"PISEC is really a museum-community collaborative rather than a museum collaborative."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"...learning as a family is what supports a parent's resolve to provide educational opportunities and to support their kids in anything they do."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"How can museums be culturally relevant going forward if individual institutions and the field in general is not deliberately building cultural competency?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"...you cannot assume that you know what your audience wants or needs without asking them. Every program should start with a needs assessment. You may have what you believe is a great idea, but if you haven't solicited community input, then you haven't done your homework."

 

 

 

A conversation with Angela Wenger about community programs and authentic connections with culturally diverse museum audiences.

Interview by Karen Knutson :: Spring 2008

Knutson: What excites you in your job and what you're working on now?

Wenger: Currently, we are nearing the completion of the fourth project of the Philadelphia/Camden Informal Science Education Collaborative (PISEC). Believe it or not, but the collaborative (i.e., New Jersey Academy for Aquatic Sciences, Philadelphia Zoo, Academy of Natural Sciences, and Franklin Institute) has been working together for some 15 years to build the capacity of museums and communities—organizations and as individuals. Depending upon the project, we've collaborated with community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, schools, and neighborhood projects. But I should also say that PISEC is really a museum-community collaborative rather than a museum collaborative. The participating museums are community partners; we don't see ourselves as service providers.

Each project builds upon our previous work and strives to deepen and extend science offerings. The current project, Community Ambassadors in Science Exploration, evolved from the Families Exploring Science Together, in which families participated in science workshops at museums and were prepared to do so by the community partners. What's really cool in our current work is that the museum educators no longer run science programs in the communities; the communities themselves now run these science programs. This is now possible because more than 100 adult and teen "science ambassadors" have developed the knowledge and the skill set to go out into their community and deliver science programming. Already, these ambassadors have conducted hundreds of workshops in their own communities and provided science programming for thousands of families. The museum partners continue to run large events that invite community families into the museum. And it has opened up all sorts of surprising opportunities within the communities themselves. We've noticed that the community partners are collaborating with one another in ways that have nothing to do with the museums.

At the New Jersey Academy for Aquatic Sciences, we have also been experimenting with outdoor programs. Like many indoor museums, many of our programs are indoors in places like classrooms and community centers. But there is great potential value in moving educational experiences outside so that kids and adults can practice scientific process skills and experience science in the real world, something that both families and educators told us they needed and wanted. It also helps to generate conservation awareness in a very real way and in a very local way. Right now, we offer three programs that feature local habitats, wetlands, beach, and pinelands.

Although we provide workshop and distance learning activities, we're interested in going beyond the museum walls to engage families and other visitors in new ways. In the same vein, we have been designing our website with this idea of moving the museum learning experience to wherever people are. We are now developing regional materials so that the layperson can use the Academy as a resource for learning more about aquatic sciences.

Knutson: What are some ideas in informal science that you are currently excited about?

Wenger: I continue to be excited about the concept that families learn together as a unit, an idea that we have explored throughout the life of PISEC. It is so many years later and learning as a family is really what supports a parent's resolve to provide educational opportunities and to support their kids in anything they do. I still hear from parents about how experiences their kids had in science workshops years ago continue to pop up in everyday conversations. Parents have also told us that they see new possibilities for their kids to attend college or to make a career in science, themes that we see with the Community Ambassadors program.

I'm also very interested in how museums can provide access to underrepresented groups to the extent that all people are offered the same opportunities, whether or not people take advantage of those opportunities. We have to make sure that access to learning and experiencing science is equitable across the board, especially in view of the current and projected changes to our national demographics.

Knutson: What do you see as being the major challenges for informal science in the next five years?

Wenger: One challenge is something that we've been talking about for the last 20 years. There is a still huge need for organizations to buy-in to community programs. Although individuals in museums seem to be more aware of community needs, there's still a lot of room for improving how museums, as organizations, attract and include diverse communities as audience participants and, for that matter, as staff. How can museums be culturally relevant going forward if individual institutions and the field in general is not deliberately building cultural competency? Those of us who deliver informal learning experiences in museums need to deliberately incorporate diverse input into our organizations, our programs, our exhibits, and our staff. We can begin to do this by soliciting input about the interests and needs of potential communities. Without doing community needs assessments, it seems rather presumptuous to think that you know what other people need or want. You don't really know that unless you become informed. We have to continue to improve.

Knutson: So how do you attract diverse groups to an institution?

Wenger: It takes a long time. You know, the PISEC projects have been actively building enduring relationships with communities partners for many years. And we're only now seeing some of the fruits of these efforts. I liken these changes to clam spawning: When an individual clam spawns, it spews out hundreds of thousands of eggs and maybe 1% of those will actually survive to reproductive age. In the same way, community outreach will reach a lot of underserved families, but only some of those families are destined to be a high user-group that actually makes it through the long haul. But the benefit for those families that do participate deeply and over time is that they gain access to new opportunities they did not have access to before. These families create a new culture and new family traditions around learning science and including museums in their everyday lives. So, as the kids get older and they themselves raise children, science and museums become part of their family's tradition, and so on.

