Resources from the Center for the Future of Museums

• Building the Future of Education: Museums and the Learning Ecosystem. (PDF, 60 pages). This report summarizes the content and shares ideas coming out of a convening organized in September, 2013 by the Alliance and The Henry Ford. Essays by educators, students, researchers, and reformers explore how leaders from the worlds of education and museums can work together to integrate the nation’s assets into a Vibrant Learning Grid. Produced with the support of the Robert and Toni Bader Foundation.
• On the Horizon: Building the Future of Education (PDF, 9 pages). This paper, co-authored by CFM director Elizabeth Merritt and Scott Kratz, vice president for education at the National Building Museum, provides an overview of educational innovation in a broad cross-section of U.S. museums, citing selected examples.
• Museum are the Future of Education (video, 30 minutes). In this keynote address delivered at Museums Advocacy Day 2013, CFM director Elizabeth Merritt makes the case that we are on the cusp of transformative change in the U.S. learning landscape, and that museums have the opportunity, through advocacy and action, to help create a more equitable and successful educational system in which they play a starring role.
• Exploring the Educational Future (PDF, 8 pages). This article by CFM director Elizabeth Merritt includes a short scenario of the future titled “A Learning Day 2037” that dramatizes one potential future of learning through the story of Moya, a young girl growing up in a walled community that has opted for self-directed learning. This article is published in Journal of Museum Education, Volume 37, Number 3. Included by permission of Maney Publishing.
• TrendsWatch 2013: Back to the Future (PDF, 42 pages). This edition of TrendsWatch includes a section exploring “The Great Unbundling”—how the proliferation of micro-credentialing systems is fueling the rise of fragmented and distributed systems of learning, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and digital badging.
• TrendsWatch 2012: Museums and the Pulse of the Future (PDF, 26 pages). This report from CFM includes a section exploring the trends creating a New Educational Era in the U.S., links to examples, and comments on what this may mean for society and for museums, and suggests actions museums might want to consider to respond to this trend.