Community-Engaged Museum-Based Learning: Fostering Content Area Literacy Development in Teacher Education

• In Event: Informal Learning Is Not Canceled: Research and Program Implementation During a Global Pandemic

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation shares how pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) engagement at a local art museum supported community engaged scholarship as teachers applied course learning about multimodality and social semiotics (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) to lesson plans they wrote based on art objects for use in local K-12 public schools. While the project was designed to host
an evening of art at the museum in which PSTs shared the content area lesson plans they designed with public school teachers, the event was cancelled due to COVID-19. As a result, we have engaged in Zoom recorded interviews where PSTs introduce their lesson plans and share how they could be enacted by teachers in virtual teaching and learning. PST lesson plans are being uploaded to the museum’s website.

Perspectives and Theory
Museums as sites of learning have been found to assist preservice teachers with development of practices, theory, content knowledge and reflection in support of teaching and learning (Avraamidou, 2014; Gupta & Adams, 2012), yet less is known about the role of museums in supporting content area literacy development. Since museum spaces allow visitors to interact with pieces of art through various modes, this research builds upon understandings of multimodal meaning-making and social semiotics (Bezemer & Kress, 2016; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) as theoretical frame. Specially, multimodal literacies supports’ critical investigation of the historical, sociocultural, and contextual dimensions for understanding and interpreting visual images (Serafini, 2014).

Methods
In Spring 2020, 13 of 19 students enrolled in a secondary content area literacies course gave consent to participate in research. PSTs made multiple museum visits in support of course learning. Data including interviews, field notes, and artifacts like lesson plans and PSTs reflective journal entries about museum learning. Data are part of an ongoing community-university partnership between an art museum located on a university campus and a teacher-educator.

Findings
PSTs were able to use course assignments to draw connections between multimodal texts and social semiotics and apply them to lesson plans that could be used in local schools. As a focal example, Kori (pseudonym) paired a series of texts (Figure 1) for a mathematics lesson to support student learning as they analyzed a work of art to demonstrate their knowledge of geometry competence (solving for areas of squares and circles), use appropriate tools to construct inscribed circles in a given dimension, and create their own original works of art using concentric shapes (I.e. squares, circles, triangles etc.)
Furthermore, recorded Zoom interviews allowed PSTs, like Kori, to reflect upon their lesson plan design process and share how teachers could enact their lessons with students, in light of distance learning due to COVID-19.

Significance
Community-university partnerships, including museums as cites of learning, benefit the educational and outreach initiatives of community partners and teacher education programs. Moreover, learning can travel across space and time, including in times of disruption, from the teacher education classroom, to the museum, to the local community and beyond.

Author

• Matthew R. Deroo, University of Miami