Using Arts-based Methods in Pre-service Teacher Education: Perzine Pedagogies

Abstract

The possibilities afforded by perzine pedagogies to nurture reflexivity in pre-service student teachers are presented and explored in this article. Perzine pedagogy as arts-based inquiry is grounded in the events of practical life and may provide a learning context for exploring the problematised nature of teaching. It considers how this reflexive and inquiry-oriented method offers opportunities to interrogate past learning, to accommodate the affective, to challenge constructed beliefs and to build adaptive behaviours. Employing the narrative inquiry lens of the researcher artist/teacher educator and the narrating and reflective voice of a visual arts teacher, this article illustrates how perzine production may inform insights into construction of teacher/learner identities. Perzines offer opportunities for experiential, critical and experimental encounters to move beyond the competency rhetoric to meet a new ethic: a personal desire for self-reflection and expression through opportunities to re-represent the teacher/learner self.

Keywords::

• perzine pedagogy
• pre-service teachers
• arts-based research
• ethics of integration
• narrative inquiry