Preparing Community Volunteers for Museum Education

Empirical Knowledge About Person-Led Guided Tours in Museums: A Scoping Review

“…Nevertheless, the relevance of some aspects is inconclusive. For example, and in contrast to Horn (1979Horn ( , 1980 study with adult tour participants, Martinello and Cook (1983) showed that the group size clearly influenced the teaching techniques that were used on a tour with students. Because of the relevance of the context, recommend including the context in the evaluation of tour guiding practice, an idea which Flanders and Flanders proposed in 1976, also Taylor et al, 2008 determined that docents require a number of strategies pertaining to their different roles, as described above.…”

“…The degree of differentiation of competencies and competency models varies across the reviewed papers-especially between the studies of Grenier (2009Grenier ( , 2011, and Schep et al (2018a, Schep, 2019. However, there are competencies and characteristics that are unanimously identified as central, such as adaptability (e.g., Grenier, 2011;Martinello & Cook, 1983), communication skills (e.g., Grenier, 2009Grenier, , 2011Schep et al, 2018a), and flexibility (e.g., Martinello & Cook, 1983;Schep et al, 2018a).…”

“…Despite these inconclusive findings regarding the techniques/approaches, the majority of studies show that inquiry/discussion-based tours are enjoyed more than lecture-based tours (e.g., Cox-Petersen & Ramirez, 2001), but visitors-young and old-found both interpretive approaches satisfying (e.g., Cox-Petersen et al, 2003;Horn, 1979Horn, , 1980Stone, 1997). 7 While group size was not an influential factor for tours with adults (Horn, 1979(Horn, , 1980, it was for tours with students (Martinello & Cook, 1983). But even for adults, group composition was also shown to influence the process, performance, and quality of an inquiry/discussion tour (Horn, 1979(Horn, , 1980.…”

“…First, further research is needed to clarify current training practices and their effects on guiding practice/performance. The scoping review revealed that guided tours are unique and complex events (Grenier, 2009(Grenier, , 2011Martinello & Cook, 1983;Rodehn, 2017;Tran & King, 2009) and that docents require a range of skills and competencies (e.g., Schep et al, 2018a) and adequate training (e.g., Grenier, 2011;Oleniczak, 2016). However, the adequacy of current docent training approaches is questionable (e.g., Bevan & Xanthoudaki, 2008;Castle, 2006;DePrizio, 2016;Grenier, 2008;Tran, 2008b).…”

Practicing What We Preach

“…Moreover, Martinello et al (1983) found in a study of museum volunteers that these guides generally have little formal teaching experience, but a wealth of life experience from which they base their work. Because their "knowledge of teaching is based on their experience as students in the classroom where linear presentations far exceed the nonlinear" (p. 55), they tend to replicate those methods in their tours.…”