Testing Out The Interpreter's Training Manual for Museums at the Spertus Museum
Reviewed by Susan Marcus, Senior Educator, Spertus Museum

In 2007, the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies' will open an entirely new facility in which the museum will play a key role. In order to prepare for this new role, my Spertus Museum colleagues in both museum education and projects management have been working on a nine-month sequence of docent training sessions to begin next fall. We plan to engage and train our veteran and new docents differently than we have in the past in exhibition interpretation. All of our interpreters, whether choosing to focus on one subject area or several, and whether staff or volunteer docents, will base their work on the content and pedagogy informing the training course. The Interpreter's Training Manual for Museums, by Mary Kay Cunningham (American Association of Museums, 2004) has been a useful guide among others in setting up training plans, as well as identifying the nature and implementation of effective interpretation. We found ourselves agreeing with Cunningham's emphasis on the role of the interpreter and that person's importance in the life of the institution:

Interpreters are the bridge between the reason the museum exists and the reason people come. Interpreters connect the messages of the site to the real and meaningful world of the visitor (p.49)

As the interface between the public and the museum, staff and volunteer docents will continue to make a difference. They will encourage or deter visitors from becoming increasingly involved and identified with the museum. The museum's interpreters will absorb and apply the best practices possible to make a positive connection with visitors.

To understand the difference between formal and informal education and to underscore effective methods and techniques, Cunningham encourages interpretation trainers to have trainees examine their own experiences by asking discussion questions such as:

Has everyone had an experience with an interpreter while visiting a museum? Think back to those interactions. How many of you casually interacted with an interpreter in a gallery or on-site outside of a scheduled program? How many of you participated in a more formal program, such as a tour, lecture, or demonstration that was led by an interpreter (p.100)?

One might add: How many of you remember and became more engaged in an exhibition enriched by a conversation with an interpreter?

Cunningham focuses on encouraging social interaction and incorporating conversation into the museum learning experience to strengthen the museum/visitor connection. Chapter 11 describes the characteristics of conversation in a museum setting, but emphasizes its effectiveness in the context of impromptu exchanges during which the individual connects on a personal level. As in other chapters, a worksheet and lesson plan for a group exercise give trainees hands-on training experience. Conversation also plays an important role for group tours in the form of dialogue, inclusive commentary, and bridging. These guidelines remind me of the work of Philip Yenawine, cofounder (with cognitive psychologist Abigail Housen) of Visual Understanding in Education (VUE), a non profit educational research organization that develops and studies ways of teaching visual literacy and of using art to teach thinking and communication skills.¹