Why Curriculum Standards Shouldn’t Be Your Standard
There’s A Better Way to Set Up Your Museum Education Program for Success
When I first started planning museum education programs, I always began in the same place: curriculum standards. Even when I wasn’t necessarily building programs for a public school audience, I still used the curriculum standard formula. For example, I might write “Students will observe the technology of the 19th century; students will understand the significance of agricultural seasons on the rhythm of Southern life; students will identify the key components of the Arts and Crafts Movement.”
Yawn. I think we can all agree that is a terrible way to get inspired. And yet, that’s exactly how I approached program development for years.
It’s really no surprise. Centering our programs around curriculum standards has been, well… the standard practice pretty much since the idea of museum education as a profession began to take shape in the 1980s.
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that our field’s general deference to the power of meeting curriculum standards happened. Both the idea of federally mandated standards in the U.S. and the concept of museum education (professionally speaking) took off in the 1980s. In the same year (1989), the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics published the Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, the first standards-based document for teachers, and the Journal of Museum Education published the first statement of standards for our work, Professional Standards for Museum Educators.
I think, for the most part, the advice was coming from a place of good intentions. It is helpful to have benchmarks that ensure we are orienting our work. After all, a standard is just a measurable goal or outcome. And goals are important. Without them, how can we be sure we’re moving in the right direction?
What’s Not So Great About Focusing on Standards
But, here’s the thing. By starting your planning process with content standards (i.e., measurable outcomes, school-based or not), you are limiting yourself before you’ve even begun because:
You’ll be reducing learning to something observable. By its very nature, learning happens inside someone’s brain, a very personal and mostly unobservable place. Yes, what a person learned can be demonstrated, but it doesn’t have to be demonstrable to be learned. Actually, learning happens in tiny stages, like taking little baby steps up a mountain. Eventually, once you have taken enough steps, your progress will show, but even before others can see how far you’ve gone, the tiny steps you’ve taken count. If you only give a person credit for what they can demonstrate that they’ve learned, you’re discounting all of the tiny learning steps they’ve accomplished.
You’ll be working against your DEAI/B initiatives. This point goes hand in hand with the first one. No one learns at the same rate, and not everyone can demonstrate their knowledge in the same way. Strictly adhering to standards limits your efforts to differentiate learning.
You’ll be immediately comparing your museum’s contribution to someone or something else. A standard is measurable against what it isn’t. A standard that says students will learn about George Washington means they are not learning about George Bush. Having limits around your content is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be where you start.
Content standards are boring and uninspiring. I said what I said.
Want to learn more?
I highly recommend two books by Dr. John Falk on the subject of learning and experience in the museum to help you think about expanding your idea of what it means to learn in a museum. There are many other books on this subject, many by Dr. Falk, but these are my two favorites.
Looking to fill out your educator bookshelf? Check out my growing list of recommendations here!
Value of Museums by John Falk: This book, published in 2022, revolutionized the way I thought about museum work and education in particular; while still full of important research, this book is more readable than your average textbook. Just do yourself a favor and read it already!
Learning from Museums by John Falk and Lynn Dierking: The second edition (2018) is a textbook, full of dense sentences and heavy on research; it’s harder to get through, but worth it!
(BTW, these are affiliate links, which means that if you click on these links ad later make a purchase, I may earn a small commission. Money earned in this way helps pay the fees to keep this site up and running, but will not result in additional charges to you. Read the full disclaimer here.)
Okay, so to be clear, I’m not hating on standards, per se. We should use learning objectives and curriculum standards to offer guidance on the specific content elements of our programs. These elements are like the signposts on the learner’s journey through your program. They are vital, and we’ll unpack them in the next step.
But standards are not the starting place.
We can only determine the standards and objectives once we have a good understanding of both who is participating in the program, and why.
A Better Way to Set Up Your Museum Education Program for Success: Define the Reason and the Audience
The “Why,” or reason, of your program, is inextricably tied to the “Who” of your audience. In addition, your “why” is two-fold: why is the audience coming and why do you want them to?
WHY? Defining Your Reasons
Any good goal-setting coach will tell you to “get clear on your why.” It makes sense, because our why is our motivation. When the going gets tough, the motivated keep going.
In the case of planning unforgettable museum education programs, you have to start with WHY questions:
Why do you want people to come to this program? Why is it important to you?
Why is it important to your institution? Why should the institution pay staff or invest in volunteers to run this program?
Why do people want to come to this program? Why it is worth their time and money?
Essentially, before you even begin spending time and resources on planning any program, you should be able to articulately explain why it matters to all the stakeholders. The reasons why you offer a program can be much broader than what you want the participants to learn. Clarifying the reasons why you offer certain programs can help you tap into the value that your particular institution brings to your community, as Dr. Falk discusses.
