Research Symposium

BIO

Hello! I am a second year majoring in English from Safety Harbor, FL. My interest in this topic of research largely stems from my position as an aftercare instructor at a local Tallahassee K-8 school. I look forward to learning more about the education sphere and nontraditional methods of learning. In addition to my UROP research and participation, I am also a member of the University Honors program, a Service Scholar with the Center for Leadership and Service, and an IDEA Grant recipient for an Honors in the Major thesis that aims to trace female utopianism through medieval and contemporary literature.

Merging Museum & Classroom: Museum Education as a Teacher’s Pedagogy

Abstract

Museum school model of education is a nontraditional learning program that combines the customizability of a typical K-12 classroom setting with the innovation, immersive, and engaging methods of a museum environment. To investigate this type of schooling, this project asks the following question: How does an individual museum schoolteacher strive to bring museums into the teaching process? To further investigate this question, an interview with a middle school teacher was transcribed and coding following grounded theory. This process highlights key terms and processes museum educators use in museum education from their first-hand experiences. Then, this coding was used to create a visual model of how museum education generally occurs and develops. The categories of the model include the processes of customizing learning to students, working within operation cultures, and many others. These categories can be used to inform museum school programs so that teachers and museum staff can combine the strengths of traditional classroom learning and non-traditional museum learning to further engage future students. Further research could investigate the role of museum liaisons and the importance of external partnerships, such as field trip destinations, in the museum schooling sphere.

Keywords: Museum Education, Grounded Theory, Education, Learning