| This study of seven post-baccalaureate students looks at how they interpret the role of art teacher through a fifteen month teacher licensure program in Art Education. Qualitative methods were used to collect data three times over fifteen months. The goal is to understand how prior experience in making art in the culture of studio arts affected understandings about teaching art within the culture of education. Three questions are addressed: (1) How do preservice post-baccalaureate students perceive the role of artist-teacher at different times throughout their teacher education studies? (2) What knowledge do they draw on that influences and affects their concepts of the artist/teacher role? (3) Are there commonalties between cases within the cohort in how students interpret the artist/art teacher role? Understanding the kinds of beliefs and knowledge about the image of artist/art teacher that post-baccalaureate students bring to teaching can help teacher educators bridge these two different fields of study. Grounded theory served as the lens to interpret interviews, conceptual maps, written responses, and art works.; It was found that students bring a kaleidoscope of artist/art teacher images with them. Rather than any participant having a solidified group of teacher images which evolved, images appeared in flux and constantly changing. Participants' images were based in prior experiences. The experiences they encountered required new constructions and reconstruction of those images. The artist/art teacher images of participants in this study were found to be contextual, based on experience, tacit, and uniquely constructed forming a complex and fluid system. |
