In this article, I explore how relationships can change the teaching practices of museum educators and strategies of entire organizations by empirically studying conversations museum educators have every day in meetings, in the hallways, and all the places where they talk about their work. I present the possibilities of reciprocal telling…

In this article, we describe some of the common misconceptions guests have expressed while visiting a Museum of Natural History and Science, along with ways in which museum educators had reacted to and/or responded to guests' misconceptions. Correcting commonly held misconceptions can be difficult, especially when guests are emotionally invested…

Museums play an important role in out-of-school learning. Many museums have begun offering distance learning programs to increase their reach and the accessibility of their collections. These programs serve a wide range of audiences from pre-kindergarten to lifelong learners. This descriptive study examined the current practices in museum-based…

By prompting imagined or actual bodily experience, we can guide interpretation of tools to emphasize the action that those tools perform. The technique requires little more than an extension from looking at an object, to imagining how the body engages with it, perhaps even trying out those specialist postures, to nourish an interpretation centered…

Teaching general adult audiences in art museums requires the teacher to consider different goals and priorities than those of school, teacher, or family programs. In this reflective essay, one gallery educator whose primary museum teaching experiences had been with the latter audiences discusses a transition to leading public tours. He describes…

The "ISSS Annual Conference Proceedings" is a peer-reviewed professional publication published once a year following the annual conference. (Individual papers contain references.) [For the 2009 proceedings, see ED504973.]