Art Museums and Teacher Professional Development: A Randomized Experiment

• In Event: Access, Quality, and Impact in Museums: Exploring Recent Research in Museum Education

Abstract

Art museums have traditionally provided teachers with professional development programs to integrate works of art into other subjects, deepen content knowledge, and improve critical thinking skills. A growing number of art museums also recognize that teaching from works of art has the capacity to improve emotional skills because it requires perspective taking and the exchange of different, sometimes conflicting ideas. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art offers a teacher professional development program that emphasizes how learning from works of art can improve both cognitive and emotional skills. This paper will present the preliminary results of a randomized controlled trial evaluation of this teacher professional development program that took place July, 2014 at Crystal Bridges located in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Fourth through seventh grade teachers of any subject were invited to apply to attend the week-long Teaching from Works of Art professional development program at the museum. Because there was no cost to attend the program, there were more applicants than available space which allowed for a stratified randomization procedure to be employed. The data collected will examine the outcomes of 36 treatment teachers and their students (n ≈ 1080), and 36 control teachers and their students (n ≈ 1080). The data collection instruments will measure the following:
· Does participating in art museum professional development
o result in teaching from works of visual art in the classroom?
o increase teacher historical and artistic knowledge?
o improve teacher critical thinking skills?
o improve teacher emotional intelligence?
· As a result of their teacher participating in art museum based professional development
o does student historical and artistic knowledge increase?
o do student critical thinking skills improve?
o does student emotional intelligence improve?
Data collection instruments will include a teacher and student survey and will be administered in November 2014. The teacher survey will collect general information about the rate and fidelity of implementing the skills and strategies from the professional development session and questions designed to assess historical and artistic knowledge. Students will be administered a survey with age appropriate questions designed to assess historical and artistic knowledge. Both teacher and student critical thinking skills will be assessed using an instrument developed by Luke, Stein, Foutz and Adams (2007). Emotional intelligence will be measured using the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) and students will be administered the youth version of the MSCEIT. All student data will be analyzed using a hierarchical linear model at the classroom level.

The results of this research will provide much needed guidance for art museum practitioners, K-12 teachers, school administrators, and policy makers. Most teachers throughout the country are required to participate in some form of professional development. However, very little experimental research exists that demonstrates how professional development improves student outcomes. With millions spent by districts each year in professional development, this research will demonstrate the role art museums may have in improving teaching, and therefore student achievement.

Authors

• Anne Kraybill, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

• Alexandra Vasile, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville