who the go-to people in your school and district are. Kent: Wow, I never even thought about providing much more than some general goals. My impression is that most museums have set programs and that not much changes from group to group. Can you be more explicit about the kinds of information you need from us? Susan: Of course! Why don‟t I start with your goals, since they really set up the reasons for your wanting to visit our museum in the first place. Just like you have more curriculum than you can possibly cover in a year, I have access to far more information and resources in my museum than we can possibly use, or your students can digest. By explaining to me what you hope your students will be able to take away from their visit to my museum, you really help me to focus my energies. For example, you could tell me that you want your students to be able to answer an essential question when they leave, or know how to interpret a particular kind of
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primary source such as photos or letters, or perhaps to empathize with historical characters stepping onto American soil for the first time as immigrants in the late 19th century. Of course, there is quite a range of how much museums can tailor specific programs based on staffing limitations and experience, but even for museums with regular programs, changes can be made to accommodate your learning goals. And as I mentioned before, in many cases programs can be created from scratch. You just have to ask! If I know what your goals are in advance I am better able to give you the museum experience you‟re looking for. Honestly, we‟re both happier: You get to avoid experiences you know your students would find repetitive or tedious, and I‟m able to steer teachers clear of activities like scavenger hunts which are not the best use of our resources. Kent: You‟re not a fan of scavenger hunts? Susan: It‟s not that I hate them, but “they are not my favorite. I'm sure it serves the teachers‟ aims in terms of making sure that [students] do learn some stuff…while they are there... and if it supports their classroom work, it‟s fine. But from our perspective it narrows the scope of their visit immensely because they're just looking for these pieces of information.” Some teachers want students to gather specific information “so [the kids] are so into all of those questions,” but “their head is so into the clipboard that to me they're missing the breathing in of the air and the seeing and the smelling and the feeling…I just - it's good and bad.” There is no long-term learning, just checking things off of a list and moving on. One of my colleagues told me: “I‟m done with providing field trips just to provide a field trip.” We feel like our museums can offer students so much more than to be just another means of dispensing content knowledge. Kent: I see. I had never really thought about it in that way. The second thing you mentioned was my students‟ specific needs.
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Susan: Okay. So if you have a class of English language learners, or even one English language learner, or students with learning disabilities or other needs, it is immensely helpful to me if I know about their needs in advance. “Sometimes there are big gaps in the communication between teachers in terms of, you know, the group that comes and it‟s mostly English as a second language students, and for some reason the teacher hasn‟t said that – I think in some cases they don‟t want [me] to be, I don‟t know what it is, to have [my] own preconceptions about their class – but you think, jee, that piece of information could have been really helpful before you walked in the door”. It is not just for ELLs either; if you have students who have lower reading abilities, difficulties focusing, processing disorders, etc., I can make adjustments to materials or include those specific students in aspects of the experience that involve different learning modalities. My colleagues and I often have had experience with different types of learners, and so by letting us know in advance what your students‟ specific learning needs are, we can make the adjustments that are necessary to meet those needs. Kent: That makes perfect sense. We spend so much time differentiating for students in the classroom it certainly makes sense to extend that to museum visits. I guess I always approached these field trips as just turning over the students to the museum staff, but teachers are better off approaching it like we are collaborating with a teaching colleague at school. You also talked about wanting to know what is going on in my class around the time of my visit. This seems pretty obvious; is it a problem for you? Susan: Although this may seem obvious, my colleagues and I feel like this essential piece of information is often missing when teachers bring their students to our museums. It is a real challenge for us. “We don‟t always know as much as we would like to about what the teacher is doing in the classroom around their visits. So sometimes it comes, especially when the teacher
