The twenty seven participants from Canberra landed in Washington on May 25th, the Saturday night of the National Memorial Day long weekend, a fascinating start to a two week tour that was exhausting, invigorating and incredibly stimulating. The group was made up of twenty museum educators from the national cultural institutions, three administrators from the National Capital Educational Tourism Project (NCETP), the president of the National Capital Attractions, the director of Australian Capital Tourism, ANU’s Professor Harvey Butcher (Director of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics) and Sharon Peoples (Convener of the Museum Education and Heritage Interpretation program).

The take home message for museum education is the move from object centred learning, which is just beginning to take hold here, to equipping teachers and students with learning tools, such as design thinking strategies which appears to increase students’ overall performances, not just in the museum but back at school. There was a strong emphasis on quality programs with small groups often selected on a needs basis. The numbers of unfacilitated student visitors to museums, particularly in Washington, as part of the various state curriculums, are so overwhelming that the cultural institutions have decided that quality rather than quantity is the mantra. As well more often it was teacher, rather than direct student workshops that formed the learning programs.

All of the Canberra participants were required to gather both quantative and qualitative data using programs developed for evaluation on iPads while formally or informally visiting all the museums and cultural institutions. Between the group we interviewed and workshopped with not only the museum educators of the seventeen Smithsonian Institutions in Washington and New York, but many independent museums such as the Newseum, the Holocaust Museum and the Tenement Museum. The group visited memorials such as Arlington National Cemetery and the 9/11 Memorial. Participants also informally visited many of the large art museums in New York. While the data gathered will take some time to evaluate, there is no doubt that museum education in Canberra will lift the benchmark nationally.

Dr Sharon Peoples