Samenvatting

From artist to art teacher.

The paper is based on a pilot study connected to my PhD research which is a case study focusing on how Artist becomes Artist/Teacher. The participants are students in a two years teacher-training program for Artists held by the Icelandic Academy of The Arts.
The research focuses on how they learn live-wide, how they develop and reshape their identity, how they learn in communities with other art disciplines and enter a new field without losing the other. My interest and questions are based on experiencing that in art-teachers’ education we tend to focus too much on formal academic procedures and values, rather than focusing on what is relevant for the students. If those academic procedures (as relevant as they are in higher education) are to become meaningful instruments for the students, they have to be built on, and connected to the students’ previous knowledge, values and working methods. In other words, it is important in education, especially with adult learners, to be aware of or know the “learning past” of the students (Jarvis, 2009).
Data in this pilot study was gathered through students’ journals over one semester and biographical interview with one student, graduating from the program January 2012. I like to use the metaphor “learning as becoming” used by Hodkinson, Biesta & James, (2008) and Wenger (2009). Put simply, it means that learning can take place everywhere, in any place and time in a persons live. The data will be analyzed through the lens of adult- and cultural theories of learning and Bourdieu’s concept of field.