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Supporting Family Learning; Emerging Research, Strategies, and Tools
- 1. Supporting Family Learning Emerging Research, Strategies, and Tools Mary Kay Cunningham Rowanne Henry Jason Porter Sarah Watkins
- 2. The LIFE Center Lifelong and Lifewide Learning Diagram
- 3. What is family learning? • Time together (fun!) • Social interaction • Collaborative • Engagement vs. basic participation • Intergenerational group of 2+ people • Shared backgrounds • Lifetime of learning (concepts, facts, attitudes, beliefs, etc.) • Customized learning (members understand group’s learning styles, strengths, weaknesses)
- 4. How can we support learning for this key group of visitors?
- 5. Why families visit? • Most seeking “educational opportunity” • Anticipation/expectation of entertainment • FUN together = learning (espec. true for families) • Learning = social interaction > facts • Self-directed (based on preferences & schedule)
- 6. www.familylearningforum.org Screen Shot 2013-04-26 at 9.09.21 PM
- 7. Facilitating Family Groups • Respect knowledge/experience of families • Observe & respond to roles within group • Greetings are KEY (Adults are ‘gatekeepers’!) • Encourage collaboration (challenges) & conversation • Model questioning & support strategies (“wh-questions”) • Adults as co-explorers (= learning partners ≠ teachers/observers) • Extend learning to home environment (car ride, online, etc.) • Prepare to get out of the way! (intellectually & physically) Pattison & Dierking, 2012 Journal of Museum Education Zimmerman, 2012 Dimensions
- 8. Observable Adult Roles in Families • Player • Facilitator • Interpreter • Supervisor • Student of the child • Co-learner Boston Children’s Museum Adult Child Inventory (ACII)
- 10. What lessons are here about how family groups want to engage?
- 11. Prototype Family Learning Strategies “Does this idea suck?” • Iterative & Quick • Minimum viable product • There are no mistakes in a prototype (we learn more from our mistakes than what works) • Testing ≠ answers (Testing = better questions!)
- 12. 4 Best Practices for Family Learning By Rowanne Henry, PhD rowannehenry@gmail.com twitter: @rowannehenry #familylearning
- 14. Noah’s Ark Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles museumstories.com
- 15. Noah’s Ark Family Visitor Evaluation • What are the main messages family visitors takeaway from their Noah’s Ark experience? • How are family visitors accessing these messages? museumstories.com
- 16. Who are Family Visitors? museumstories.com
- 17. Family Visitors in Action museumstories.com
- 18. 4 Best Practices for Families 1. Give families options museumstories.com
- 19. Options: Multiple Modalities museumstories.com Noah’s Ark Exhibition, Skirball L.
- 20. Options: Educational Spaces museumstories.com Railroad Exhibition’s Ed Gallery Railroad Exhibition The Quest for a Railroad Across America, The Huntington
- 21. Options: Accessible Exhibition Features museumstories.com Ancient Sicily, Getty Villa
- 22. Options: On-Demand Gallery Hosts Futbol: The Beautiful Game, LACMA museumstories.com
- 23. 4 Best Practices for Families 1. Offer families options 2. Make the setting work for you museumstories.com
- 24. The museum environment is always saying something…. museumstories.com …even when you are not.
