For ESOL – or English for Speakers of Other Languages – learners, visiting a museum is as much about social integration as about language learning. Some may have never used public transport or been outside their neighbourhoods, or even spoken English with a person other than their tutor.
Museum visits are a chance to do all these things.
In 2016, M Shed in Bristol conducted interviews and surveys with museum staff and about 250 ESOL learners, teachers and group leaders. It also looked at work produced by learners, and found that ESOL visitors learnt about the city and felt better connected to it after the visit.
Similar findings were made by researcher Julie Carr when she interviewed some ESOL tutors in 2014. They also told her that learners’ vocabulary and self-esteem had increased following visits.
But measuring outcomes such as increased confidence or connection to a place is challenging, as is measuring the long-term impact of museum visits on ESOL learners.
Speaking to tutors or group leaders after a visit will provide museums with a good insight into how the trip was used later in the course. Students’ coursework based on the museum visit – for example a post-visit letter to the museum or a reflective journal – can also offer insight into learners’ thoughts and feelings.
Eleanor Frances-Tanaka, who has just completed an International Heritage Management MA dissertation on ESOL and museums, says the main evaluation methods are numbers of re-bookings, tutor questionnaires, anecdotal evidence and learners’ coursework.
There is anecdotal evidence that group members return to visit independently, but Frances-Tanaka says that “nobody really knows and nobody really has any formal way of assessing this”.
Jo-Anne Sunderland Bowe, a heritage education specialist who runs the British Museum’s ESOL programme, says that learner questionnaires don’t often help museums improve their offer, partly because feedback is usually polite and positive. Issues, such as cafe prices, might also be out of the control of the team running the programme.
She recommends that museums use qualitative approaches, such as talking to tutors, to assess their offer. Self-evaluation and experimentation with new teaching methods for the museum’s temporary exhibitions can also help.
Kim Klug, a learning producer at London’s Kensington Palace, part of Historic Royal Palaces, plans to use qualitative evaluation to identify longer-term effect of ESOL visits.
She hopes that case studies will highlight whether learners return to the palace, but also if they’ve visited other museums, art galleries or heritage sites, and whether they’ve “started making connections with their own community about its history and stories around them that relate back [to the palace visit].”
Evidence of the impact of museum visits on language use is lacking, but there is plenty of scope to explore it (resources permitting). After all, these are ESOL visits, not projects purely about widening access.
ESOL in the museum can also be linked with other organisations’ work. For example, Manchester Art Gallery’s English Corner programme of drop-in ESOL workshops appear on a list of programmes recommended by Health Education England to help healthcare employers train and keep staff.
If such partnerships can be established and maintained this will support museums’ funding bids and prove the value of museums’ ESOL provision in society more widely.
Museum visits are a chance to do all these things.
In 2016, M Shed in Bristol conducted interviews and surveys with museum staff and about 250 ESOL learners, teachers and group leaders. It also looked at work produced by learners, and found that ESOL visitors learnt about the city and felt better connected to it after the visit.
Similar findings were made by researcher Julie Carr when she interviewed some ESOL tutors in 2014. They also told her that learners’ vocabulary and self-esteem had increased following visits.
But measuring outcomes such as increased confidence or connection to a place is challenging, as is measuring the long-term impact of museum visits on ESOL learners.
Speaking to tutors or group leaders after a visit will provide museums with a good insight into how the trip was used later in the course. Students’ coursework based on the museum visit – for example a post-visit letter to the museum or a reflective journal – can also offer insight into learners’ thoughts and feelings.
Eleanor Frances-Tanaka, who has just completed an International Heritage Management MA dissertation on ESOL and museums, says the main evaluation methods are numbers of re-bookings, tutor questionnaires, anecdotal evidence and learners’ coursework.
There is anecdotal evidence that group members return to visit independently, but Frances-Tanaka says that “nobody really knows and nobody really has any formal way of assessing this”.
Jo-Anne Sunderland Bowe, a heritage education specialist who runs the British Museum’s ESOL programme, says that learner questionnaires don’t often help museums improve their offer, partly because feedback is usually polite and positive. Issues, such as cafe prices, might also be out of the control of the team running the programme.
She recommends that museums use qualitative approaches, such as talking to tutors, to assess their offer. Self-evaluation and experimentation with new teaching methods for the museum’s temporary exhibitions can also help.
Kim Klug, a learning producer at London’s Kensington Palace, part of Historic Royal Palaces, plans to use qualitative evaluation to identify longer-term effect of ESOL visits.
She hopes that case studies will highlight whether learners return to the palace, but also if they’ve visited other museums, art galleries or heritage sites, and whether they’ve “started making connections with their own community about its history and stories around them that relate back [to the palace visit].”
Evidence of the impact of museum visits on language use is lacking, but there is plenty of scope to explore it (resources permitting). After all, these are ESOL visits, not projects purely about widening access.
ESOL in the museum can also be linked with other organisations’ work. For example, Manchester Art Gallery’s English Corner programme of drop-in ESOL workshops appear on a list of programmes recommended by Health Education England to help healthcare employers train and keep staff.
If such partnerships can be established and maintained this will support museums’ funding bids and prove the value of museums’ ESOL provision in society more widely.