Emergent Places in Preservice Art Teaching: Lived Curriculum, Relationality, and Embodied Knowledge

Abstract

This article explores how student teaching experiences provoke preservice art teachers to rethink curriculum and pedagogy as an organic and living space that is connected to place, community, and local knowledge. Based on a larger qualitative study of urban preservice art education student teachers, the journeys of two student teachers are highlighted as case studies. By investigating information collected through student teacher interviews, classroom observations, and video elicitations, these cases exemplify how student art teachers embark on a journey that facilitates becoming a teacher through emergent and responsive curriculum that integrates art, materiality, and place. We highlight the importance of conceptualizing preservice teaching as an embodied and relational way of knowing, as well as the important role that place, as a focus of curriculum, might have for effective and meaningful field experiences. Implications are discussed in terms of preservice teacher education, urban teaching, and curriculum studies.