- 25. Setting: What does this say? museumstories.com
- 26. Setting: look closely The Life of Art, Getty Museum museumstories.com
- 27. Setting: Families + Educator Dialogue Look Together, Hammer Museum museumstories.com
- 28. Setting: Child + Educator Dialogue Look Together, Hammer Museum museumstories.com
- 29. 4 Best Practices for Families 1. Offer families options 2. Make the setting work for you 3. Communicate the big picture museumstories.com
- 30. Big Picture: Prep families for learning museumstories.com Noah’s Ark Orientation Talk
- 31. Big Picture: Group Discussions Look Together, Hammer Museum museumstories.com
- 32. 4 Best Practices for Families 1. Offer families options 2. Make the setting work for you 3. Communicate the big picture 4. Provide opportunities for reflection museumstories.com
- 33. Reflect: Formal Evaluation museumstories.com “The survey really got us thinking.” Noah’s Ark Family Visitor
- 34. Reflect: Informal Conversations museumstories.com
- 35. Reflect: Embedded Evaluation Family Dynamic, LACMA museumstories.com
- 36. Conclusion 1. Offer families options 2. Make the setting work for you 3. Communicate the big picture 4. Provide opportunities for reflection museumstories.com
- 37. Supporting Intergenerational & Family Learning– WMA 2014 Jason Porter, Associate Director of Education, Skirball Cultural Center jporter@skirball.org #porterlyle 310-440-4746
- 38. Agenda 1. Shifting from a programmatic model to family learning focus 2. A rationale for making this shift 3. Tools and resources on family learning 4. “Keys” to shifting staff
- 39. Noah’s Ark at the Skirball
- 40. The Evolution of Family Learning in Noah’s Ark
- 41. The value of values.
- 42. The process (SSUPR, aka SUPER!) 1. Visitor study and its findings (Study) 2. Sharing meaningful data (Share) 3. Utilize resources (Utilize) 4. Prioritize attainable steps (Priority setting) 5. Instituting a process for reflection (Reflect) Learning about Family Learning
- 43. Putting SSUPR into Practice: Study and Share - Some programs are less effective than others - Families were not aware that the galleries were a learning space - Staff reluctance - Program clarity around learning
- 44. Putting SSUPR into Practice: Utilizing Family Learning Resources • Exploring Staff Facilitation that Supports Family Learning, JME, Spring 2012 • Boston Children’s Museum Adult Child Interaction Inventory • Conner Prairie Opening Doors video series • Family Learning Forum • NISE Team-Based Inquiry Guide (Nanoscale Informal Science Education)
- 45. Putting SSUPR into Practice: : Prioritizing 1. Training 2. Adapting existing programs 3. Developing new programs
- 46. Putting SSUPR into Practice: Reflective Practice 1. Staff observations of families 2. Program evaluations using video and observation 3. Reflective practice
- 47. Keys to Transforming Staff to Support Family Learning * Clarify learning * Observe and listen * A spirit of inquiry * Define what makes you unique * Make yourselves experts * Look to the field * Reflect on your work
- 48. What are your strategies?
- 49. Engage Families Looking at family programs in a new light A project of the USS Constitution Museum, Boston
- 50. Family Programs Engaging All Ages Facilitation Environment Program Design Program Topic
- 51. Program Topic When selecting topics for family programs consider: t Distinctiveness t Personal relevance
- 52. Program Design To enhance family engagement design programs that are: • Fun • Multi-modal • Multi-user • Multi-outcome
- 53. Environment Family engagement is enhanced when the physical environment is: • Comfortable for all • Multi- Sided • Without too many distractions
- 54. Facilitation Facilitators engaging families should: • Be welcoming and encouraging • Consciously and continually engage adults • Convey content in concise & accessible ways • Be nimble • Have fun!
- 55. Family Programs Engaging All Ages • Build connections • Make memories • Support life long learning • Expand audiences • Encourage repeat visitation • Strengthen communities • Generate revenue
- 56. Utilizing Video as Professional & Programmatic Development Tool Remember: videos are most successful when used as a learning tool for the observer (self-reflection) rather than as an assessment of those in video!
- 57. Video Reflection Tool: Visitor group: What did you notice about visitor group? (interaction?, engagement?) Role of Adult: How were they involved/participating? Role? (observing vs. co-learner?) Facilitator: How did educator help/hinder engagement? Overall: What worked well? What would you do differently?
- 58. We have resources for you!
