Writing Feedback / Essay - Observing & reflecting upon gallery teaching [2]

We need to observe a gallery teaching and write up an essay. Please give me some feedbacks, thanks a lot.

I observed the preschool class field trip which I do my internship in the Texas memorial museum (TMM). TMM locates in UT and display exhibits relate to Texas natural history. The total tour guide lasted for approximately an hour. I checked the tour guide information on TMM website and I found that the tour guide is basically according to grade level. Also, school tours are based on multiple themes from the Science TEKS (Texas essential knowledge and skills). There are two parts in this tour guide-exhibition hall introduction and "talk to scientist". Two different docents, Karen and Kevin , took the responsibility for leading the tour respectively. Their teaching and interactions with the children will be discussed in details in following paragraphs.

As we discussed in the class, each of us has our own big goal-no matter where the tour guide/gallery teaching takes place. These two docents were no exceptional. Based on the observation, both Karen and Kevin's primary goal was similar; they wanted to introduce the content of exhibits in the way that young children can understand without difficulties. Meanwhile, they tried their best to connect their introduction/teaching with the themes from the Science TEKS. I deem that they wanted these children loving the TMM as well.

Since the tour guide is basically according to grade level, as well as the docents' goals behind the tour, both Karen and Kevin spoke mostly to the children in a simple way. They hardly used terminology in their guiding except those they could not avoid. Especially for Karen, she used examples such as "tooth fairy" or the movie "Finding Nemo" to explain dinosaur's habits and how dinosaurs hunt for foods. Such instances make the unfamiliar content more intimate for the children. In addition, Karen did not rush to correct children's answers or label the answer as right or wrong; instead, she listened to children's assumptions and guided them to observe closely from where they started.

In terms of Kevin's teaching, unlike with Karen, he asked more questions but used fewer analogies in his interaction with the children. The questions were really good in stimulating children's thinking. For example, Kevin did not disclose what the fossil is it when inviting the children and parents to touch it. He asked children to guess which part of an animal might the fossil be and why by touching it. He also asked children to predict "what might this animal eat" based on the rough feel of the fossil. These questions helped to elaborate the children's experiences and thoughts.

While Karen and Kevin might not do very well all the time, they still demonstrated how to well interact with young visitors. Particularly, I think they showed that the depth of a tour guide did not necessarily depend on using tons of terminology; on the contrary, visitors' knowledge could be deepened through a docent's questions. How does a docent talk to visitors is really an art in museum teaching. Based on this observation, I found that in what way a docent should talk to visitors; particularly to children at very young age, is a tough mission for most museum docents because they might not have related backgrounds or enough experiences of working with young children. Since the main audience of museums are composed of two major groups-family and school (Falk & Dierking, 1992), it is necessary for docents/ museum teacher/educator to communicate and negotiate with schoolteachers to know how their needs are, in order to give them the best guiding as well as achieve their own goals through all kinds of narratives.

The children participated by listening for most of the time in the first part. Sometimes they asked questions and re-asked questions if they did not get the point of what Karen said. Yet in general, these young children participated passively in this whole process. Karen's teaching seemed not to allow these young visitors have many chances to explore their personal interests. In other words, the individual voice or willingness disappeared.

On the contrary, when the tour moved on to the "talk to scientist" part; which was in charge by Kevin, the children engaged more actively comparing to their previous responses. The "talk to scientist" took place in the paleontology lab, according to the TMM website, is "a unique working laboratory where visitors are encouraged to interact with and ask questions of a paleontologist or lab intern while seeing first-hand how fossils are properly prepared, catalogued, and studied." Such uniqueness enabled these young children to involve in the interaction and conversation with Kevin by touching a real mammoth tooth fossil and observing how Kevin distinguished fossil pieces from sand or other impurities.

Children before age six learned the most through first-hand authentic experiences. These children were all excited about touching the mammoth tooth fossil and seeing Kevin doing his work. They were highly responsive to Kevin's teaching. They kept asking questions with curiosity and tried to assist Kevin to find fossil pieces. The two experiences offered these children a chance to know how paleontology scientists do their work. The motto: "I hear and I forget, I see and I remember, I do and I understand," which from the Boston Children's Museum perfectly describes why the "talk to scientist" part was most effective moment. I would not claim that there was no learning happened when they listened to Karen's teaching; nonetheless, having chances to touch the fossil and watching scientist's working process empowered these young children to ask more meaningful questions-those they raised from the direct experiences. They also had a more concrete picture of what a paleontology scientist's work is. All in all, first-hand experiences play a critical role in enhancing the effectiveness of the tour, whereas listening but without directly interacting with exhibits may limit its effectiveness.

In sum, while they might have the similar goals, the different teaching philosophies and styles of Karen and Kevin showed apparently in their teaching. Although Karen used some intimate examples to connect children's former experiences or knowledge to the exhibits; she seemed to expect more that children listened carefully to her introduction. In other words, Karen indeed wanted these young visitors to engage in their museum visiting, yet she may think the most effective way was to follow her procedures. As such, I would describe her style belongs to the "transmission" type (Pratt, Collins, & Selinger, 2001), which is more teacher-centered and cares if the course objectives can be achieved. However, Kevin's teaching philosophy may want children learning happily. So his style might belong to part of the "development" and some of the "nurturing" type (Pratt, Collins, & Selinger, 2001). I think this may due to the characteristics of his part, which may offer him more freedom to interact with young visitors.

Lastly, In terms of the relationship that Karen and Kevin cultivate with this preschool class, I would say that they tried to set up a cooperative relationship with these young children, even with the teachers and parents. Such relationship may base on their goals of the tour-to engage children in the exhibit contents in an easy and interesting way. This cooperative relationship does not only help they achieve their goals but also make the tour goes more smoothly.

Reference
Falk, J., & Deirking, L. D. (1992). The museum experience. Washington, DC: Whalesback Books.
Pratt, D.D., Collins, J.B., & Selinger, S.J. (2001). Development and use of the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI). Paper presented at the 2001 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA. Retrieved Jan 24, 2011, from teachingperspectives.com/PDF/development1.pdf

Writing Feedback / (the social processes) My teaching philosophy of museum teaching [2]

i need to state my teaching philosophy of museum teaching in one to two pages. Please give me some suggestions. Also, please let me know any grammar errors. Thanks a lot!

My teaching philosophy is informed by Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory, which focuses on the social processes that contribute to cognitive development. It argues that the development of higher forms of thinking is mediated by social interactions (Rogoff, 1990; Wertsch, 1985, 1991). Social interaction is the "active collective activity of a group of people [and]...true learning is created through collaboration" (Davydov, 1993).

Drawing upon socio-cultural perspectives about how knowledge is constructed; to me, learning is not merely gaining new knowledge (Falk & Dierking, 1992). Instead, learning refers to gain new things primarily based on learner's former experience or knowledge through interacting with others. Learning is not only focuses or examines how much a learner understands new materials; rather, is to assist he/she to integrate new knowledge and old experiences together through the process of co-constructing.

Influenced by sociocultural theory; moreover, I believe that learning is not only about individuals, it is social and contextual as well. By contextual I am referring to that learning should situate in context which is meaningful to learners. Based on this premise, the role of teacher in learning is not about how much he/she passes on knowledge to learners. The more important thing is that he/she needs to carefully observe learners' interests and even better to know their backgrounds or former experiences to come up different ways to well support their learning and make it meaningful. Teaching is a science but also an art; in other words, teacher needs to know the goals/objectives as well as keep the flexibility simultaneously.

Additionally, a museum teacher should be aware that not every visitor is familiar with the museum as he/she is, or the same as those frequent visitors. It is crucial for a museum teacher to give visitor some time first to get familiar with the environment and become comfortable. I deem that providing visitors enough time to explore the setting before the teaching starts is good for effective learning.

While I believe that social interaction provides an essential means in the learning process, learning is also a very individual construct. For example, I prefer learning by asking a series of questions. However, others definitely do not learn things in the same way as I do. People grew up in various backgrounds and even came from different cultural backgrounds; hence obviously, how people learn would surely influenced by their backgrounds. A learner may have his/her preference when learning new things-by passively learning to instructors/teachers, by actively engaging in activities, by hands-on interacting with objects, etc. As a teacher, it is pivotal to sense that every individual is not the same, and providing multiple ways to take care of these learning needs is necessary. Encouraging learners to learn in their own way could also be helpful to build their confidence in interacting with exhibits in museums.

In all, in my opinion, being a teacher in the museum means that most time he/she is the more knowledgeable person comparing to the visitors. The background knowledge of work/exhibits displayed in museum enable the museum teacher to bridge the distance between exhibits and visitors. Hence, in the teaching process, a museum teacher in fact acts as a media to help visitors to communicate with exhibits. Yet, because the role of being a mediator, he/she will not impose his/her own thoughts or the so-called "right answers" on visitors. In order to obtain the goal of good museum teaching, a museum teacher needs to be open-minded instead of thinking his/her say is way more important the visitors'. Then the collaboration will bring learning into full play.

Writing Feedback / "early childhood teachers and classrooms" - article reflection [4]

Hi, i need to read an article then reflect on it. Please give me some suggestions and let me know if there are any grammar errors, thanks!

My reflection

To begin with, my two little critiques are about the vagueness showed in the article. First, in their first study (e.g., the free toy choice situation), they asked children to construct an imaginary exciting scene and the descriptions were recorded. Also, "If nothing exciting was described about the scene, the child was asked what was the most exciting thing about the scene." (p. 509) I am wondering what does "exciting" mean here. I think the author should give examples or definition of what is "exciting". Second, when they report the result of first study, they wrote "Moreover, 3 subjects showed no scorable feminine or masculine functions; and 2 subjects who had an equal proportion of masculine and feminine themes were not classified as predominantly masculine or feminine." (p. 511) Since they wanted to know whether children's gender or toy's sex characteristics affect children's play construction, they should clearly pointed out the 3 and 2 subjects in above quotation are girls or boys.

Regardless of the flaws, this research is very interesting because it started from Erikson's (1951, 1963) work, but the authors stated that in Erikson (1951, 1963) and Cramen and Hogan (1975), which replicated Erikson's research, "do not eliminate the possibility that certain types of constructions and themes result from play with boys' toys, and different types of constructions and themes characterize play with girls' toys, regardless of the gender of the child using the toys." (p. 508) In addition to this, the authors proposed that "The use of same-sex toys (and therefore different toys by boys and girls) may represent a confounding factor in studies allowing the children free choice of materials." (p. 508) So they replicated the toys, scoring system and instructions used in Erikson (1951) and Cramen and Hogan (1975), to distinguish sex-typed toy choice from sex-typed play behavior.

Surprisingly, in the free choice situation, they found only the functions were significant related to subjects' sex, which was also presented in Erikson (1951) and Cramen et al. (1975). Neither configurations nor themes were significant related to subjects' sex. Because this finding was contradictory to what Erikson (1951) and Cramen et al. found, the authors should provide more explanation of why they had the different result in free toy choice situation. Additionally, since they recorded children's stories regarding their scenes, I would like to see some qualitative data of the process to know more beyond the statistic numbers.

In the first study (e.g., the free toy choice situation), the authors found that masculine functions and themes are more likely to occur when vehicles are used, but feminine functions and themes may be more likely to appear when a number of pieces of doll furniture are used in the child's play construction (p. 513). However, the authors also pointed out the sex-typed toy preferences in the free choice situation may obscure the importance of the toys in eliciting stereotyped play in either sex. Hence vehicles and dolls and doll furniture were particularly used in the second situation (e.g., limited toy choice situation) as boy's toy and girl's toy, as well as including the blocks as both gender's toy, in order to examine the sex-typed characteristics of children's play are determined by the type of toy used, and not by the child's gender. The experimental evidences indeed supported this hypothesis. They also found that sex differences appear with the neutral toy, the blocks. However, it is a pity that the authors did not provide explanations of this finding.

Based on the findings of two different toy choice situations, the authors proposed conclusions that children tend to avoid cross-gender play may result from the restriction of accessing certain sex-typed of toys rather than their ability of showing cross-gender play. While the subjects in this study were preadolescents, this conclusion still makes me to review my internship experiences of providing children toys and encouraging them to play. "Out of what purpose did I decide what types of toy need to be provided to children?" "Did I ever limited children in my class to certain sex-typed toys?" "Have I interpreted children's play in terms of their gender? How did I view their play?" This conclusion is really worthy for early childhood teachers to think more about how and why they provide toys (especially those for supporting gender appropriate behavior) in their classrooms.

Writing Feedback / Reflection paper-museum tour reflection [2]

Hi all, this is a reflection paper of my tour. Any comments, feedback, or correction of grammar errors are very welcome. :) Please help me to improve more!

