As art museum educators from across the country begin to pack their bags and head to New York this week for the National Art Education Association annual conference (Wed-Sun), I thought it might be interesting to offer a quick breakdown of the sessions being offered in conjunction with the Museum Education Division.  And it’s important to note that the Museum Education Division is celebrating its 36th year, having been created during the annual conference held in St. Louis back in 1976 (go Cards!).  So, what’s hot this year?  Let’s run some of the numbers:

Total Museum Education Sessions: 76

Total museum educators presenting: 185 (plus or minus)

Most Frequent Session Topics:

Technology (digital media, blogging, podcasting, etc.) – 13

Teacher professional development & resources – 10  (duh, it’s NAEA — thousands of teachers attending)

Community and family audiences – 8

Museum-school partnerships – 6

Visitor-centered programs / listening to visitors – 5

Evaluation – 4

Docents – 4  (WAY down from last year — I guess docents aren’t cool anymore)

Looking deeper at the topics and issues being addressed this week in sessions spread all across the New York Hilton and Sherton hotels, one can find a distinct focus on museum audiences — and expanding those audiences to non-traditional groups.  Other than the sessions dealing with larger issues of community and family outreach, almost two dozen sessions bring attention to exemplary work being done to connect with the vision-impaired, English language learners, teens, young children, homeschoolers, pediatric patients, students with autism, etc.  A handful of sessions will be addressing the needs and questions of visitors, and how museums can listen to those voices to develop more effective programs, interpretives, and tours. Another dozen sessions will be exploring strategies to engage those visitors — from theatre activities and multi-sensory tours to newly-designed gallery spaces and art-making projects that inspire creativity.

When I ran a quick analysis of the session titles and short descriptions, the most common words used (outside of “art” and “museum”) were, in order of frequency: learning, education, programs, research, teaching, visitors, community, and technology.  I only find this interesting as it pertains to how our field describes the work we do to a larger audience — the vocabulary and terms we use to label what we do best.  The word “learning” was used more frequently than “education” and “programs” combined, perhaps providing a sense that our field is thinking of itself more as “museum learning” than “museum education” (a distinction the Brits have drawn for quite some time).  Of course, this blog is titled “art museum teaching,” so I suppose I’m already behind the curve ; )

All in all, I am surprised to not see more sessions using the word “participatory” now popularized by Nina Simon.  It does pop up some, but not as frequently as “interactive” or “conversation.”  More so, I’m amazed to not see more sessions (there is at least one) addressing the conflicts, challenges, and collaborations that exist between education and curatorial.  This seems to be a growing concern or issue among colleagues across the field, with several museums actively restructuring or retooling in order to ensure that these collaborations take place between educators and curators.  Perhaps the goal for NAEA in 2013 could be to convince some curators to present sessions with us, making strong connections with education (and we can, in turn, lead parallel sessions with them at CAA making similarly strong connections with curatorial).  Who’s with me?

For those of you packing your bags for New York, travel safely and I’ll see you there!  And for those not attending this year, please check back here — you’ll definitely see some updates as well as new content once NAEA concludes (and new authors, as the community of contributors to this blog is about to grow!  If you’re interested in contributing, just let me know via Twitter or in the Comments below).