The Unexpected Ways I Use My Museum Education Skills as a Researcher
In light of recent posts about museum workers leaving the field (like this one from Seema Rao and this one from Paul Bowers), I’ve been inspired to write about my own recent career transition from museum education to research and consulting. My hope is that these ideas resonate with any museum educator, or really anybody considering work in another field, who feels uncertain about articulating how their skills can transfer to another profession.
Before starting at Kera Collective full time, I spent about 10 years as a freelance museum educator, cobbling together several teaching gigs with different art museums. An average day would take me from leading a kindergarten field trip in the morning, crosstown to a café to do some research and administrative tasks, then I might teach an afterschool program for teens and jump back on the train to facilitate teacher professional development in the evening. I never expected to make the jump from museum education to consulting, but the appeal of extending my interest in learning about all different types of people to facilitating organizational learning experiences spoke to me and I went for it!
I realize more and more everyday that I developed some unexpected transferable skills as a museum educator that serve me in my new role as a researcher and consultant, specifically: research distillation skills, facilitation, experimentation, and adaptability and flexibility.
1. Distilling information about objects is a lot like audience research.
One of my favorite aspects of my work as a museum educator was that I was lucky to work at museums with rotating exhibition cycles. I was often tasked with teaching about artworks, artists, and historical content that I had never heard of before. Every couple of weeks I was researching something brand new, enough so that I could speak on it with toddlers, teenagers, members of the general public, and everyone in between. I developed skills around not just learning new content, but viewing it through the lens of the “so what?” What are the key themes and takeaways from this body of work? Why is it important for audiences to know this? What information should I tell people, and what should I let them discover for themselves? In my current work, the content has shifted, but the essential work of distilling relevant information is similar. What will help clients make future decisions about an exhibition, program, or initiative? How can I help them cut through the noise?
2. Facilitating conversations about art is very similar to facilitating focus groups and interviews.
Of course the main aspect of my work as a museum educator was the teaching itself. This required a knowledge of theories of learning: How do audiences learn differently? How will I craft open-ended questions that are truly open-ended, and that convey a genuine curiosity about visitors’ responses? How do I create a sense of safety, often with people I’ll meet once and never again, in order to facilitate the level of vulnerability required to achieve this type of learning? Now, as I design survey, interview and focus group questions, I call on these facilitation skills around asking authentic questions and developing rapport in order to make sure research participants feel respected, and that the data that comes from these conversations is rich and actionable.
3. Consulting and education both require adaptability and flexibility.
I can’t tell you how many times I got to the museum in the morning and found out I was teaching an entirely different grade, or the artwork I wanted to teach wasn’t on view, or the sketching materials I was expecting to be there weren’t. No problem! We adapt. And almost always, the adaptations I made on the spot served as some of my most memorable and exciting teaching moments. This is true in research and consulting as well; in fact one of Kera’s values is “adaptability amid complexity.” We understand implicitly that when working collaboratively with others there are bound to be reasons we’ll need to shift our approach as needs and circumstances change. In both museum education and consulting, our adaptations are always made with visitors’ interests at heart.
4. Research requires experimentation, just like teaching.
The first time I taught a new exhibition was always an experiment. No matter how much prior research I did, or how much I knew about an audience, there was always a period of trial and error before I arrived at the best wording of a question, or the best ordering of content, or the perfect in-gallery activity to supplement dialogic learning. As an educator, I quickly learned to embrace this type of iterative course correction as a necessary and inherent quality of education. This ability to embrace experimentation serves me as a researcher to be attuned to when an interview question may not be landing exactly as I imagined it might and to make adjustments on the spot. Or when a survey question is asking for data we may not actually need. These small adjustments help me improve for next time, and remind me that no process or product is ever perfect the first time around. The evaluation I did on my own teaching helped me see the value of ongoing self-assessment; being able to see the benefit of constant adjustments in my teaching helps me today to see the same benefit (and capacity for) perpetual improvement. Without this, I would not be the educator, researcher, and person I am today.
When I stopped teaching, a part of me felt I was turning my back on my students. I think a lot of museum professionals feel similarly if they leave the field. But the research and consulting I do now helps me see that there’s lots of ways to support museum audiences, and people in general. What are you good at? What do you actually like doing? Where else might those skills be useful and valued? You might find that the skills you use daily in your museum work might turn up in other unexpected places.
