Teacher-artist partnership as teacher professional development

Abstract

Teacher-Artist Partnership (TAP) programmes in Ireland have, historically, tended to be ad-hoc, short-term, and underfunded. They have, moreover, lacked an explicit focus on teacher CPD. In 2014, a Government of Ireland funded initiative was set up to address these shortcomings and to explore how TAP, as a model of CPD, could support arts education in Ireland’s primary schools. The initiative involved six teachers and six artists collaborating on arts projects in six schools across the country. In this article, the authors examine three of these partnerships, focusing, specifically. on the professional development enabled by TAP for the three teachers involved. In their analysis, the authors draw on data from an initial week-long residential summer course and the ensuing in-school partnerships. Data sources include teachers’ and artists’ diaries, classroom observations and focus group interviews. The authors found that TAP enabled considerable professional development for the three participating teachers, all of whom were highly motivated and had significant expertise in the arts/arts education. In this article, they consider the implications of their findings for the role of TAP in developing a sustainable approach to arts education in Ireland’s primary schools.

Keywords:

• arts education
• teacher-artist partnership
• teacher professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 TRD stands for Teacher Reflective Diary and ARD stands for Artist Reflective Diary.

2 AFG1 and AFG2 stand for Artist Focus Group 1 and 2; TFG1 and TFG2 stand for Teacher Focus Group 1 and 2.

3 CO1 and CO2 stand for Classroom Observation 1 and 2.

4 A seanchaí is an Irish traditional storyteller/historian.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Government of Ireland. The research was commissioned by the Association of Teachers’/Education Centres in Ireland (ATECI) under the auspices of, and funded by, the Departnment of Education and Skills (DES) and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (DAHG)/Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs (DAHRRGA).

Notes on contributors

Dorothy Morrissey

Dorothy Morrissey is a lecturer in drama education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. She teaches on initial teacher education programmes and is course leader of the College's MA in Education and the Arts (META). Dorothy holds an EdD (Narrative Inquiry) from the University of Bristol (UK). She is currently PI on the Government of Ireland funded initiative ‘Research and evaluation of “Creative Clusters”. Dorothy’s research interests lie in arts education, teacher-artist partnership, gender, and Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA). She also has extensive experience as a primary teacher and in teacher professional development.

Ailbhe Kenny

Ailbhe Kenny is a lecturer in music education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick. Ailbhe is author of Communities of Musical Practice (2016) and co-editor of Musician-Teacher Collaborations: Altering the Chord (2018). She is a EURIAS fellow (Hanse Institute for Advanced Study, 17-18), Fulbright Scholar (Teachers' College and New York University, 14-15) and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Ailbhe is currently PI on the HERA funded project ‘Night Spaces: Migration, Culture and Integration in Europe' (NITE). She has also worked as a primary teacher and as Arts and Education Officer at a children’s cultural centre.