An Underused Resource on What We Know about Museum Learning

Museum Questions Blogger Rebecca Herz and I agreed awhile back to have an open and continuing blog conversation about education and learning in museums.  Rebecca has upheld her end of the agreement much better than I. Over the past several months she has posted an interesting question almost every week–on the value of field trips, the…

Museum Educators’ Unrealized Potential

The museum blogosphere in the past few weeks has been filled with postings related to the work of museum educators and the role of museums as educational institutions. Rebecca Herz has posted a number of articles and interviews with teachers and museum educators on her blog Museum Questions.  Rebecca is examining from many angles the…

The Changing Role of Museum Educators: A Conversation

For some months now museum educator, consultant, and blogger Rebecca Herz and I have been exchanging thoughts on the roles and future of museum educators, mostly by email.  But we’ve also been talking about making our conversations more public.  Rebecca’s recent thoughtful post, What Does a Museum Educator Do? (And Do We Need Them?) offers, I…

Museum Educators Next, Part, Part V : Bringing Informal Education to the Classroom

In a series of posts over the past year on next steps for museum educators, I’ve expressed disappointment at the over-identification of museum learning resources and experiences with the methods of formal education – too many lesson plans, tests and reading assignments–all of which are fine in themselves but not our forte. One promising trend in  the…