Hartstone-Rose worked with Mulvey on the research
What are the biggest benefits teenage docents get from volunteering?
The docents get an enormous amount out of the teen programme experience. That’s one of the things that we’re still studying, but preliminarily, we think that these programmes are fantastic for their STEM engagement, and we hope that they are especially good for encouraging under-represented groups to stay in these fields. Our study hasn’t made any modifications to the existing programmes – we’re just studying them as is.
What relevance does this research have as museums are dealing with the challenges of reopening safely?
As institutions struggle, they have to make difficult decisions about prioritisation and our data suggests that these teen programmes are great value; not only are they fantastic for the teen participants, but because the teens are such effective educators, the institutions are essentially getting twice the benefit. In other words, they get value toward their educational mission both in terms of the impact on the teens and the teens’ impact on the visitors.
Adult educators are also great, but our research would suggest that these teen programmes are actually more effective at supporting museums’ educational mission.
What would you like to see come of this research?
Our work is among the first to show quantitative evidence of the wonderful benefits of these teen programmes. As we disseminate these results, we hope that institutions realise how impactful programmes like this are and choose to start, grow and emphasise them.
By the end of the project, we hope to have evidence-based systems of ‘best practices’ for how to build or modify these teen programmes for maximum effectiveness toward creating and enhancing STEM interest and engagement – especially for target populations like girls and people from marginalised ethnic groups that can feel excluded from STEM fields as they progress in their educations.
These results make a compelling argument for investing in youth programmes