Personal versus Professional Development —

Research on teachers’ identity formation recognises that there is a difference in the development o f a professional and personal identity in learning to teach. Rodgers and Scott (2008) have found that teachers’ identity is not fixed, but is shifting and multifaceted, formed in relationships, influenced by contexts and constructed in stories (p. 701). Featherstone (1993) suggests that teachers construct a sense o f themselves as professionals by combining parts o f their past and pieces o f their present, with images

o f the teacher they want to become and the kind of classroom they want to have (cited in Cochrane Smith et al., 2008, p. 701). As art teachers tend to be specialists in one area o f design or fine art, they are conscious o f the need to broaden their specialist skills and learn new ones. This would enhance their teaching and enable them to facilitate the broad-based art curriculum at second level which includes art, craft and design. In her survey of the continuing professional development (CPD) needs o f Dublin art teachers, Bodkin (2013) found that although the majority o f art teachers indicated that they needed CPD for professional development (teaching their subject), almost three-quarters of those surveyed suggested that they needed CPD for personal development (practising their subject) (p. 89).

Over the last number of years, the UK has offered some models of good practice for reinvigorating the school art experience and realigning it with the contemporary art world. The next section examines the ‘Artist-Teacher Scheme’, (ATS) a model of professional development which has shown that collaborative initiatives between schools, galleries and HEIs can benefit both pupils and art teachers (Downing & Watson, 2004; Galloway et al., 2006; Hall, 2010; Pringle, 2009a; Thomson et al., 2012). The importance for art teachers o f ‘making art for art’s sake’ and the need for art teachers to remain close to and develop their practice is also evidenced in the popularity of the ATS in the UK. The ATS initiative, developed by the Arts Council for England (ACE) and the National Society for Education in Art and Design (NSEAD), in collaboration with the Tate Galleiy, devised a postgraduate course which offered art teachers the opportunity to maintain their creative practice once they became teachers. Commenting on research carried out by the NSEAD which identified these art teachers’ anxiety over their loss o f art practice, Michael

Yeomans, a former president of NSEAD in the UK, described very aptly what he considered to be his personal motivation in moving from art making to art teaching:

It was the love of exploring visual ideas, handling materials, developing personal themes, tackling design problems, seeing the product o f imagination, thought, skill, that led to a desire to share these experiences though the classroom, workshop and studio, (cited in Adams, 2003, p. 185).

This process of ‘making’, ‘handling’, ‘being in touch w ith’, ‘thinking through materials’, is an experiential one, which is fundamental to the art teacher’s way o f working. Likewise, Adams (2003) concurs that one o f the main benefits o f the ATS for art teachers was the common experience with other art teachers, as amongst teachers there was often a perception of a sense of isolation in the classroom, or at least a sense that one may be ‘losing touch’ (p. 192). Yeomans argues ‘that practice informs teaching and if you do not practice, your teaching becomes less well informed’ (cited in Adams, 2003, p. 185). He suggests that art teachers can improve their effectiveness as teachers by maintaining and refreshing their creative activity as producers.

3.6.1 The Artist-Teacher Model of Professional Development

The artist-teacher model of professional development has been actively researched in the UK over many years. The ATS is significant in that it identifies and responds to the particular needs of artists who become teachers. It goes some way to address and capture the concerns which exist for art teachers who have a need to continue their art practice. In conducting research on artist-teacher participants o f the MA in Art Education in Roehampton University, Hall (2010) suggests that the processes by which artist-teachers link their art practice with teaching are complex. Some regard art-making and art-teaching as equally essential, one feeding the other, while others prefer to separate their art practice from their teaching. He suggests that the construction o f the artist-teacher identity is a complex and idiosyncratic process

informed by many variables. These include, their personal and professional identities as a teacher and an artist; their personal and pedagogical philosophy and approach, the ethos and character o f their school and the stage in their career (p. 109).

In another context, Kind et al. (2007) describe the need for ‘the in-between spaces’ for the artist-teacher in professional development programmes. The artist’s sense of identity can sometimes seem to be compromised by the demands o f the teaching profession or the shifting cultural domains as the artist migrates from studio to classroom. James Hall (2010) identifies five distinct but overlapping themes in the literature on artist-teacher identity:

1. Professional Identities: which is concerned with the hybridity of artist- teacher identities and the tensions within the professional practice of artist and teacher.

2. Curriculum development: the artist-teacher in curriculum development, generating innovative curriculum and engaging in contemporary art practice in the classroom.

3. Teacher Development: supporting personal and professional growth such as the artist-teacher scheme in the UK, developing new knowledge, understanding and skills.

4. Theoretical Perspectives: the importance o f artist-teachers generating and using theory, conceptual frameworks, analysing assumptions and beliefs, exploring art practice as research.

5. Reflective practice: the reflexive learning dimension, developing an epistemology of practice as artist-teachers maintain a critical stance towards their practice, (p. 105).

The positive effects of the artist-teachers’ scheme would seem to connect with a deeper need in individual art teachers for meaning in their personal art practice, which in itself has a positive effect on their classroom teaching. This need for verification o f personal artistic identity seems to weigh particularly heavily on the art teacher.

In Ireland, the PME in Art and Design Education seeks to be responsive to the current thinking in art and design pedagogy, whilst working within the pedagogical structures o f the DES and the TC. As previously mentioned, a defining feature o f the ITE programmes in Ireland is the fact that they are located in art colleges, and as such they are imbued with the essential practices and ways of working, thinking and being that distinguish the artist/designer (Granville, 2013). There is an urgent need to re- imagine the art education curriculum in second-level schools in Ireland, which remains very much an imperialist Eurocentric model, adrift from the needs o f the multicultural classrooms o f Ireland today. Sarat Maharaj (1999) argues that despite the unlikely prospect o f the postmodern finding a home in the second-level school space, if art education is to remain relevant in today’s world it needs to connect with the second- level school ‘where the most intense and intimate experiences of the postmodern are played out in the schooling and shaping of the sense faculties’ (Maharaj, 1999). He describes schooling as taking place,

...in an inescapable immersion in an assembly o f intensive-extensive sonic constructions linked with high-speed image circulation ads, TV, film, fashion fabrications and fictions of the mega-visual system, (p. 63).

In order to understand the difference in how we consume art and culture, Lessig (2004) argues that we need to understand the difference between ‘us and them’. ‘We experience art and culture as “something that we take”, in the digital age the younger generation understand culture as something that “they make, remix and remake”’. Students are using technologies in the same way that contemporary artists are, engaging with issues about living, life and the world, but none o f this is represented in the Senior Cycle art curriculum in Ireland today.