Developing a visual art community of practice: a participatory action research study of a museum-based partnership for art teachers in Los Angeles

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the development and outcomes of a visual art educator community of practice (CoP) cultivated in partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, known as the MOCA PD Lab. Participating researchers were interested in examining how to bring visual art teachers together outside of schools and districts to pursue their own collaborative professional development (PD) that could accommodate time, distance, and expense needs. The study focused on increasing the capacity of group members to design and facilitate PD through examining the impact of the CoP on participants’ shared knowledge and reflective practices; exploring strategies to grow and sustain the CoP; and implementing organisational strategies for cultivating connections and empowering teachers to pursue ongoing professional learning (PL). Feedback from participants indicates the positive impact of this CoP on members’ self-directed PL in: building community, collaborating with colleagues, developing instructional practice, and engaging in critical reflection. Now concluding its fifth year, the MOCA PD Lab continues to meet monthly to engage in visual art PL experiences to meet participants’ individual learning goals. Our hope is that the MOCA PD Lab may serve as a model for educators and museums looking to create collaborative PL opportunities.

KEYWORDS:

• Community of practice
• visual art educators
• professional learning
• professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Although responses from data collected indicated that artistic practice was highly valued in regards to professional learning, all members in the CoP during the following year focused their investigations on ideas related to collaboration, instructional practice, or developing resources for teaching art; no member elected to pursue refining their own artistic practice or arts-based research as part of the MOCA PD Lab.

2. ‘How might we …’ design thinking challenges are taken from ideo.org, which promotes the idea that ‘Human-centered design sits at the intersection of empathy and creativity’ (‘Approach’, n.d.) This approach provides opportunities to collaborate artistically through critical thinking problem-solving activities.