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ABSTRACT
This article presents installation as a professional learning site for early childhood teachers to visualise relationships between key events, people and places influencing their professional identity journeys. Aesthetic processes of collecting, creating and representing the ways teachers see their evolving identities offer opportunities to reveal connections and influences that impact identity development. This investigation of teachers’ unfolding stories provoked the methodological design of seven ‘aesthetic frames’ for uncovering and sharing what was revealed about self-as-teacher. Contributions from six early childhood teachers were shared with the primary researcher over a period of 14 weeks before being assembled and viewed collectively in a final focus group as installation. Selected frames are offered in this article as storied forms of visual narrative that present participating teachers with opportunities for critical reflection. As an arts-informed research process, installation provided teachers with a uniquely aesthetic model for understanding and transforming their identity journeys. The immediacy of lived teaching experience captured through image and text also prompting teachers to see with refreshed perspective, new ways for expressing and evaluating pedagogy–practice connections.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Leanne Lavina
Leanne Lavina After working as an early childhood teacher in prior-to-school settings, Leanne has recently completed her PhD at the Department of Educational Studies at Macquarie University. Continuing her interest in teacher education, Leanne works as a sessional tutor and educational consultant. Her research involves an arts-informed approach to understanding the formation of early childhood teacher identities and the influence of the social world in shaping teachers’ narratives of identity.
Amanda Niland
Amanda Niland is a lecturer in Early Childhood education in the School of Education and Social Work at the University of Sydney. Her arts-informed research in music education explores the musical worlds of children, with particular focus on children under 3 years and children experiencing disability.
Alma Fleet
Alma Fleet is an Honorary Associate Professor at Macquarie University, continuing her ongoing work in early childhood teacher education and postgraduate supervision. She enjoys educational consultancies and publishes widely with colleagues, particularly engaging with educational change, practitioner enquiry and pedagogical documentation.