- 59. Questions?? Mary Kay Cunningham marykay@visitordialogue.com Rowanne Henry rowannehenry@gmail.com Jason Porter jporter@skirball.org Sarah Watkins swatkins@ussconstitutionmuseum.org
Notas do Editor
- Rowanne Henry – independent evaluator from Museum Stories Consulting & Blogger (LA) Jason Porter – Associate Director of Education, Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles Sarah Watkins – Director of Collections and Learning, USS Constitution Museum - Boston MKC- Past 20 years in field & my work is focused on staff & volunteer professional development and institutional planning that improves the visitor learning experience Including. I first started thinking about what makes family learning different around 2004 after I had published my book, The Interpreter’s Training Manual for Museums. I was spending a lot of time doing staff training on how to engage visitors in learning, but the strategies to engage families seemed different, nuanced. In 2006 I was invited to work with Oregon Museum of Science and Industry on an NSF funded exhibit called access algebra that focused on family learning around math. This focused my thinking and started the process of developing new strategies for training staff to work with family groups. Who is here? (educators, evaluators, exhibit developers, management, ?? What disciplines or institutions are represented? (Art, History, Natural History, Science, Gardens, Zoos, Children’s, others?) How many have done research or evaluation to support your plans/efforts around family planning? ----- Meeting Notes (10/6/14 09:18) ----- add trainers of staff childrens museums aquaria
- WHY SHOULD MUSEUMS CARE ABOUT FAMILIES? Beyond fact that some studies estimate between 60-70% of all museum visitors come in family/intergenerational groups Visiting museums as a child with family correlates more directly with adult visitation than any other childhood experiences (e.g. field trips) Museums support life long learners – people that value learning are people that are connected to our institutions BUILDING FUTURE LEARNERS AND ADVOCATES
- What makes this unique? What does it look like? TAKE INPUT FROM AUDIENCE? Where we learn to be life-long learners Family Learning = Learning that families engage in over their lifetimes (facts, concepts,& shifts in attitudes, beliefs, etc.)
- 2014 Left Coast Press More than just working on programs that we call FAMILY PROGRAMS that tend to serve children, what is unique about family audiences. ALSO:: Shaffer, Sharon. (2014). Engaging Young Children in Museums. (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press).
- Why Family Learning is Important? Lynn Dierking FamilyLearningForum.com Respecting their choices/time as a family ----- Meeting Notes (10/6/14 09:18) ----- time schedule
- Amazing resource USS Constitution – Work/website focused on designing exhibits and writing labels to be family-friendly Just started another research project with a focus on programming to support family learning
- MORE OF A SPECIFIC FOCUS ON FACILITATING for FAMILY GROUPS Scott Pattison & Lynn Dierking Exploring Staff Facilitation that Supports Family Learning Heather Toomey Zimmerman “How New Family Learning Research Can Inform Innovative Programming” Everyone is given a role to be involved ----- Meeting Notes (10/6/14 09:18) ----- Included in resource list for you
- Player - adult plays independently or with the child – either child or adult may initiate the play -- an adult having fun in the museum, being playful, just like a child Facilitator - a non-verbal role where the adul Scaffolds, models, monitors child’s frustration, asks or answers questions, etc. Interpreter- the caregiver uses verbal language to reinforce and cue the child Supervisor- the adult’s main goal is to monitor the child’s safety and interaction with others Student of the child - Observes child while thinking about their development, progress, needs, etc. Plans for making connections to museum experience (interview) Co-learner -Works collaboratively to solve a problem, relying in part on child’s thinking to stimulate adult’s thinking, through playing adult is reminded of concepts and skills he/she may have forgotten
- Staff Training Tools! What lessons are in
- Visitors as contributors, collaborators, co-creators Over the last twenty years, audiences for museums, galleries, and performing arts institutions have decreased, and the audiences that remain are older and whiter than the overall population. Cultural institutions argue that their programs provide unique cultural and civic value, but increasingly people have turned to other sources for entertainment, learning, and dialogue. They share their artwork, music, and stories with each other on the Web. They participate in politics and volunteer in record numbers. They even read more. But they don’t attend museum exhibits and performances like they used to. {excerpt from opening of The Participatory Museum] READ For FREE! www.participatorymuseum.org/read/
- I’ve observed family visitors from a variety of perspectives over the years. I’ve worked as an art museum educator, and I’m currently an museum evaluator, a museum blogger, and the mother of two school-age children.
