In the spring of 2008, the Connecticut Humanities Council collaborated with Robin S. Grenier and Alan S. Marcus, professors from the University of Connecticut's Neag School of Education, to conduct a study that explored secondary school classroom teacher and museum educator practices, attitudes, and beliefs.  Over the next fifteen months, Grenier and Marcus asked both groups of educators questions exploring how teachers prepare students for field trips, the types of activities students complete at museums, how teachers and museum staff collaborate, how attitudes and beliefs effect student learning in museums, and how we can better understand and support student learning.

Below is a museum educator's response to "Supporting student learning at history museums," the report summarizing the findings from the joint UCONN/ CHC study.  Immediately following are pdfs of both the study's executive summary and the study's full report.

The HRC thanks Rebecca Furer for serving as guest author for the following entry.  Rebecca has worked in museum education at Mystic Seaport, the MFA Boston, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and for the past ten years at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum & Library, where she is currently the Director of Research, Education & Interpretation.  Rebecca is a founding member of the Connecticut Museum Educator Roundtable and is the new New England Museum Association Education PAG co-chair.

History museums are underutilized by middle and high school teachers.

Is this a surprise to anyone in the museum education community? No, but the report, "Supporting Student Learning at History Museums," offers some insight for history museum staff and also raises some challenging questions.

The participants in the study included 94 secondary history teachers and 51 museum professionals, all of whom completed a survey. Some were also selected for in-depth interviews.

There were flaws--museum professionals were asked about their experiences with grades K-12, while the teachers surveyed all taught grades 7-12; more than one staff member was surveyed at some museums, possibly skewing the data--but the findings are interesting nevertheless.

The report describes findings regarding perceptions of the value of museum visits, barriers to taking trips, teacher and museum professionals' practices with students when they visit museums, use of museum resources, satisfaction with museum-developed programming, and attitudes towards teacher-museum staff collaboration.

Some of the findings are to be expected. Logistics and money (especially for transportation) are barriers to teachers visiting with their students. Teachers rarely use pre- or post-visit lessons developed by the museum.

I found the following data and findings most provocative:

• Teachers see a lot of potential value in visiting museums with their students. They wish they could take more trips. But when they do come to visit us, they aren't terribly impressed. We don't relate well to older students. Our programs aren't age appropriate. We push our own agenda or don't understand the teacher's goals. Worst of all, we don't want to hear these things. We only "sometimes" (not "often", not "always!") ask teachers to evaluate how well the visit met their goals. What are we afraid of?

• Neither teachers nor museum professionals ask students to critically examine museums and how we present the past. Teachers trust museums to accurately represent the past and cite museums as second only to primary sources in this area. This is in keeping with the findings of Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen in The Presence of the Past (1998). Nevertheless, isn't it our responsibility to help train critical thinkers who will analyze what we present, what we don't present, and how we do it? Isn't this skill more important than any history content that we could possibly teach?

• 48% of teachers said they had participated in a museum-initiated professional development program and, in general, responded positively to the idea of attending professional development offered during the summer by museums where they take their students. Why wouldn't we, as museum educators, jump at the chance to work directly with secondary teachers to develop programs to better meet their needs at our museums?

The teachers were surveyed about which history museums they visit with their students. Although not included in this report, I would very much like to see these results. Where are they going?! At the Connecticut Historical Society, high school students make up just 1% of our annual school visitation (excluding the annual History Day contests.)

We all could and should serve this audience better, and we need to work with teachers to do it.

To see the report's executive summary, click the link below:

To read the full report, click the link below: