Visual Art Communities of Practice: Cultivating Support for Beginning Visual Art Teacher

Visual art teachers, from beginning to veteran, often report experiencing feelings of professional.;isolation and a desire for content-specific support and collaborative professional learning.;experiences. Mentoring and Induction Programs (IPs) offered by schools and districts continue to.;fall short of meeting the needs of beginning visual art teachers in particular. There are a large.;number of visual art teachers in the state of California, especially in Los Angeles County, yet.;there are no visual art specific support networks for beginning visual art teachers to help them.;navigate their first years teaching. Collaborative learning groups, such as communities of.;practice (CoP), may offer visual art teachers opportunities to learn together and support one.;another in shared learning, yet none have been formally documented in Los Angeles County as a.;means of supporting novice art educators.;The Exploratorium in San Francisco, CA has established a community of practice called.;the Teacher Induction Program (TIP) to support beginning science teachers with content-specific.;pedagogy during their first two years of teaching. Using the TIP as a framework, a visual art.;professional growth support community was outlined for this study based on the needs and.;concerns of visual art teachers reported throughout the literature. Beginning visual art teachers in.;Los Angeles County were interviewed to help the researcher better understand their existing and.;desired supports, as well as their individual needs and concerns as new teachers. The visual art.;CoP was proposed to them to elicit feedback about its anticipated values (immediate, potential,;applied) based on their lived experiences as first or second year PK-12 public school visual art.;teachers in Los Angeles County.