- 2. I launched my blog Museum Stories in 2011 with a mission to encourage parents to visit art and cultural museums with their children. Since then, I’ve observed over 100 museum offerings in Los Angeles, often times with my children and their peers. Today, I’m presenting a few Best Practices for Families based on these observation.
- 3. And the findings of an evaluation I conducted with Jason Porter at Noah’s Ark, the Skirball’s interactive family gallery. The Skirball asked me to design a study to evaluate the exhibition’s educational goals for family visitors.
- 4. Specifically, they wanted to know what messages families were taking away from the exhibit, and how they were accessing the messages. The exhibition’s educational messages come from Noah’s Ark story narrative, such as the importance of caretaking and working together to survive the storm, and hope for the future.
- 5. Family visitors are diverse in terms of their ages, their educational levels, their learning style preferences. This is the kind of picture we’d all love to see of family visitors…But in reality if often doesn’t look that pretty.
- 6. Negotiating the museum environment with children can be challenging. Busy parents and caretakers are constantly pulled in different directions by their children’s needs (they’re hungry, thirsty, etc.) and their short attention spans.
- 7. For all these reasons, families need options, my best practice #1.
- 8. One of the most successful aspects of Noah’s Ark is that gives families lots of options for engagement… interactive features, staff facilitated experiences, and hands-on activities. Our research showed that these options not only promoted engagement, but also learning. We found that the more families heard and experienced educational messages during their visit, the more takeaway messages they reported after their visit. But how can you incorporate options like this into a not so kid-friendly art museum setting?
- 9. One of the best examples I’ve seen is this educational gallery space at the Huntington. This educational gallery pictured on the right, was part of an exhibition on railroads. It gave families a welcome reprieve from what was otherwise a text-heavy, adult-focused exhibition (pictured on the left) containing 200 historical documents and photos. Touchable railroad tracks and ties, and interactives at different heights engaged children and adults as you can see.
- 10. Even offering a single exhibition feature or object at a child’s eye level can make a big difference for families. In the Getty Villa exhibition about Ancient Sicily, my 9 yr old discovered an iPad that compelled him to look closely at rare coin details. The station also included magnifying glasses that appealed to a father and his two teenage sons who used them to look at other objects.
- 11. Gallery hosts, like the ones you see in Science and Natural History Museums, are great, but underutilized, options for art museum visitors. I spotted educators like this one, at a LACMA family Day, stationed in front of works of art to engage families on-demand. Unlike guided tours that have a fixed beginning and end, “on demand” facilitation enables busy families to participate when and where they chose, and to ask questions as they arise.
- 12. My second Best Practice for Families is: Make the museum setting work for you. My training as a cultural anthropologist has made me keenly aware of how much the social and physical context of a museum can impact the visitor experience. In terms of family learning, the museum’s setting can help or hinder your educational goals. Always keep in mind…
- 13. The museum environment is always saying something….even when are not
- 14. For ADULTS, large expansive galleries packed with beautiful objects like this can be awe-inspiring. But for FAMILIES, they can be difficult and overwhelming, especially for those with young active children who love to explore open spaces.
- 15. By contrast, this small Getty Center exhibition comprised of only 4 objects beckons visitors to stop, sit down, and look closely. This exhibition space successfully communicates the museum’s educational philosophy which is less is more, when it comes to looking at art.
- 16. A new family tour at the Hammer Museum, called Look Together, illustrates how the physical layout of a gallery can impact social interactions. The first gallery stop promoted a group-wide discussion. Families gathered around the circular object, and both adults sand children participated in the conversation.
