In general, visitors go to museums to see what might be new and interesting. In other words, visitors are curious. Curiosity, according to psychologists, is an intrinsic motivator — that is, curiosity motivates people to seek and find something. What an opportunity for docents, who thrive on sharing information! The …
The museum was small, and the budget even smaller, when I undertook to write my first docent manual almost twenty years ago. The docents I had recruited all volunteered to “help” in our small town’s first and only museum. Many of the volunteers, and most of the town, had never …
America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was dramatically transformed by new inventions and innovations in daily living and social thought that drastically altered the way we perceived ourselves and our nation’s role in the world. Satirist Mark Twain dubbed this time period “The Gilded Age,” implying there …
Trainers enable people to do something — catch a football, perform heart surgery, ride a bicycle. Educators enable people to know something— the dimensions of a football field, the arterial system, the history of bicycles. All training involves some knowledge imparted before and during training. Therefore, the terms are commonly …
Similarities in the roles of classroom teachers and docents suggest that a review of teacher training programs may provide insights into docent training. Perhaps the best known model of teacher training was developed by Bruce R. Joyce and Beverly Showers. According to these two scholars, staff development programs for teachers …
There is a long history of poets and writers who draw inspiration from the visual arts. Master poets John Keats and Percy Shelley crafted great poems like “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and “Ozymandias,” translating the visual world into poetic language. Using creative writing in the galleries can be an …
One does discover new lands without consenting — to lose sight of by the shore.” (Andre Gide) The safety of “shore” in a docent training Nelson program can often be the security of mastering factual information about a particular museum collection. But what happens when docents move away from the …
During my 27 years of involvement with museums and docent training, I have arrived at the opinion that the most effective docents are those who have the firmest understanding of teaching and education. Likewise, it is my observation that the most common error made in constructing and executing docent training …