Journal article
“Putting It into Practice Is the Best Way to Really Learn Something”: Evaluating the North American Graduate Archival Education Curriculum1
The American archivist, v 88(2), pp 247-294
2025
Abstract
Despite the vital role graduate archival education plays in preparing aspiring archivists for practice, we lack empirical evidence concerning its efficacy. This study is based on a survey of 406 students and new professionals (SNPs) (five or fewer years in the field). It addresses the following research question: based on their graduate education, how well prepared for practice are SNPs in North America? To address this question, the authors explore the topics SNPs suggested were most useful, the assignments they found most fruitful, their perceptions of topics lacking adequate coverage, their overall rating of their professional preparation's effectiveness, and the ways in which they thought professional preparation might be improved. Notably, SNPs lauded the payoff of experiential learning. They also foregrounded topics related to the 2016 “Guidelines for a Graduate Program in Archival Studies” (GPAS) clusters Arrangement and Description and Digital Materials Management. SNPs suggested that improved professional preparation could come from augmented course offerings, enriched course content, and most important, more hands-on/practical experience. SNPs were vocationally preoccupied; they showed only modest interest in “archival thinking.” The authors juxtapose their findings with both GPAS and A*CENSUS II and suggest that communities of archival practice (COAPs) are a profitable direction for future archival pedagogy.
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Details
- Title
- “Putting It into Practice Is the Best Way to Really Learn Something”: Evaluating the North American Graduate Archival Education Curriculum1
- Creators
- Alex H. Poole - Drexel UniversityAshley Todd-Diaz - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- The American archivist, v 88(2), pp 247-294
- Publisher
- Society of American Archivists
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science (Informatics)
- Other Identifier
- 991022153555504721