- 17. The second gallery stop had different results. The art object was against the wall in the corner of the gallery. So not everyone could see each other or the object clearly, and the tour dialogue narrowed to a conversation between only the educator and 4 of the children.
- 18. My Third Best Practice for Families is Communicate the Big Picture – think here - what is the main thing you want families to learn or takeaway, and then make sure you communicate it in a clear way. In our Noah’s Ark study, we found that parents were eager to facilitate their children’s learning, however, they weren’t aware of the exhibition’s learning opportunities.
- 19. The Noah’s Ark orientation gallery provides an ideal space for introducing the exhibition’s educational themes to families. Although, we observed that not all the educators consistently introduced the main messages in their orientation talks. Something Jason will discuss in a minute.
- 20. In the art museum setting, group discussions are a great way to convey the big picture. In the Look Together program, the educator started the tour with a casual discussion in which he clearly stated his educational goals which was , (demonstrating the rewards of looking closely and responding to a work of art before you read the wall label). Then he ended the tour with a discussion – giving families important time for reflection.
- 21. Which brings me to my final best practice provide opportunities for family visitor reflection. As museums experiment with new ways to engage families, it’s important to talk to families to see if these new initiatives meet their needs, and match their expectations. In our Noah’s Ark research, families welcomed the opportunity to give feedback about their visit.
- 22. In fact, several parents said that the evaluation experience was the most memorable part of their visit. According to one family, “the survey really got us thinking.” Our research methods included: a family pre & post-visit activity, interviews, as well as gallery observations.
- 23. In addition to formal evaluation, informal conversations can be a good way to get visitor feedback. Here I hung-out with some families before a family program started. I learned a lot about the families, including why they were attending the family program.
- 24. A new LACMA initiative, takes reflection one step farther by including it in the program itself. The program brings artists and their children, together with museum family visitors. After making art together, the educator led a discussion in which families had time to ask questions and talk about their experiences.
- To sum it all up: if you offer family visitors options, make the setting work for you, communicate the big picture, and provide opportunities for visitor feedback and reflection….I think you’ll find that small things can made a big difference when it comes to family learning in the museum. Thank you.
- My institution, the Skirball Cultural Center, is a museum and cultural center that explores the intersection between 4000 years of Jewish history and the American democratic experience. We do so through exhibitions, performing arts, and educational programs for students, teachers and families. Noah’s Ark at the Skirball opened in 2007 - a permanent exhibition conceived to support families in learning about particular values that resonate in Jewish and many other cultures (empathy, collaboration, stewardship of the earth, service to the community, etc.). These values informed the exhibition’s design, program development, and staff training, but up until two years ago we had never attempted to measure the degree to which these values were understood by visitors and how they experienced them.
- I’m going to speak to you today about our shift from a programmatic model (create programs we think people will like) to one focused on meeting the needs of families and supporting family learning. (I’ll speak in terms of staff, though I think much of this can also be useful with volunteers and docents). I’ll talk about why we made this shift. Share some tools that you might access to think about the needs of families in your gallery programming. Finally, I’ll provide a list of “keys” for transforming your staff to support family learning in your galleries and programs. Just to get to know you: How many work with gallery staff or gallery volunteers who do interpretive work in your galleries? How many of you manage staff? Great, well, I hope we can discuss later what you’re doing to work with staff who work with families. I suspect there are lots of strategies already in place that would be useful to share with one another.
- Describe Noah’s Ark exhibition: Noah’s Ark is….. • An interactive family destination based on the biblical text (and on flood stories from around the world) and focused on key, universal messages of community, diversity, and taking action to make the world a better place. • The design incorporates hands-on elements (with little didactic text), animal sculptures, kinesthetic puppets, all of which visitors are invited to interact with in groups, as facilitated experiences, or independently. • The galleries are staffed by full-time and part-time gallery educators.
