Abstract:

The current education landscape demands pedagogical approaches that foster essential 21st century competencies (21CC) and future-ready dispositions amongst students. These are the 4 Cs of creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, and communication, and important socio-emotional and lifelong learning aptitudes (Tan et al., 2017). Many education frameworks worldwide are being redesigned to address these demands, making this an urgent concern in education research.

In the context of art education, current research highlights various teaching approaches used by artist educators and their resulting outcomes that are notably aligned to these 21st century educational goals. Artist educators are actively practicing artists who are also engaged in teaching, with their professional practice being an active and integral aspect of their art teaching (Thornton, 2005). Existing literature highlights positive student learning outcomes when artist educators focus on the creative process of art-making and authentic meaning-making, and are driven by passion and agency (Jaffe, 2013). They adopt a more meaningful, student-centred approach to arts teaching (Jaffe, 2013), enabling students to develop agency, confidence, reflectiveness, and abilities for risk-taking and collaboration, while improving student engagement (Jeanneret, 2011; Kukkonen, 2020).

These outcomes align closely with the key 21CC educational goals. Hence, understanding the nuances of artist educators’ teaching practices can inform strategies to achieve these outcomes in general education. However, while current literature illustrates the approaches and outcomes of the teaching strategies used by artist educators, there exists a research gap surrounding the reasons they teach in those ways. Namely, it is unclear exactly how theory and knowledge connect to their teaching practice, and how these classroom decisions are also rooted in their artistic practices. These understandings have positive implications on shaping better general education outcomes.

To address this, the study explored how the unique sensibilities of artists might enrich learner experiences in various learning contexts. It adopted a qualitative grounded theory methodology and involved a participant sample of 30 artist educators across different art disciplines (i.e., drama, visual arts, dance, music, literary arts). Participants each took part in two ethnographic classroom observations and a semi-structured interview. The observation and interview data were then coded and analysed using a set of literature-generated codes to discern significant knowledge, skills and dispositions that shaped the teaching strategies observed during lessons and reported in interviews.

Based on the analysis of the coded data, the paper explores the nuances of artist educators’ teaching by examining the interplay of specific dispositions, skillsets, and knowledge unique to them, and how these underpin their perspectives of learning, and shape artistic thinking and sensibilities to inform teaching practices. In particular, it discusses how these findings have significant implications on teacher learning that can be applicable across subject domains and diverse learning contexts. This paves the way for supporting a more process-led and student-centred approach to teaching in schools, especially targeting the still salient 21CC 4 Cs necessary to nurturing future-ready learners.

Keywords:

21st century competencies (21CC), pedagogy, art education, teaching artists, artist educators.