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In recent years, the role of the professionally trained volunteer docent has taken many twists and turns. Guided by institutional strategies and missions, docent programs have flexed, shifted, and altered to meet institutional needs. This article provides an overview of recent trends and practices presented at the National Docent Symposium Council's biennial meetings. It includes examples of changing trends in recruitment, training, and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art museums around the world play an integral role in the formation and preservation of collective identity and national belonging. As part of wider efforts for social change, these institutions are being challenged to decolonize and confront racism with renewed and sustained focus. As such, they are thinking more deeply about how they engage visitors with their collections. Within this context, this article considers how docents are uniquely positioned in the collective response to these calls for action. Drawing on strategies used in museum and teacher education pedagogy, it offers a renewed approach that emphasizes docent training's capacity to create meaningful experiences that dismantle exclusionary national narratives operating within collections and exhibitions. This article responds to calls for art museums to multiply voices and become spaces for decolonization, and will resonate with other museums, galleries, and heritage institutions invested in ongoing critical learning amongst volunteer and professional educators alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal learning experiences can provide valuable visitor-to-staff interactions that require skilled staff—often volunteers—to adjust to the needs of each visitor group. These experiences are often less regimented to provide increased flexibility for both the museum and the volunteer, allowing for more diversity of volunteer support. This article discusses the literature on education volunteers in a museum setting with a focus on how to effectively train and retain quality gallery-based volunteers. Based on the literature, we highlight five hallmarks of a successful education volunteer program: shared vision, communities of practice, experiential learning, continuing education, and evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, inspiration from the performing arts catalyzed the transition to more guest-centered gallery teaching at The Dayton Art Institute. To initiate this shift we hired three performing artists to lead training sessions for teaching in the galleries to illustrate that interactive strategies create livelier experiences for museum guests. Consequently, we made changes to guide training and tours that were more far-reaching than anticipated. Techniques from the performing arts enrich museum teaching by supporting the skills with which guides react and respond to guests with ease and confidence, and transform tours to create more rewarding experiences for all. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: A full spectrum of medical education requires not only clinical skills but also humanistic qualities in the medical professionals, which can be facilitated by an integrated training program. An integrated project was created to improve one's medical intellectual and communication competence and to enable them to become docents who can perform well, as well as for development of their humanitarian nature. The aim of this study was to suggest an integrated program that provided approaches for creating positive effects in medical history education. Methods: Taiwan Medical Museum conducted a project on medical history lessons and docent training program; 51 participants (24 male and 27 female) attended this plan. Targets took pre-tests before lectures, attended courses of medical history, and then took post-tests. Next, they received a series of lessons on presentation skills and practiced for guiding performance. After all the training processes, the attendees succeeded in all evaluations in order to guide exhibition visitors. Data were analyzed using paired t test. Results: Two types of assessments were followed, i.e., cognitive examination and guiding practice, and both were related to good performance. Reliability (Cronbach's α) was 0.737 for the cognitive examination and 0.87 for the guiding evaluation. It indicated that the integrated program for docent training resulted in a significant difference (p ≦ 0.0001). Conclusion: The participants demonstrated better achievement and knowledge acquisition through the entire process, which led to great performance when approached by the visitors. The whole project helped to shape up a good docent and to accumulate positive learning experiences for medical professionals as well. Therefore, an integrated program is recommended to medical history education in the future.

The public value that gallery educators, whether paid or volunteer, add to our institutions is beyond measure. Museums would not be able to serve and educate the public in such broad-reaching ways without the commitment of these educators. However, despite making great strides in improving the quality of teaching for school tours, adult tours remain mainly lecture-based, which jeopardizes opportunities to engage adult visitors in meaningful ways. To change this unsatisfactory system of practice, gallery educator training must transform in two significant ways. Trainees must be thought of first and foremost as adult learners; training must foster a culture of respect that uses adult learning and developmental theory as its foundation. The other change is that museums must invest in training for working with adult audiences with the same level of attention that they pay to training for working with school audiences. If museums are to truly be visitorcentered, they must transform their training to transform the gallery experience for all visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to better understand the importance of adult learning theory to museum educators' work, and that of their profession at large, museum professionals must address the need for more adult learning research and practice in museums--particularly work informed by existing theory and work seeking to generate new theory. Adult learning theory begins with andragogy, but it does not end there. Guided by these ideas, and drawing from the author's work, this article highlights three adult learning theories and explores adult learning theory as a resource museum educators can use when designing and delivering training and professional development for front-line museum educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014-2015, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) and Concordia University's School of Extended Learning conducted a joint pilot project with the objective of determining the effectiveness of a new approach for training volunteer museum guides based on a dialogic method. In this paper, we address: (i) the conceptualization of alternative training based on dialogic concepts; (ii) the development of a new course outline; (iii) the trial period during which volunteers took part in test training; (iv) and, finally, aspects of what we learned during this undertaking. This pilot project is important because it will influence future docent training at the MMFA and possibly elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]