Understanding How Teachers Use the National Portrait Gallery’s Expanding the Roles of Women Curriculum Guide
Client: National Portrait Gallery | Location: Washington, DC | Funding: Catherine and Michael Podell
We assessed the usability and classroom application of the National Portrait Gallery’s Expanding Roles of Women curriculum guide, which uses portraiture to engage students in US women’s history.
OVERVIEW
In 2022, we partnered with the National Portrait Gallery to assess the usability and classroom application of the Portrait Gallery‘s new Expanding Roles of Women Curriculum Guide, which uses portraiture as a way to teach US women’s history. The two-part study sought to understand the museum’s curriculum in use—i.e., how US middle school history teachers from across the country navigated and used the guide in their classrooms.
Our evaluation dovetailed with a broader nationwide effort to integrate more women’s history into school curricula. Museums serve as a pivotal source for teachers working toward creating more inclusive histories. At the same time, teachers often face obstacles in incorporating marginalized histories, such as recent bans on critical race theory.
APPROACH
We designed a two-part evaluation:
A usability study: in-depth remote interviews with US history middle school teachers.
A classroom application study: a mixed-method approach that included a diary study, interviews, and a student activity.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
We found that the Portrait Gallery’s curriculum guide was an incredibly robust and useful resource to help history educators use portraiture to fill gaps in content and contextualize their standard curriculum in powerful ways. With pre-researched and pre-organized resources, lesson preparation and implementation were significantly easy; educators found a multitude of ways to integrate the guide into their curriculum.
Additionally, the guide filled a need for teachers: offering a more inclusive history and using fun, interactive activities to engage students in history. Teachers gravitated toward resources that offered concrete pedagogical strategies and activities for critical analysis of portraiture. Students responded well to the guide’s lessons, taking away several key messages from the curriculum, actively engaging with women’s history, and enjoying the guide’s hands-on activities.
The study helped affirm the Portrait Gallery’s instincts: that teachers are interested in using portraiture to teach women’s history and need robust, well-organized resources to effectively integrate these lessons into their structured curricula and limited class time. With the study, the Portrait Gallery also identified areas to improve usability (such as navigation links) and opportunities to strengthen the guide by providing reference tools to help teachers facilitate effective and thoughtful conversations about racism. During reflections with other Smithsonian educators, the Portrait Gallery and their colleagues discussed strategic methods for broadening the reach of their sources.