- The concept of families learning together was instrumental in thinking about the exhibition features and staffing plan for Noah’s Ark at the Skirball when it was first developed in the mid 2000s. Since then, our understanding of the audience has changed significantly – you always learn about a place once you’ve seen it in action for awhile. Over that time, we’ve observed, studied, and gathered feedback from visitors The museum education field has also changed, with important work on family learning done at museums and in academic settings, which has expanded our understanding of how families want and expect to engage in the museum experience continues to evolve. Family learning is loosely defined as informal learning in a specific place for the purpose of expanding horizons, learning concepts, or adding to pre-existing knowledge among a distinct social group (the definition of which is constantly changing and often self-defined). As Lynn Dierking says, families are families pretty much if they say they are. And increasingly, the museum is a place families go to spend time together, to escape the mundane, and to learn things in an experiential way.
- As I said, Noah’s Ark was designed to be an immersion in a universal story. Unlike a science or history or art exhibition, the content is not about facts or objects, but about values. But values are not easy to communicate – risk being didactic or overly controlling of the visitor experience. And when you factor in that our exhibition is visited primarily by families with children under seven years old, you can imagine how challenging this might be. We have come to understand, through a process of study, discovery, utilizing resources, setting priorities, and reflecting on family learning, is that we needed to reorient our perspective on the exhibition and connect differently with our visitor if we intended for them to learn about these values. Our previous modes of programming were not all working! Time for a change!
- So, this was the process we followed in transforming our thinking about family learning: Visitor study (Rowanne talked about this) – which messages resonated, how the gallery features supported our messages, and staff impact on the visitor experience. This information set us up for beginning to think about changing our work. Since staff had participated in the evaluation study, the findings meant something to them. We shared results and came up with ideas for action-planning together. We used resources of best practices related to family learning to study up, worked with an outside expert in the field, and learned from other institutions. More about this later. We prioritized a sequence of steps to move forward so that change happened (to avoid the pitfall of doing an evaluation project and having it die on the shelf) and made a year-long calendar of discussions, trainings, and program development. Began a process of reflective practice - focus on documenting our programs (we had become lax in writing up our “artifacts of practice”, collected data from visitors, experimented with a variety of tools for reflection and idea sharing
- Study findings (Rowanne touched on these already) Some of our previous modes of programming were not effectively communicating our messages Staff did not feel comfortable “interrupting” play of guests to “teach” values – for example, showing people our “load up” activity (on the left) where animals are put on the boat and mentioning that the children were collaborating; they did not want to appear be too didactic or to mess with visitors autonomous exploration of the gallery We found that programs were not necessarily set up to encourage family learning - we didn’t clarity for parents what their roles were and how they could facilitate learning for their children – for example, that with close looking and exploration, you could look inside this polar bear and see an example of the damaging effects of global warming on the bear’s habitat.
- We looked at the body of work related to family learning and took advantage of great resources. (All of these are on the one-sheet resource list that we’ll have to distribute.) JME article –kicked the whole process off for us – this article by Scott Pattison and Lynn Dierking really highlighted the way that adults play a crucial role in family learning. It brought us to Mary Kay and began our fundamental shift in thinking. BCM ACII –Tool we used to talk about family visitor “types. We worked a lot with this resource, and it’s played a key role in coming up with new facilitation strategies, developing new programs, and has provided us with useful vocabulary to talk about family visitors. Conner Prairie videos – these videos from the mid-2000s provide a wonderful tool for reflective conversation and looking closely at family learning in the museum context. While Connor Prairie is a different type of institution – an interactive history park where people in bonnets churn butter and feed hay to real horses – we still found many parallels between our visitor experiences and theirs. Led to our own use of video. Family Learning Forum – this on-line resource, initially funded in 2004 by an IMLS grant, aims to improve museum interactions with families across the field. There are on-line articles, examples of “success story” programs, videos, and other resources related to best practice in family learning. Much to share with staff here as a kind of lit-review / best practices resource. NISE Team-Based Inquiry Guide – While not specifically about family learning, this resource was instrumental in helping us think about how a team of educators could approach shifting a paradigm. It outlines a cycle of inquiry approach whose steps: question, investigate, reflect, and improve, has been a great process for us to adapt when thinking about changing our practices of working with visitors. I recommend taking a look at all of these!