With the nurturing perspectives, I designed my tour in a way which can give learners a safety but challenging environment. This environment was designed to help them to learn confidently. In doing this, I proposed many questions to encourage conversation instead of telling them what to believe or what they must to know. My tour outline entirely followed this principle; the questions were designed in an open-ended form to welcome visitors' thoughts without having the pressure of giving correct answers.

In terms of the assumptions regarding visitors revealed in my tour, I think the most apparent one is that I assumed visitors are capable individuals-even they are very young children-they have good ability to appreciate artworks and make contributions to collaborative conversation. This assumption is not only from my professional background, but also from my attempt to break up my impression that "only people who are familiar with art have the ability to appreciate it". Although the intended group in my tour is kindergarteners, this assumption of mine might also for other age groups.

The assumption regarding art and museums is a viewpoint of making these two more friendly and intimate to visitors, especially for those who might have never been to art museums. Personally I always feel art museums are far away from my life, what even worse is that I am fear of being judged by how much I understand the artworks. However, this class constantly challenges my stereotype of art museums; my new recognition forms and underpins this assumption. As for the assumption of culture, while culture is hard and typically only becomes obvious when there is a conflict, I deem that artworks are definitely wonderful media to communicate ideas of culture with visitors. Additionally, artworks also serve as a vehicle to encourage visitors to reflect back on the artworks in terms of their own. Every artist has his/her own background and is slightly or hugely affected by his/her background. The cultural influence has often been transformed by artists into the artworks. Hence, this assumption is in fact a reflection of how important it is to understand the cultural elements in the artwork and what role do docents' and visitors' cultural backgrounds play in interpreting the artworks.

I think the assumptions in my tour were all intentional ones. It might be possible that there were assumptions which were unintentional yet I was not aware of them. To me, it seemed not easy to be conscious of those are unintentional ones. This may be another task for me to be more sensitive to the information.

According to the definition in Stapp (1984), museum literacy includes visual literacy and the ability of independently and effectively using museum resources. My tour is more likely a visual literacy than museum literacy. In my tour I primarily wanted to cultivate visitors' ability of communicating with the visual information (Giorgis, Johnson, Bonomo, Colbert, & al, 1999). While visitors are not allowed to touch artworks by hands, they touch by eyes. All the questions I designed to lead the tour were efforts to fit this purpose. In my opinion, since this is a single tour, maybe it is a little difficult to develop visitors' museum literacy in such a short time. Yet I am still thinking if there are any possibilities to start to develop visitors' museum literacy even in one single visit.

The strongest feature of my tour was to provide visitors as many chances as possible to assist them in expressing their thoughts. Therefore, when I demonstrated it to the class, I was trying to make my tour fit this feature. However, I was too concerned what to teach so that many times I rushed to take the say back. In other words, I cared about the goals of the stop rather than learners' responses. It seemed that I merely kept asking questions yet without assisting the visitors to connect their comments to the artwork. I should remember these questions were for inspiring visitors' ideas rather than merely going through them. I need to be more flexible instead of being rigid in using my questions.

Basically, my tour nicely mirrored my teaching philosophy. I believe learning is a construction through social interaction and allow individuals to learn in their own ways. I tried to create chances to encourage social interaction. Yet, offering personal learning was not so obvious or well considered in my tour design. While I offer the visitors opportunities to speak up their thoughts, primarily the visitors learned in the same way-there was not much individual flavors. This is in fact the hardest part for me to well reflect my teaching philosophy.

In designing the tour, the challenges I gave myself are (1) trying to let the visitors to be the master of their learning and (2) being more flexible. In my demonstration, trying not to intervene too much was a task for me. The main reason of challenging myself particularly in these three aspects is that I do not want to be the powerful person in this process. I want visitors to feel safe and can control their own learning. In addition, I always want to control things which I am not familiar with, for example, arts. Therefore I tried to challenge myself in these ways to learn how to learn with learners.

"Teachers" refer to those who are responsible for teaching learners to learn in particular environments (Schwab, 1973). Art museum educators are responsible for assisting people to learn through resources in art museums. As early as in 1913, American Museum Association has defined museum educators as "interpreter of objects" (Ramsey, 1938). The next step I would pose for myself in the development as a gallery teacher is to learn more about how to become a better media to connect the artworks and visitors, as well as learn how to become a part of the learning community.