Results from the first-ever joint workforce study between the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) and the Association of Children’s Museums (ACM) document the field’s success in diversifying its public-facing staff and aligning it closely with the national demographic profile. To support this emerging 21st Century workforce requires that more attention be paid to the behaviors and policies that guide our work together, advancing from promoting multiculturalism and diversity to achieving cultural competence — making the practice of inclusion a foundational way of work. Yet, training resources serving the museum field focus on building a diverse workforce or serve only one staff member at a time.
San Jose Children’s Discovery Museum (CDM) proposes to design an organizational change model that goes beyond the goal of hiring of diverse employees to addressing the evolving needs and demands for cultural competence of museums. We will spearhead an in-depth process to develop and field-test a program to ensure that it yields for the museum field a richly resourced roadmap that supports cultural competence development within the 21st Century learning skills framework. Developed in partnership with leading industry partners, the Cultural Competence Learning Institute will be a learning model that is adaptable for institutions of varying size and social context, ultimately to be disseminated through ASTC’s Diversity and Equity Program.
CDM will draw upon our competencies in audience development and the tools we have created on our cultural competence path and join with a similarly passionate and experienced Thinking Partner Team, comprised of members of ASTC’s Equity and Diversity Committee and researcher/evaluator Cecilia Garibay to establish the prototype model. A literature review will provide a state-of-the-field research process that identifies the best thinking and resources currently available to include in our project. Two museum Collaborating Partners, Sci-Port: Louisiana Science Center and Long Island Children’s Museum, which have been working on increasing their institutional capacity for inclusion, will partner with us in a 10-month trial implementation that tests the tools to ensure their applicability across the museum field.
The Cultural Competence Learning Institute will be created using the following Guiding Principles:
A. Tested, real world strategies that combine a 21st Century Skills-based curriculum; rich, thought provoking resources; and an implementation strategy supported through a peer learning process
B. Partnerships with forward-thinking leaders that combine the best ideas and models with in-the-trenches experience
C. A flexible model that can be used by institutions of varying size and context which combines a proven framework, web-accessed tools and resources, and peer learning communities that promotes ongoing engagement/implementation
D. Broad dissemination of the resources via association websites, and dissemination of the final product on an ongoing basis by a national association serving the museum field
To expand the project’s reach, the Cultural Competence Learning Institute will be both a facilitated group program as well as an individual museum track so an institution can advance on its own. This challenge will be addressed through a formal cohort program, with features modeled upon the successful Noyce Leadership Institute, and informal on-line learning communities using tools like ASTC Connects. In three years, with IMLS support, the Cultural Competence Learning Institute will have been fully vetted by museum practitioners with considerable expertise to bring to bear on questions of cultural competence nationally, piloted tested in-the-trenches with museums and their staffs, and fully implemented by six children’s museums and science centers who will comprise the Round One Cohort. At that point, the Web-based application will be available at no charge on ASTC’s and ACM’s websites, and ASTC will take on management of the cohort for the future.
CDM is requesting $249,780 from IMLS for the project and is matching this sum dollar-for-dollar with unrestricted funds to support the CDM project development team, underscoring the importance of this project to CDM and the field. We are very honored by the commitments made by our partners and believe that they will benefit firsthand from the process and from seeing their pioneering efforts used to help museums advance their inclusion efforts. At the end of our work together, we envision all of these participants as founders of a successful cultural competence professional development initiative for the 21st Century Museum Professional.