Teaching and Learning How to Create in Schools of Art and Design

Abstract

This article describes the studio model—a cultural model of teaching and learning found in U.S. professional schools of art and design. The studio model includes the pedagogical beliefs held by professors and the pedagogical practices they use to guide students in learning how to create. This cultural model emerged from an ethnographic study of two professional schools of art and design. A total of 38 professors from a total of 15 art disciplines and design disciplines were interviewed and their studio classes were observed. A grounded theory analysis was used to allow the studio model to emerge from audio recordings of interviews and video recordings of studio classes. The model was then validated by 16 different professors at six additional art and design schools. The studio model was found to be general across art and design disciplines and at all eight institutions. The central concept of the studio model is the creative process, with three clusters of emergent themes: learning outcomes associated with the creative process, project assignments that scaffold mastery of the creative process, and classroom practices that guide students through the creative process.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the reviewers, who offered constructive comments on both the original and the revised submissions. In addition, Sharon Derry provided valuable suggestions while I was initially preparing the manuscript for submission. I owe a great deal of thanks to former Journal of the Learning Sciences editor Josh Radinsky and associate editor Erica Halverson, who provided insightful guidance on how to respond to the reviews for both the original and the revised submissions. I am especially grateful to the professors who participated in this study.