| The focus of this study is on the experience of three artists whose medium is performance working in an inner city progressive public elementary school. The following questions guided the study: what roles did the artists play at the school, how did the artists describe their teaching, what were the artists' views about connections or conflicts between teaching and making art, and how did the artists describe the school setting? Although there is literature that surrounds this study, none addresses in depth artists' ideas about teaching and the importance of this to the field of education. John Dewey's Art as Experience (1934) is one of the theoretical frameworks used in the study, and his theory of aesthetics is placed alongside the ideas of making art and teaching.;The methodology of the study is qualitative. Participants were selected using an emergent analytical framework (Johnson, 1990). All three artists went through an in-depth interview process over six hour-long sessions. Transcribed interviews were coded using constructive grounded theory (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). The codes led to a thematic analysis, and a form that placed each artist's multiple viewings of their teaching alongside each other. Large themes that came forward were each artist's life experience teaching and making art, and the three artists' collective view of the school. These themes were presented as much as possible through the voices of the participants themselves, so a democratic, transactional encounter occurs between the audience and the research.;The following findings supported the literature: the importance of the relationship between teacher and artist (Remer, 1990); the transactional nature of teaching (Dewey & Bentley; Rosenblatt, 1982; Gallas, 1988); and how the viewpoint of artists can help teachers better see their own practice (Eisner, 2002; Mello, 2000; and Sarason, 1999). New findings were: each artist held onto a thread of media throughout their life; the ethical context of the school mattered to the three artists; and a new form based on the work of the Prospect Center (Himley and Carini, 2000) that allows artists and teachers to examine their own craft descriptively and thematically with a researcher. The above findings hold implications for the following fields: educational theatre, teaching, education, and qualitative research methodology. |
