Museum education is a specialized field devoted to developing and strengthening the education role of informal education spaces and institutions such as museums. In a critical report called Excellence and Equity published in 1992 by the American Association of Museums, the educational role of museums was identified as the core to museums' service to the public. As museum education has developed as a field of study and interest in its own right, efforts have been made to record its history and to establish a research agenda to strengthen its position as a discipline in the wider work of museums. Description Museum education falls under the broad category of informal education. Informal education is defined as "...any organized educational activity outside the established formal system—whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity—that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objective". This definition was later broadened to include the idea that non-formal education is any systematic educative activity, organized outside from the official framework to facilitate educative experiences for all people, regardless of age, genre, nationality, social, economic or health situation. Informal education expands the definition of educational spaces to include learning that occurs in places like the home, national parks, zoos, and museums. Museum education has been set apart from other informal education largely due to education made available to museum educators and the specific learning objectives of the museums themselves. History Beginnings in art museums of the United States At the turn of the twentieth century, art museums were very new institutions to the average visitor, who was seen wandering with no clear direction through the galleries, and with no clear idea on how to appreciate and study the exhibitions. In 1906, architect J. Randolph Coolidge Jr. was appointed the temporary director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He experimented with a guiding system in the galleries, to help visitors orient themselves throughout their walk across the exhibitions. Art Museum Volunteers as Museum Educators An article published in the June bulletin of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1906 features one of the first uses of the term docent and the description of its functions. It said, After the conclusion of WWII, art museums' priorities shifted once again to an increased focus on education. Schools across the country began making field trips to museums for educational programs, and at the same time