From: Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
To: [log in to unmask] and
[log in to unmask],[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Museum education service performance indicators
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 11:35:52
Hi Roland et al
One of the measures of the educational value/use of museums relates to
institutional committment.
We sould begin to firm up some ideas about whether or not all museums
should have specialist museum education officers and if so what
qualifications and experience is required. I have strong ideas about the
level within thew insittution that MEOs should be placed at, and how
this should be compared to curatorial and other postions. Very many
museums have a huge way to go on these extremely basic points, even some
of the national ones, let alone others.
I think it would be fruitful to map out some basic principles about
staff and other resources that museums should be investing in
educational provision before starting on how well those committments
work. That comes next!
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
University of Leicester
Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 11:08:07 +0100
Subject: Museum education service performance indicators
From: Roland Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Reply-to: Roland Jackson <[log in to unmask]>
Well, here's a topic to get the pulses racing, but I have a serious need
for some ideas.
It is clear that Government funding is being increasingly driven by
outcomes and performance against targets. We can confidently anticipate
that this might affect the funding of museum education services.
My question is: If it were up to us, by what performance measures do we
think the educational performance of a museum should be judged?
They will need to be simple, measurable (obviously!) and actually help
to
improve our service.
The trouble is that education or learning is such a complex beast on
which
to perform outcome measures, especially when ours is such an informal
sector and the result of our activities relatively indirect.
There are obvious quantitative measures such as number of booked
educational visits (but that tends to restrict education to the formal
sector).
Mixing more qualitative measures one could survey visitors on their
self-reported satisfaction with the learning opportunities and
educational
services they were offered.
Even more qualitatively one could try to agree the conditions that best
support learning and demonstrate performance in achieving them.
Any ideas? How would you like the educational service of your museum to
be
measured?
Roland
Eilean Hooper-Greenhill
Director
Department of Museum Studies
University of Leicester
103/105 Princess Road East
Leicester LE1 7LG UK
email: [log in to unmask]: http://www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies/
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