Because so many of our community and youth programs have continued for so long, and because the many of the same families still participate, we've had many opportunities to reflect with these families about why they continue to participate. What's the value to their family? From various surveys and interviews, we're pretty sure that families value the time they spend together, the focus on their interests, a sense of being invited to participate, and camaraderie with families beyond their normal community. We've also noticed patterns where families describe ongoing conversations about science during everyday events. These conversations are occurring within families that never gave science a second thought, but who are now talking about the properties of lightening in the middle of thunderstorms! That's powerful stuff.

Even with this success, we continue to meet groups of people, even among longstanding community partners, who still don't come to our museums simply because museums are not part of their culture. They either don't view science centers, museums, and other informal learning outlets as fitting into their beliefs about what it means to educate their kids.

Knutson: Where do you see innovation coming from right now? Are there models that you're looking towards or other institutions or programs?

Wenger: Honestly, I have a difficult time with the word innovation. It means so much and nothing at all. But I'll take a stab at answering your question. I think innovation comes out of collaboration. There isn't a better way to capture the best that different groups, organizations, and professions have to offer than to combine them into a collaborative effort that serves people where they are. Is collaboration new? Of course it isn't. But collaboration does push the envelope about what's possible because it builds capacity, it's resourceful, and it's cost saving.

Some of the in-museum and after-school partnerships that link informal and formal education are pretty interesting. These program areas can really support one another and can creatively respond to the pressures that we face from the No Child Left Behind Act and the accelerated shift in demographics. I also see some of the partnerships between museums and universities as potentially sources of innovative programs. We are currently working with a local university that wants to increase female representation in engineering. So, we've joined efforts to create new aquatic science programs as a way to attract young girls and coeds and to also get them more interested in engineering. We also think this program will create new points of access into science for people of color

Knutson: Who are some of the people in the field that you admire and whose work has been formative for you?

Wenger: I really respect Deanna Beane. She had been the individual responsible for initiating and directing the Youth ALIVE! Initiative. Deanna's passion for young people and her ability to get people to work together provided the foundation and framework for YouthALIVE. In the late 1980s, she managed to communicate a new vision about how youth development programming in science centers and museums could transform the lives of youth and the practices of museums. YouthALIVE also provided a new model for supporting the professional development of youth workers. The fact that this vision continues to this day in different forms is in no small part due to Deanna's leadership.

In fact, our own youth outreach programs owe a lot to YouthALIVE. For one thing, my training as a marine scientist in no way prepared me for having any clue about how to bootstrap youth participation. Becoming part of the YouthALIVE network helped me and to integrate youth needs and interests into program activities. Another great thing about YouthALIVE has been the focus on professional development for the youth workers. This development went well beyond a creating and using a set of materials. Network members met twice a year and during those meetings we gained new skills, learned from youth and other youth workers, and created a supportive network of people who would help you develop and deliver solid programming.

Today, our youth urban science enrichment program has inherited the best of YouthALIVE. We continue to work with underserved minority elementary, middle school and high school youth and to provide the "career ladder" support necessary to enable students to pursue science careers. We continue to offer opportunities to engage with science throughout the Academy's educational programs, but we also support them in terms of academic preparedness, work readiness, and as a forum for discussing critical teen issues. We pride ourselves in working with relatively small numbers of youth, year round, year-in and year out.

More recently, we added new growth and support opportunities for youth participants who have gone on to college and who still want to "give back". These young adults now serve as role models for younger participants. Following a model of K-16 programming, which promotes college readiness and success for students, we realized that participants who have graduated from our youth programs need continued access to a network of caring adults who support their academic and personal development. With this ongoing support, they can achieve educationally, but equally important to us, they can continue to build their self-esteem and favorable attitudes about science.

Knutson: If you were to mentor someone new to the field, what would you tell them?

Wenger: Being somebody who has been mentored and who has mentored others, I would say that honestly assessing both your strengths and your weaknesses and then having the opportunity to work on those weaknesses is very important. In my own case, I started as a marine scientist and I didn't know a lot about formal or informal education. I had lots of intuitive ideas based upon my experience learning science but I had no training or practical experience in education. I was fortunate to find a mentor who provided me with resources—books, professional training, feedback—that got me started and encouraged me along the way to think more deeply about learning science in museum settings. My mentor really helped me understand the importance of assuming responsibility for my own learning and then also helping others to do the same.

One of the most important lessons I've learned is you cannot assume that you know what your audience wants or needs without asking them. Every program should start with a needs assessment. You may have what you believe is a great idea, but if you haven't solicited community input, then you haven't done your homework. The informal learning field is littered with interesting programs that go unused simply because no one asked the target audience what they think before or after it has been designed or implemented.

Another important lesson is that you—yourself, your team, your department, your institution—cannot do it all alone. You really need to build strong, longstanding, and far-reaching collaborations. I have been fortunate to be part of two outstanding long-term collaborations. Actively including multiple perspectives and voices has not only enriched me personally, but has also enriched the partnering organizations and individuals.