Proper

Abstract

For 21st century learners, life-long learning through everyday life, which is beyond school learning, is a prevalent experience. Among various life-long learning experiences, museum learning has a long standing history in many developed countries due to unique and varying artifacts and experiences that museums can offer. This study analyzed the perceived importance of core teaching competencies of instructors and the perceived performance levels of core teaching competencies of museum instructors at the National Folk Museum of Korea. By comparing the importance and performance level of the core teaching competencies of the instructors, this study conducted the needs assessment for instructor professional development programs and subsequently proposed several ways to improve museum education. A 5-point Likert scale survey on core teaching competencies was administered to 33 museum instructors. The core teaching competencies were composed of 6 domains with 35 sub-items. First the differences between the importance and performance level were compared using t-tests. Thereafter, an importance-performance analysis was conducted. The results revealed statistically significant differences between the importance and performance level of the core teaching competencies. For example, the museum instructors perceived the importance of individual teaching confidence and reflection as high as their performance level. However, while the instructors perceived the importance of the related knowledge of museum education high, their performance level of the related knowledge was relatively low. Thus, the museum instructors need to gain a better understanding of museum education in general and of the specific learning objectives of the museum. In addition, they must be given opportunities to develop a better understanding of learners and pedagogical content knowledge. The provision of need-based professional development programs can help improve the overall museum education, to provide more unique and creative life-long learning experiences to various learners.