Public Outreach Efforts at SAA: collaborating for effective community engagement (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
Archaeological education holds an important place in the advocacy efforts of museums, archaeological organizations, and schools. But for all of their benefits, many of these programs are designed to accommodate a series of competing interests; all too often, the interests of archaeologists win out over those of educators. In order to correct this tendency, we can apply the same theoretical concerns that govern traditional collaborative archaeological research to the design of education programs. Embracing community-based participatory research (CBPR)'s tenets of community involvement at every stage translates to teacher input that ensures that lesson plans and programs designed to introduce archaeology to schoolchildren are designed such that they can be realistically implemented in public classrooms with their own standards in place. This project aims to do just that, by creating a set of educational resources and lesson plans about archaeology for the sixth-grade social studies department at Newfield Middle School in Newfield, NY. By working closely with a sixth-grade teacher, I tailored these resources directly to the needs and requirements that her students and administrators have.
2019 - The Alma College Archaeological Project: Toward a Community-Based Pedagogy
Journal of Archaeology and Education, 2019
The turn toward community-based research in archaeology is “transforming” the discipline. No longer can we show up with screens and trowels wielding government permits and expect to start digging. Community-based archaeological projects may never even get to the excavation phase if local collaborators are uninterested or have other priorities. Now that collaboration with local populations has become standard archaeological practice, it is imperative to begin incorporating community engagement into traditional field schools. Today’s archaeology requires grassroots organizing, cultural awareness, and sensitive listening skills, in addition to digging square holes and drawing tree roots to scale. In this paper, I incorporate archaeology’s new community transformation into teaching a four-week service learning field school at Alma College in May 2018. Short-term outreach and educational events included hosting Boy Scouts, participating in Environmental Education Day, and holding a public archaeology day for the wider Alma community. I argue that creating opportunities for undergraduates to teach other publics both solidifies content-based knowledge and aligns with the goals of active learning and critical pedagogy. Integrating community engagement into the traditional field school model provides first-hand experience in collaboration, and offers students alternative understandings of the past that promote increased reflexivity and self-awareness. https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/jae/vol3/iss4/1/
The Cultural Fieldwork Initiative: Collaboration for Better Education
Journal of American History, 2013
In recent years many advances have strengthened history teacher preparation. Due in large part to No Child Left Behind () legislation, preservice teachers increasingly major in their content areas to be designated "highly qualified." Although it is not a new approach, teaching with primary sources has also become an exceedingly valued dimension of social studies teacher preparation; future teachers are taught to use documents so that they can model for students the analytical skills of historical thinking and illustrate particular episodes or chronological periods. 1 In addition, preservice teachers are often assigned field experiences prior to their student teaching placements, as opportunities to apply what they are learning in their programs. In some cases, these field experiences take place in historical museums, giving novice teachers the chance to learn how to teach using objects and how to work with groups of students in alternative educational settings. While the literature on museum education is vast, little of it explores history museums and their relationship with social studies teachers. Much of the scholarship on preservice teachers and museums discusses teaching with objects and artifacts and preparing beginning teachers to design field trip experiences for future classes. Science education is a central focus in the literature, and the few discussions of social studies teaching and learning typically address the preparation of elementary classroom teachers. One recent study of secondary history teacher preparation found that the relationship between teachers and museum staff is underdeveloped. As Alan S. Marcus, Thomas H. Levine, and Robin S. Grenier argue, "both school teachers and museum staff are important stakeholders who can learn from each other and support each other's work." 2 Christine Woyshner is a professor of education in the College of Education at Temple University. Andrea Reidell is an education specialist at the National Archives at Philadelphia. Marc Brasof is a Ph.D. candidate in educational leadership at Temple University. We would like to thank all of our cultural community colleagues for helping make this project so successful. Also, we wish to thank V Chapman-Smith and Jonathan Kahn for comments on early drafts of this article.
Archaeology in the classroom: An intra-university continuing education workshop for K-12 teachers
1992
In this article the authors describean innovative program in continuing education for teachers at the University of Georgia. The program, developed by the Museum of Natural History, the Georgia Center for Continuing Education, and the Department of Anthropology within the university and an independent research institute, offered teachers an opportunity to do archaeological field work as they learned about new discoveries in archaeology and Native American history and culture. The workshop design incorporated principles of adult and experiential learning. With the help of the workshop leaders, teachers developed their own materials for presenting integrated thematic units in their classrooms. Teachers responded enthusiastically to the workshops in a two-stage evaluation process. The authors conclude that intrauniversity cooperation is necessary if teachers are to benefit from all the resources of the university. Every child who has handled an artifact may have wondered about its history: who made it, when was it used, and what was it intended for. Has not this child also wondered about the lives of the Native Americans who produced these artifacts? Did they live in houses, tipis, or out in the open? What did the family eat? What games did the children play? Did the children go to schools? This type of wonderment can be turned into a powerful teaching tool by creative teachers who know about the archaeology and ways of the Native Americans. Often, however, a child's curiosity dissipates because a teacher does not know enough about the subject to channel that curiosity. In this article, the authors describe and evaluate an innovative program that brought together anthropologists and school teachers in Georgia to learn about archaeology and Native American history. The Jacqueline J. Saindon obtained her M.A. in Anthropology at Hunter College, CUNY.
Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 1996
A public-professional partnership is essential to achieve responsible management and preservation of our cultural heritage. The Bureau of Land Management (Ely Nevada Office), in cooperation with the White Pine County School District (Nevada) and Brigham Young University (Utah) have developed an archaeological teachers 'field school to increase public awareness of the significance of archaeological resources and the need to protect those resources. Teachers and students are participating, side by side with professional archaeologists, in an ongoing archaeological field project in Baker, Nevada. These experiences, augmented by the Project Archaeology Education Program, serve as a model for innovative, active involvement of archaeologists and educators in public archaeology.
Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 1996
A public-professional partnership is essential to achieve responsible management and preservation of our cultural heritage. The Bureau of Land Management (Ely Nevada Office), in cooperation with the White Pine County School District (Nevada) and Brigham Young University (Utah) have developed an archaeological teachers 'field school to increase public awareness of the significance of archaeological resources and the need to protect those resources. Teachers and students are participating, side by side with professional archaeologists, in an ongoing archaeological field project in Baker, Nevada. These experiences, augmented by the Project Archaeology Education Program, serve as a model for innovative, active involvement of archaeologists and educators in public archaeology.
2009 APSA Teaching and Learning Conference Track Summaries
PS: Political Science & Politics, 2009
The sixth annual Teaching and Learning Conference (TLC) was held February 6–8, 2009, in Baltimore, Maryland, with nearly 300 registrants. The conference uses the working-group model, permitting in-depth discussion and debate amongst colleagues on research dealing with the scholarship of teaching and learning. In addition to the 11 working groups there were workshops on various topics. Michael Brintnall, APSA executive director, and Kimberly A. Mealy, APSA director of Educational, Professional and Minority Initiatives, offered welcoming remarks. John Jeffries, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, was the opening speaker, and APSA president Peter Katzenstein, Cornell University, spoke at the opening reception. Joseph A. Kahne, the Abbie Valley Professor of Education, dean of the School of Education, and director of the Civic Engagement Research Group at Mills College, delivered the keynote address titled “Teachin...