How do you learn to be a museum educator? And what are the tricks of the trade? This second edition of the Museum Educator’s Manual – the first was published in 2009 – offers case studies and practical examples that can be immediately applied to everyday work.
Written by a team of experienced museum educators from the US, this hands-on guide aims to address the role that educators play in today’s museums from an experience-based perspective.
As a museum educator myself, I have formally studied museum education and the theories and philosophies around learning in museums. But theory and philosophy can get you only so far when you’re confronted by a class of lively and excitable primary-school children armed with paint and glue sticks. It’s at such times that the techniques and approaches you’ve picked up over time become invaluable; classroom management, how to adapt your delivery style for different abilities, the ability to get PVA glue off historic furniture, the list of eccentric scenarios goes on.
So it’s great to have a resource that focuses on the peer-to-peer sharing of techniques and approaches, like this handbook sets out to do. It’s this pragmatic and practical advice that is sometimes missing in more esoteric or philosophical treatments of museum education. This book draws back the emerald curtain to reveal the real-life mechanisms of museum learning.
In one of the book’s opening chapters, a museum education university student is quoted as saying “a museum educator is someone who taps into a visitor’s natural curiosity”. This book is all about the museum educator as facilitator. A facilitator and guide to space, knowledge, politics and ideas. We make things happen.
As one of the authors, Valerie Bundy, says, “a museum educator is someone who sees the museum through the eyes of the visitor and helps the visitor see the museum”. It’s in this spirit that all the book’s authors aim to provide a practical guide of how to resource, plan, deliver and evaluate an educational offer in the museum. It includes sample forms, checklists, example programmes, staffing structures and funding models (albeit within a North American context) to give readers ideas and suggestions for possible approaches to adopt in their own work.
It is clearly laid out with sections progressing from “building an education team” to “connecting with museum collections”, “engaging multiple audiences” and finally “pulling it all together”. The book also includes sidebars featuring personal stories from educators, giving a flavour of personal experience to complement the discussion of general themes.
One criticism is that it is a text-heavy resource. To meet its ambition to encapsulate peer- to-peer knowledge of what it means to be a museum educator, it would have benefited from more images and less text. We live in a visual world and the richness of museum education is lost somewhat without inspiring and thought-provoking images to accompany the accounts and discussions. Another omission is a wider focus on the role digital plays in facilitating engagement with audiences and how we, as educators, harness its power.
But this is a minor criticism of a highly comprehensive and accomplished work. It is something I could see adorning the bookcases of everyone from museum studies students to mid-career practitioners, managers and strategy makers.
The book highlights that in 1985, the authors of The Good Guide: A Sourcebook for Interpreters, Docents and Tour Guides pronounced museum education as a “‘relatively new field of study”. Thirty years on, this edition of the Museum Educator’s Manual addresses the role that educators play in today’s museums. Our roles and responsibilities have evolved from just being about delivering tours and teaching school groups. The role of the museum educator is diverse and sometimes complicated. But this manual, at least, deconstructs our everyday and provides us with a handy tool for getting it all done.
Jenny Wedgbury is a museum education consultant
Written by a team of experienced museum educators from the US, this hands-on guide aims to address the role that educators play in today’s museums from an experience-based perspective.
As a museum educator myself, I have formally studied museum education and the theories and philosophies around learning in museums. But theory and philosophy can get you only so far when you’re confronted by a class of lively and excitable primary-school children armed with paint and glue sticks. It’s at such times that the techniques and approaches you’ve picked up over time become invaluable; classroom management, how to adapt your delivery style for different abilities, the ability to get PVA glue off historic furniture, the list of eccentric scenarios goes on.
So it’s great to have a resource that focuses on the peer-to-peer sharing of techniques and approaches, like this handbook sets out to do. It’s this pragmatic and practical advice that is sometimes missing in more esoteric or philosophical treatments of museum education. This book draws back the emerald curtain to reveal the real-life mechanisms of museum learning.
In one of the book’s opening chapters, a museum education university student is quoted as saying “a museum educator is someone who taps into a visitor’s natural curiosity”. This book is all about the museum educator as facilitator. A facilitator and guide to space, knowledge, politics and ideas. We make things happen.
As one of the authors, Valerie Bundy, says, “a museum educator is someone who sees the museum through the eyes of the visitor and helps the visitor see the museum”. It’s in this spirit that all the book’s authors aim to provide a practical guide of how to resource, plan, deliver and evaluate an educational offer in the museum. It includes sample forms, checklists, example programmes, staffing structures and funding models (albeit within a North American context) to give readers ideas and suggestions for possible approaches to adopt in their own work.
It is clearly laid out with sections progressing from “building an education team” to “connecting with museum collections”, “engaging multiple audiences” and finally “pulling it all together”. The book also includes sidebars featuring personal stories from educators, giving a flavour of personal experience to complement the discussion of general themes.
One criticism is that it is a text-heavy resource. To meet its ambition to encapsulate peer- to-peer knowledge of what it means to be a museum educator, it would have benefited from more images and less text. We live in a visual world and the richness of museum education is lost somewhat without inspiring and thought-provoking images to accompany the accounts and discussions. Another omission is a wider focus on the role digital plays in facilitating engagement with audiences and how we, as educators, harness its power.
But this is a minor criticism of a highly comprehensive and accomplished work. It is something I could see adorning the bookcases of everyone from museum studies students to mid-career practitioners, managers and strategy makers.
The book highlights that in 1985, the authors of The Good Guide: A Sourcebook for Interpreters, Docents and Tour Guides pronounced museum education as a “‘relatively new field of study”. Thirty years on, this edition of the Museum Educator’s Manual addresses the role that educators play in today’s museums. Our roles and responsibilities have evolved from just being about delivering tours and teaching school groups. The role of the museum educator is diverse and sometimes complicated. But this manual, at least, deconstructs our everyday and provides us with a handy tool for getting it all done.
Jenny Wedgbury is a museum education consultant
