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Beryl,
Some replies after your responses:
On Oct 16, 2007, at 11:14 AM, Beryl Rosenthal wrote:
>
> You open another related strand which I think will be of interest
> to my colleagues in the Grad School of Education - there are times
> when I have said that if a potential museum educator has incredible
> personality/people/facilitating skills (note I did not say
> teaching, as we are informal educators!), I can teach them the
> content. There have been other times when I would sell my soul for
> someone who knew there way around a lab. I will say that I have
> found it harder to teach the interpersonal skills.
Matt says: That may be the prime quandary in almost all informal
education hires. I have had some real arguments over this issue with
colleagues and staff. All things being equal, and they never are,
where I stand on any specific hire depends on other variables the
three chief ones are
1. What am I hiring? Is it floor staff? Someone who supervises and
trains floor staff? An educator to work solely or mainly on an
exhibition? A web site? Is it a contractual position of limited
duration or a permanent hire? If I am hiring someone for a pre-k or
seniors program, I may even opt out of someone with ANY museum or
science center experience and go with a specialist in early childhood
and working with seniors respectively. However someone working on a
content heavy teen or adult program will need more subject knowledge.
2. What skills and people does the institution already have? For
example, if I already have three floor managers and two of those are
content heavy, I might choose someone with more skill or aptitude in
pedagogy or interpersonal skills and vice versa. Or if I am hiring
for a specific project like an exhibition and there is already a
curator/scientist assigned, I will opt again for the person with the
interpersonal skills.
3. A related question is training and supervision. How much time and
staff do you have to mediate the gaps in a new hire's experience. An
institution with a lot of curators/scientists or associated with a
university with same may be able to provide extensive training in
content. A small museum away from such resources may need to demand
more content knowledge from an applicant.
Also, I sometimes imagine the worst that can go horribly wrong and
think about which scenario would be the least horrible. If an
educator will be dealing with experiments in a lab, I also want
someone who knows their way around it and won't make someone sick or
can operate an eye wash station by instinct. So they are a little
shy. I'll keep my eye on them and deal. On the other hand if safety
is less an issue, I don't want someone short tempered who might yell
or argue or, GSD forbid, strike a child, so I might want to go with
the more even tempered, skilled interpreter and if he states a few
wrong facts along the way, again, I'll keep an ear on them and deal.
All that having been said, if you are talking mostly about the
temperament and skills of an entry level floor staff person or even
volunteer, and assuming all realistic candidates for a position had
at least a little bit of both content and interpersonal skills, I
would go with the one strong in interpersonal skills. I just cannot
teach someone to enjoy, or excel at, engaging the public no matter
how much content knowledge they have.
But again, it is rarely that cut-and-dry and all things are never equal.
>
> Perhaps the reason for the crossover seen so often in the science
> museum field is that it is a more difficult set of topics to
> handle. Discussing how the world works can be daunting.
> Incidentally, one of the challenges in the history world is how to
> tie up all the various pieces of the puzzle, eg, social, economic,
> gender, etc.
>
> Beryl
Matt says: I think that is right. Science is a more multi-faceted
field than others. Even professional scientists in Biology sometimes
have difficulty talking to each other due to barriers in language
and gaps in learning. In fact, I could be wrong in this as my
experience is about 15 years out of date, but teachers do not get
certified in "science" do they? Don't they get certified in
chemistry, biology, earth sciences, etc? Not so with history. In fact
it is rare if a teacher can get certified in history at all, it is
usually Social Studies. Which brings me back to LUCY'S point
yesterday when discussing a science educator choosing informal or
formal venues. In other fields there is no other real choice but
informal. The opportunities in history are rare and even if you find
an open position not filled by someone named coach, you may find
yourself teaching geography, economics, civics, or some such and not
history. So as a BA or even MA in history who wants to actually work
with his/her field there are much fewer options which, in my off-the-
cuff opinion is one reason there is more separation between informal
and formal educators in non-science fields. We got no where else to go.
Good discussion, keep it up!
Matthew White
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