Building Staff Capacity to Evaluate in Museum Education

Abstract

AbstractFor years, museums of all varieties, including art museums, science centers, history museums, zoos, and aquariums, have conducted education evaluation. However, museums are all too often faced with the challenge of allocating staff time, expertise, and other resources toward conducting evaluation, particularly evaluation that moves beyond program satisfaction and measures the degree of learning occurring in the educational experiences. The John G. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Illinois acknowledged this challenge and addressed it head on through a new approach within its education division. The aquarium adopted an empowerment evaluation1 philosophy that enabled a diverse cadre of museum educators with varying degrees of evaluation experience to not only participate in the evaluation process, but to be an integral driver of it. The following case study details the premise of empowerment evaluation and how it was applied at this one museum while highlighting the potential applications toward other muse...