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calls to book a program and … if they seem to know exactly what it is they are looking for I think we have a tendency not to probe too much …[so] we book it and here they come and sometimes you get the surprise of, well the kids aren‟t really studying anything related to this…or this is going to be their introduction to the American Revolution and they actually haven‟t done anything about it yet in the classroom.” But it is the same as with your own teaching, when you understand what your students already know in advance, you can make better curricular decisions. Likewise, how much we know about what the students are doing in the classes around the time of their visit impacts what we can do. By providing us with a clear picture of what students have learned prior to the visit and what they will learn following the visit, museum staff can make changes to programs that can have a profound impacts on the quality of the museum experiences and on the learning outcomes. It can help to avoid the misunderstandings like the one I described. Kent: Sometimes for me there is a disconnect because the timeframe for the field trip does not always coincide with when the subject is being taught. For example, winter field trips are not always easy to pull off, especially if there is a lot of time outside or where snow is a constant threat. Also testing season throws off the timing. So there might be a wonderful museum to visit but we have to go at a point when that doesn‟t coincide with when that topic is being taught. This is so frustrating!!! Susan: I totally understand. And this type of information is enormously helpful – anything we can do to connect to whatever is happening in the classroom allows us to provide a better experience. Also, I am sometimes confused about how teachers use the resources my museum provides. We often have pre-packaged programs that offer pre-readings to contextualize the students‟ activities in the museum, or follow-up activities that serve to extend the learning
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they expect has happened during the visit. Sometimes we have a teacher who has done a program for years, so we know what to expect from her, but we don‟t always have a very good idea about which resources other teachers are using. Kent: So would it be helpful for you to know in advance which of your activities and resources we are planning to use? Susan: Yes, that would be really helpful because it allows me to focus my creative energy and better serve your goals by developing a more coherent experience for your students. Kent: I am curious about the last thing you mentioned wanting to know, who the go-to people in my school and district are. Why is that helpful to you? Susan: Well, it is helpful to both of us really. By telling me who the person in charge of making field trip related decisions is, I may be able to help support your efforts in arranging a visit to our site. I may be able to negotiate permission to take your students on a visit by providing a rationale for your visit, demonstrating the museum‟s connection to the state frameworks, or by leveraging my existing relationships such as retired teachers who sometimes have already established networks in the district. Being able to make the case to administrators may be an important step in the process. “Teachers continue to…be the best [contact]…they can be the best advocate for you just because they‟ve been here and they‟ve experienced the program”, but this isn‟t always enough. The situation is different than it used to be; “school districts are now making these decisions at a higher level than it used to take place”, where it used to take place at the school level. So district administrators are stopping teachers from going on field trips. Kent: Yes, sometimes administrators are a major obstacle.
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Susan: “I think that‟s an important piece of this puzzle that needs to be delved into a little bit more,” and we could do more to help teachers in this area too. For example “if the teachers say to us, oh no you‟re never going to get any [location removed for confidentiality] classes here, I think we have a tendency to say, oh ok, well that‟s a shame.” Instead “if we could ever actually get in to meet with the superintendent‟s office, maybe we could probe a little bit into that, but I don‟t think we push back against” the teacher who says that doing so is impossible. We should probably tell them that there are “things that can be done, [or point out that] there [are] other schools that have had a similar situation….Because the reality is we know that [city removed for confidentiality] students are let out of the classroom [to come to the museum].” So we need to be willing to push back more. For your part, in order for us to push back, we need to know who to talk to. If we can build the relationships with the person or people in charge of the decision making, we are better able to facilitate your coming out to visit our sites. So what we need to know is “what is the best way to help make it happen for [you]? Do I need to get in and talk to the principal, the curricular coordinator, the superintendent?” Who do I need to contact in order to help you take the field trip? Kent: That‟s great. We can tag team to lobby administrators. Is there anything else? Susan: Only that you should not be shy to tell us what you need from a visit. Let us know what your goals are, what your students‟ learning needs are, what‟s going on in your class and what resources you‟re planning to use. Finally, let us know who we can talk to – the relationship building is useful to us, especially if it can get you and other teachers to bring your students to our sites. Keep in mind that we want you to come to our sites and make use our resources. So we may be able to support you financially, can sometimes offer you alternatives to visits, and are
