Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Archaeology Education: Building a Research Base," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Research in archaeology education, long called for by many, is gaining momentum and recent publications have greatly increased the database of relevant literature. Sustaining both existing programs and the research behind them are now of paramount importance. Without research, we cannot improve existing programs nor effectively plan new education materials and delivery systems. This symposium will provide research results in several important areas of archaeology education including the pros and cons of student excavations, the maintenance of delivery systems, formative assessment of new curricular materials, the long-term impact of education programs on participants, students’ experiences with archaeological learning, improving student field schools for professional success, and the ins and outs of gathering and analyzing data on learning outcomes. Papers will focus on the role of learning research in the long-term success of archaeology education.