When you start program planning by naming the reasons why a program is valuable, you allow yourself to think expansively about the program. You articulate that a museum program can, and should, have intangible benefits that outweigh and outlast any particular “fact” a person might learn.
WHO? Defining the Audience
Who will be participating in a program is as important as why they are there, and the two elements are closely interrelated. Many times, the reason why a program is worth your time is entirely dependent on the audience. At the very least, who the audience is will determine much of the reasoning behind the program in the first place.
For example, if you work at a children’s museum, but want to plan an after-hours event for adults only, you’ll likely need to explain why it is worth the resources incurred by keeping the building open after hours.
Often, we overlook the step of clearly defining the audience because it can seem so obvious. A field trip’s audience is school-children. A lecture’s audience is adults. A community event’s audience is everyone. Done and dusted.
But, if we take a minute to stop and think, there are layers to every audience, and giving a few minutes to consider them will help you in the long run. Think about a field trip, for instance. The obvious audience is the students. But there will also be teachers in attendance, maybe assistants for special needs learners, and possibly parent chaperones. In addition, the field trip will have to be approved by a principal or administrator, so in one respect, they are an audience member to consider, as well.
When you have a fully formed idea in mind of who will be benefiting from and participating in your program, you can include all of their needs in your objectives and plans.
Likewise, when you take the time to clearly state your intended audience, you are more likely to notice gaps in your audience. Who is not represented in your programming? Who is not coming? Answering those harder-to-face questions will not only improve the inclusivity of your programming, but as a responsible museum educator, this is your ethical obligation.
Case Study Example
One of my favorite programs at my former museum was a recurring monthly program for homeschoolers. Each month we planned a new lesson and set of activities, all centering around a yearly theme.
When this program first began, I approached planning my lessons from the standpoint of curriculum standards. Even though the audience was homeschoolers, and therefore the program wasn’t actually limited by testing standards, I still found myself starting with lesson-specific objectives, like “Students will learn about the role of spies in the American Revolution.” While these kinds of objectives are important, starting here meant I was focusing all my energy on this objective. Consequently, I frequently felt frustrated when the lesson took a turn, or if the students just weren’t “into it” that day. Some days, it felt like all they wanted to do was play in the grass on a sunny day, and that was not one of my learning objectives.
But over the years, I realized a better approach. I thought about why this program was important in the first place, and significantly, why the families who attended it felt it was important and worth their investment. I realized that one of the main reasons families attended this monthly program was not necessarily for their students to learn particular facts, but to have an enrichment and socializing opportunity for their homeschooled students. I also began to realize that the students themselves have their own whys. Some of them loved history, while some of them simply loved being out of their own house for a few hours.
When I began to plan my lessons from the perspective of who the audience was and why this program was important, I came up with these more expansive “objectives” as my starting point:
This program will allow homeschoolers an opportunity to learn history in a unique place and with students they may otherwise never spend time with.
This program will allow homeschooling parents a break when all of their children are attending these lessons.
This program will allow me the opportunity to research and explore historical topics outside the boundaries of my museum’s typical interpretation.
This program will allow me to try new methods of teaching and new activities with a smaller audience.
This program will create a consistent monthly income for the education department.
When I approached the program in this way, it allowed me the freedom to relax and meet the students right where they were. On an early spring day, when it’s finally sunny outside after a long winter, maybe the most important thing wasn’t that they knew the ins and outs of Revolutionary spy life. Maybe, we could incorporate a physical activity that somehow related to spy history while also supporting their need to just play outside with friends in a safe and beautiful setting.
Your Next Step
When planning your next program, step back from the standards for a moment and consider why this program matters and who will benefit from it. Use those answers to help you craft broader intentions for the value of the program, before you start listing curriculum standards or learning objectives.
Let’s Plan Your Next Unforgettable Museum Education Program… Together.
Planning an unforgettable program takes time. And I know you’re so, so busy doing all the things. But without a good plan, a good program can fall apart.
That’s why we’re going to walk through planning your program one baby step at a time. All you need is a few minutes each week - no overwhelm here!
Get Started Today
Decide on the program you want to plan. It needs to be something that won’t be happening for at least 3 months because you need to give yourself some time to get this planning thing done right.
Once you’ve chosen your program, spend some time thinking about why this program is important to you, your staff, your site, and your audience. Take 15 minutes to think through the questions presented here and set some high-level guiding goals for the program. If you have a team that will be involved in the planning or implementation of the program, be sure to get their input here.
Questions? Comments? Send me a message here or DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn. I can’t wait to hear what program you’re planning!
Once you can name why this program is worth everyone’s time, you can move on to the specifics of what participants will learn (hello, content standards, my old frenemy). Next time, we’ll explore the best (and least frustrating way) to address content and curriculum standards for your programs.
