Transforming School Museum Partnership: The Case of the University of Florida Harn Museum Teacher Institute

This study examines the teacher museum institute experience at the Harn Museum in Gainesville, Florida. The proposal this study is built on is that museum education in general and museum teacher programs could function as effective tools that the school system can utilize to help promoting the educational reform movement. The ultimate argument this study attempted to make is that developing educational programs and activities will help to make museums more open towards their communities and will help to attract more audiences.

The study focused on the first five teacher institutes that have taken place at the Harn Museum in the years 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. The idea of choosing this number of institutes is to acquire enough data that will make it possible to make comparative study between these institutes in terms of the organizational and administrative aspects as well as in their professional outcome. Also choosing this many number of museums made it possible to examine different teachers' experiences based on their year of participation.

The decision of using a combination of qualitative methods including questionnaire and documents analysis in this study was tied to the interest in reaching an interpretive and descriptive analysis of the museum teacher institutes' experience.

The qualitative methods employed in this study have proven to be flexible and allowed developing a level of contact with the institutes' participants that eventually made it possible to learn about their perspectives and expectations. They also made it possible to produce rich and detailed data that provided a solid ground for analysis evaluation of the final results.

The study showed that a well-planned and carefully executed museum teacher program will result in positive results relating to the advancement of teachers' professional development and the creation of better teaching and learning environments.

The findings of this study highlighted the fact that museum and schools share similar objectives and missions, and any effort to strengthen their joint ties and partnerships will be in the best interest of the educational system and the teachers' professional development.