- Priorities: program assessment and observation, new programs We trained staff on family learning strategies such as “typing” family visitors, engaging parents as well as children, using “challenge” strategies in programs We identified programs that we were doing – oral storytelling, puppet interactions, percussion jams – and worked to adapt them using family learning strategies. We created new programs that specifically addressed learning goals (example: oral storytelling in the galleries, but we started each story with visitor questions about the values in the stories, we refined a habitat building project to involve more self-selection and less facilitation – more like maker space than a performance)
- Reflective Practice Observations of families and staff in the gallery How families interacted with gallery features and how they responded to staff. It is amazing how much you learn from just paying attention to your visitors As I said earlier, we also began to evaluate programs using a variety of measures: We observed families and “typed” them using the Boston Children’s Museum taxonomy We captured our staff on video and discussed with them (individually and as a group) what visitors were doing, where the opportunities for working differently with families were, and how they could respond when families communicated their needs (in a variety of ways). Our orientation space, for example, is the only place where visitors are seated and listening to direct teaching – we looked very closely at this and discussed how to improve our presentations so that they engaged parents as facilitators of the experience (gave parents tools for helping their children understand our messages in a variety of ways), acknowledge them for bringing their families to a very special place (about values!), and provided them with a preview of the experience (set the stage for their visit). We assessed messages and levels of engagement for programs in our Rainbow Gallery, where we often do art-making or table-top projects (some of which just didn’t cut the mustard for families and others that required reorganizing so that their messages were clearer and more accessible). All of this reflection created for us, a shared desire for improvement and deepened our commitment to working differently with families.
- 1) Hone in on what families will learn in your exhibition or during your program. You may set goals as part of interpretive planning or program development, but have you tested these goals against the visitor experience? 2) Observe and listen to visitors – learn to take cues from them and ask for feedback. 3) Cultivate a spirit of inquiry around family learning: this is an ever-changing body of knowledge - create a community of learners as opposed to a top-down directive. None of this would have worked at the Skirball had we forced it on people. The open space to have epiphanies about family learning theory made a big difference among the staff buy-in and their ability to take it & run with it. 4) Identify what makes your institution or exhibition or program unique for families – sharing this information with families up front will help them and understand what’s available to them – they’re at this special place that affords them the opportunity to do this special thing they can only get here!!!!! –Help staff understand and communicate your uniqueness to families. 5) Build a sense of expertise and goals among staff around family learning (encourage them to become well-versed not only in content but in families! – they may work with physics or fish, but really they work with families), 6) Always look to the broader field for ideas and inspiration. 7) Reflect, reflect, reflect: the consistent conversations about family learning, the refining of programs once we’d tried them out and experimented, the shift in vocabulary from staff-centered to visitor-centered were all a result of reflective practice. This is where the real work happens, so set up authentic tools and systems and make it happen.
- I like to end with this photo because it’s like a revival meeting, and because it strikes me as inspiring. I hope that you’ll consider shifting what you do with your staff if you do work with families, but I don’t maintain that I’ve cornered the market on what works. I’m looking forward to our table conversations so that we can hear from each other.
- Before we move into next SEGMENT – take a minute to capture questions you have for each presenter so we can revisit at the end of the session! Videos are a great TOOL for reflective practice Can be used for training staff (new/old), developing new programs, improving existing programs! Sarah to offer CONTEXT for video, first
- PPT and FamilyLearning Forum.org posting, too