Let Me Show you What I Mean - Changing Perspectives on the Artist-teacher and the Classroom Art Demonstration

This research aims to develop a theoretical and practical understanding of a situated and embodied artist-teacher practice by testing multiple models of teacher demonstration and exemplification. The intention was to find out the ways in which the classroom art demonstration can be construed as the basis for a participatory, dialogic, pedagogical art practice, using co-learning and experiential learning based approaches to school art making. By using the model of the classroom art demonstration, a tried and tested aspect of my teaching practice, and amplifying and expanding that into art practice, I proposed to investigate the ways in which the demonstration functions as an effective link between teaching and art practice.

The research was a professional self-study carried out within the context of the author’s art and teaching practice in a middle school classroom with students from age 9 to 13. As an artist, teacher, researcher and participant, I used a reiterative procedure, based on Shön’s (1983) ‘reflection-on-action’, to design four case studies. Evidence was collected through the making and documentation of artefacts made during, and in relation to, demonstrations and modelling, including journals, sketchbooks, artworks, visual presentations, lesson plans, questionnaires, exhibitions in schools and other settings.

A framework, based on Hetland et al.’s (2013) approach to ‘habits of mind’ was used to evaluate the outcomes, and this was used to construct a taxonomy of different purposes and functions for the demonstration which is dispersed throughout the case studies.

The contribution to knowledge lies in the nuanced study of the uses of the art demonstration as exemplification, interpretation, collaboration and instantiation of art making and thinking in the classroom, exploring methods, means and ends. The demonstration examples, made as part of the practice-based research process, studied means of communication, sharing and thinking about art making in concert with students. The demonstration artworks also led to an understanding of the changing dynamics of the artist-teacher role over a significant period as the research progressed. Using the case studies, I argue that the processes of thinking and making, with students, artists and on my own behalf, helps to locate the classroom art demonstration in a new theoretical framework and taxonomy within an expanded field of socially engaged, dialogic and material-based art practice.

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