Understanding what teachers gain from professional development at historic sites

Abstract

Despite decades of formal work with teachers, little is known about what they gain from professional development at and with historic sites. This article presents the first data-set from a 3-year Institute for Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant project designed to develop a broad-based assessment for understanding what teachers learn in historic site-based professional development. The centerpiece of this project is an assessment tool based in Q methodology. This round of study focuses on the pre-post Q sorts and interviews of 29 teachers in a history-focused institute regarding how they see their work at historic sites affecting their professional development. Contrary to advocates' assertions, results indicate that only a small number of participants specifically set out to seek historical disciplinary expertise and analysis, while greater emphasis was placed on working with content-area peers, developing pedagogical practices, and the power of place.

What Teachers Retain From Historic Site-Based Professional Development

“…The present study focused on how the participants perceived their HSBPD experience from pre-sort at the start of the institute (A), to the post-sort at institute's end (B), to the post-post sort administered 6 months later, when teachers were back in their classrooms (C). The factors that emerged in this (ABC) data vary from those in the pre/post data (AB) (Baron, Sklarwitz, Bang, & Shatara, 2019). While many distinguishing statements from (AB) rank as +6 or −6, many (ABC) statements rank between +3 and −3, offering a more sober view of what teachers retained from HSBPD, rather than what is exciting about being at the historic site (see Table 3).…”

“…Q-method is used more frequently in political science and public health studies than in education, so we acknowledge that readers might require more elaboration about how Q works, the concourse development, validation process, and procedures for implementation. A fuller description of all of these elements is available in the first paper reporting on this project (Baron, Sklarwitz, Bang, & Shatara, 2019) and on the Project Website: www.teacherinsites.org/.…”

Hidden in plain sight: museum educators’ role in teacher professional development

“…Q-sorts were administered on the first day of the institute prior to any instruction in the institute, and on the final day after all the sessions were completed. Full description of Q-methodology, its history and process, as well as concourse development is available in the first paper in this series (Baron et al 2019) and the project website (https://www.teacherinsites.org/), both of which are Open Access.…”

“…Prioritizing teachers' professional needs represented a significant shift in how the MEs approached this work (cf., Baron et al 2019;Cooper et al 2018). As did grounding the evaluation tool in professional standards established by teacher professional accreditation and affinity groups.…”

Historical experiences: A framework for encountering complex historical sources

“…Although history education should enable students and educators to handle these sources competently, we know little about the actual effects that engaging with historic sites and eyewitnesses of the past have on learners, besides some first hints on the particularity of these sources (Baron, 2013;Baron et al, 2019;Bertram et al, 2017;Savenije, 2016). Consequently, studies on the effectiveness of these immediate experiences with the complex sources on learning processes are needed.…”