Dear All,
GEM is planning to expand its current professional development activities as
the annual conference, national training days and area meetings have proved
very effective and been very successful. Therefore, we are asking you to
comment in a very open-ended way on two quite broad questions. We should
like comments from both experienced and successful museum educators and from
those just starting (and not forgetting those in the middle!). The word
"museum" is used here in a very general way and includes educators who are
not only working in museums and galleries but also those working in science
centres, zoos etc.
A) What makes a good museum educator?
What skills, experiences, knowledge, qualifications etc do they need to
acquire? How relevant is teacher training or a PGCE? How important is
inspiration, motivation, enjoyment etc.
B) How do you make a good museum educator?
Is an intensive one year full time course required? If so, what should be
the syllabus? Or is in-service training better? If so, how much and what
kind of training? Are apprenticeships a good thing? And what about
mentoring? Or are museum educators just born or do you just have to learn
through bitter experience?
Clearly you could write a very long answer to these questions, but at this
moment in time I would appreciate just a few bullet points. You may like to
consider putting your answers in the context of "Inspiring Learning for
All" and think of how GEM could be a better "learning organisation".
Perhaps you know someone who has already got the perfect or very good
answer, or know of an article to which you can refer me. It would be helpful
to know in what type of organisation you work and whereabouts in your career
you are.
I shall summarise all the comments I receive by the end of next week (Friday
25 June) and post it back to the list (without names!)
Many thanks,
John
Dr John Stevenson
Group for Education in Museums
Primrose House
193 Gillingham Road
Gillingham
Kent ME7 4EP
Tel/Fax: 01634 312409
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www.gem.org.uk
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