Museum Education

I spent the first 15 years of my museum career working as a museum educator, and I am passionate about this work. Below are resources I have been creating for conferences and workshops, as well as on the Museum Questions Blog, that support museum educators in their work. Recent and upcoming projects include SEED:Baltimore, resources for facilitating object-based conversations, and resources for program planning.

Are you looking for additional resources, coaching, or other help? Email me and let’s talk!

Upcoming Workshop Opportunity

SEED: Baltimore is for school tour managers, docent and gallery experience managers, and anyone else whose job involves creating a gallery teaching program. Offered in partnership with Rachel Ropeik and David Bowles. Registration ends May 1.

Learn More / Register

Download the SEED: Baltimore Team’s 2024 Report on Gallery Education in Museums!

Facilitating Worthwhile Conversations with Objects

Image of a school group at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For most of my career I have taught using a fairly common version of object-based inquiry that involves engaging participants in careful looking followed by thematic questioning, with information used strategically as a tool to deepen understanding and conversation. Here are some resources related to this approach:

I find this approach to teaching with objects enjoyable and effective. It is also flexible: it works with participants of almost any age, and with any size group. It can be done in a museum gallery, in a classroom, or over a video call. And you can build activities, and all sort of sensory experiences, into this format.

Still, I find myself very interested in other approaches, and a number of Museum Questions posts have explored alternate approaches to talking about objects, or using objects to spark conversation. These include: 

Program Design: Using a Reflective Practice Cycle

The Reflective Practice Cycle is my go-to approach for planning a program of any type, for any audience. It starts by asking you to define your goals for participants, and then takes you through the process of aligning your program to give it the best shot of approving these goals. It also helps guide you through embedding evaluation, and improving programs over time.

Here are some resources to get started with this program planning methodology:

Museum Questions blog post on Reflective Practice – Read this blog post for an overview of this program planning approach.

Presentation on The Reflective Practice Cycle – This is a presentation I gave at the Small Museums Association Conference in 2024

Worksheet – Use this worksheet to plan a program using these steps (the PDF version. This version is editable. And if you want, here is a model of a completed worksheet, for reference.

From the Museum Questions Blog

Some of my blog posts exploring museum education are among my top-read posts, with tens of thousands of views to date. Here are the most-read blog posts in this category:

Why Should Schools Visit Museums?

A current project of mine calls for a very specific justification of school visits to museums. I believe strongly that school groups should visit museums, and that museums should provide great programs for these groups, despite the fact that the these visits are time-consuming (for schools as well as museums) and expensive. But this project is leading me to…

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What does a museum educator do? (And do we need them?)

A few weeks ago, a colleague told me that she is optimistic that her museum is becoming a truly educational institution. “And when that happens,” she said, “we’ll put ourselves out of business.” In other words, the purpose of a museum’s education department is to help keep the institution focused on its educational goals. In…

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Schools and Museums: Goals for Students

This week, I am beginning the process of reflecting on the past 25 posts about field trips. In this post, I am interested in goals and value: How do the many contributors to Museum Questions answer the question, “Why should school groups visit museums?” What do their answers tell us about the current state of museums, museum education, and school field…

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What is engagement, and when is it meaningful?

In a recent post, I noted that museums seem to be shifting from education to engagement. I must admit that “engagement” has always seemed to me to be an ambiguous term, representing a reluctance to ask visitors to involve themselves with challenging content, and opening up the museum to any experience necessary to keep people…

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