Curating Colonialism: A Study of Practices in History Education for Young Children in California History Museums

• In Event: 63.058 - Reassessments of Power, Ideologies, and Praxis: Toward a More Critical Elementary Education

Abstract

Objectives and Research Questions
In California, field trips to the state’s twenty-one missions to learn about the state’s colonial history are a tradition for fourth graders. Mission San Juan Capistrano alone sees 74,000 fourth graders each year (Mission Handbook, 2015). The missions of California are in good company with other historic sites that have become school field trip destinations designed to educate the public about American colonial history, including Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts. These school field trips sites are also sites of great suffering in the past, including violence, slavery, and mass death. Through this study, I study how museum educators at California missions explore the difficult history of these sites with young children. How do museum-based educators design field trip programs about colonization? How do they address the violence embedded in this time period, if at all?

Theory
This study brings broad theories of public history on colonial America (Gable, Handler, & Lawson, 1992) and analyses of issues in museum curation and education (McCracken, 2003; Willinsky, 1998) into conversation with theory on the nature of elementary education in museum settings (Anderson, Piscitelli, & Everett, 2008; Filene, 2010; Jensen, 1994) to examine the unique challenges of teaching young children about difficult histories at historic sites.

Methods/Sources
Using purposeful sampling (Marshall, 1996), I selected three museum sites that were well-resourced, employed education staff, and served as popular fourth grade field trip destinations. I made between three and five visits to each museum between 2014 and 2017, conducted a total of thirteen semi-structured interviews with education staff, and observed a total of three field trip programs at each site. I conducted focus groups and historical narrative assessments with a total of 250 students before and after each field trip. Interview transcripts, observational field notes, and student assessments make up the primary data for this study.

Findings
Results reveal that teaching young children about difficult histories proves challenging for museum educators. Museum educators have a variety of responses to these challenges, including avoidance, ambivalence, and direct engagement. I analyze each of these responses and their effects on student learning, as well as the reasoning behind these pedagogical approaches through close analysis of transcripts and observational notes. I argue that program design in museums is often motivated by a combination of the broader socio-political climate of the local region, and marketability and financial sustainability for the museum’s operations. In other words, the museums’ dependent relationship with students-as-consumers often shapes their framing of history.

Significance
This study addresses broader questions raised in designing educational history programming for young children that deals with conflicted histories, and invites museums and historic sites like these to more deeply consider the education of their youngest visitors. Further, it raises critical questions about how the student-as-consumer shapes the construction of historical narratives, which have broader implications for the role of history in consumer-driven educational settings.

Author

• Harper Keenan, Stanford University