But Are They Learning Anything? Assessing Changes in Teachers' Beliefs and Perceptions About Controversial Topics Presented in Historic Site-Based Professional Development

• In Event: 54.064 - Engaging Complex Social and Scientific Issues in Informal Learning Spaces

Abstract

History and social studies serve to explore the full range of the human experience. Doing so at historic sites requires grappling with complex concepts such as cultural exchange, colonialism, imperialism, and others via the spaces and material culture exemplars of these concepts. Accordingly, there is considerable interest in the ways in which exposure to complex historical narratives inform visitors’ beliefs and perceptions about contemporary and historical agents.
Understanding these beliefs and perceptions remains elusive because they are difficult to generalize beyond the unique circumstances offered at particular sites. Quantitative research about historic places is scant for logistical and funding reasons, but, more importantly, the types of questions historic places pose tend to be deeply subjective. From the moment visitors arrive on site, they begin to assign meaning to what they are seeing. Even when the interpretive programming offer nuanced interpretations of the history of these spaces, the degree to which one sees past a simple narrative of, for example, the beautiful home of a wealthy, white family often depends on one’s position relative to it. This encapsulates the essential problem of evaluation at historic sites: If every visitor begins in a different relative position to a host of complex issues, how can you determine the impact of interpretive programming by their visit’s end?
The complexity of this problem is amplified when the purpose of a visit is teacher education: How does programming offered help teachers shift their perspectives relative to that starting position and change classroom practice? In what ways does exploration of these places reinforce dominant narratives or broaden understanding? How can we compare that across multiple professional development programs held at multiple historic sites? Considering the disparity between the composition of a largely white, middle-class, female teaching corps and an increasingly diverse student body, these questions demand answers.
This paper presents results from the first year of a three-year Institute for Museums and Library Services (IMLS) National Leadership Grant to develop a Q-Methodology -based assessment program for museums and historic sites. Q-Methodology is an innovative adaptation of factor analysis designed to be a rigorous, quantitative study of subjectivity which combines the strengths of qualitative and quantitative research traditions to register subtle subjective shifts in individual perceptions. By using this assessment program, researchers were able to obtain both quantifiable data about how teachers’ (n=30) beliefs and perceptions about the complexities of slavery and plantation life changed over the course of a professional development program situated at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and the qualitative data that suggests context and causality.
Results suggest that participants increased their declarative content knowledge about slavery and plantation life, but did not develop significantly more complex understandings of the topics or substantively integrate them into their classroom-based project work. Implications that these findings hold for programming and the need for museum-based assessments of teacher learning will be discussed.

Author

• Christine Baron, Teachers College, Columbia University