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more than happy to collaborate with you to design or adapt our programs to meet your needs. Please talk to us about what we can offer you; remember, even very specialized museums may be able to provide you with a program that meets your needs. [End Scene]
Conclusion It is clear that a discussion between a teacher and museum educator can help to ensure that both are on the same page when it comes to planning and implementing museum visits. Our analysis of the data revealed that the concerns discussed in the dialogue above including what museums can do to facilitate and collaborate with teachers to improve museum learning, teachers‟ learning objectives, students‟ learning needs and prior knowledge, and who to contact in schools and districts to facilitate museum visits, are often not effectively addressed. Although there may be questions that are unique to particular schools and sites, the concerns and questions we have presented here emerged consistently across our participants. Currently, such concerns are often not resolved by teachers and museum educators prior to museum visits; in order to do so, museum educators and teachers need to improve their communication. We argue that it is important for teachers to take a leading role by asking specific questions about the extent to which museum educators can offer support for the museum visit under consideration, and to provide museum educators with specific information about the needs and the context of the school. The questions teachers should ask, and contextual information they should provide to museum educators are highlighted in the following table. Although high school students make up a small proportion of the overall student visitation to history museums, teachers frequently perceive these sites as rich sources of
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historical learning. This disjunction between what teachers value abstractly about history museums and their willingness to organize and execute fieldtrips to these sites is disconcerting. As a result, recent research has attempted to identify the factors which may lie at the heart of this contradiction such as inadequate training of preservice teachers (Kisiel, 2003), unchallenged traditional assumptions (Skramstad, 1999), and the need for collaboration between teachers and museum educators (Griffin, 2004; Marcus, 2008). This disconnect has, however, revealed certain identifiable gaps in knowledge and expectations between teachers and museum educators, which if effectively addressed, may help to bridge the gulfs in their mutual practice. As Griffin noted, these gulfs, or boundaries “need to be crossed from both sides” (S65). But it is our hope that if properly equipped with questions to ask of, and information to volunteer to, museum educators, teachers will be in a position to initiate the collaborative relationships with museum educators that Marcus (2008) has argued may be an essential component of successful museum education. Specifically, teachers should be prepared to ask museum educators whether there is anything they can do to help defray the costs of museum visits, whether they offer alternatives to museum visits, and to what extent they are willing to collaborate to create programs specifically tailored to the needs of their students. Teachers must also be willing to provide museum educators with the learning objectives they hope to achieve by visiting the museum, details about their students‟ specific learning needs, a clear picture of what students will be learning prior to, and following from, the museum visit, and to make clear who is in charge of making field-trip related decisions at your school. Teachers‟ efforts to initiate such collaborative efforts will ultimately impact their students; the improved alignment between school and museum, as well as the possibility of more
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meaningful museum experiences has the potential to improve student learning outcomes. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, such experiences have ramifications beyond the near-term desired learning outcomes we have for our students. Indeed, the data on museum visitation (i.e. that adult learning at museums is widespread) leads us to speculate that creating more effective episodes of museum education could well reverberate throughout our students‟ lifetimes. For teachers who wish to improve the way they utilize museums for student learning, as well as those who would like to begin tapping into the opportunities museums afford teachers and students alike, we have offered a starting point. Although we do not claim that our suggestions for questions to ask museum educators and the information to volunteer to them will lead directly to effective museum learning, they provide an initial foundation upon which teachers and museum educators may build the collaborative relationship that we believe is at the heart of enhancing students‟ historical understanding through museum education.
Notes 1. This study was conducted in collaboration with the [name of state removed for blind review] Humanities Council(XHC). We thank the XHC for their intellectual, logistical, and monetary support. This study was also partially funded by two faculty grants from The University of [name removed for blind review]. 2. We are grateful to [removed for blind review], Education Coordinator for the [removed for blind review], for her insightful feedback on drafts of this article.
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