Collage as critical practice: Mapping new art teacher experiences within contemporary assemblages of educatio

In this dissertation, I examine the experiences generated by a year-long support initiative for new art teachers guided by collage as critical practice. Based on concern that current mentoring and induction practices are entangled in the exploding audit and standardization culture of schools, I implemented the support initiative for six new art teachers across two Mid-Atlantic states as an attempt to open spaces of pedagogical freedom within school cultures. The support initiative aimed to foster the implementation of contemporary theories of art education through a material and conceptual process of collage, which encouraged participants to consider their teaching experiences in relation to each other and to the larger discourses at play within school cultures. As a researcher/mentor, I visited the teachers in their school/local contexts twice and led them in three workshops culminating in an interactive art exhibit. By pursuing research through the support initiative, I aimed to: (1) understand how collage as critical practice functioned in relation to new art teacher support, and (2) understand new art teacher experiences within school cultures differently through collage. Collage as both method of support and method of analysis allowed for a mapping of new art teacher experiences which called attention to the dominant discursive and representational forces articulated by contemporary assemblages of education and lived by new art teachers, while also uncovering the ways new art teachers move beneath the surface of recognition within the ruptures of those articulations. The study has implications for rethinking the ways new art teachers are both prepared and supported to understand the complex, social nature of teaching, and to embrace the generative potential of their experiences from the middle of contemporary assemblages of education.