The Experience of Teaching in Art, Design and Communication

The aim of this thesis is to explore conceptions of and approaches to teaching situated within the context of practice-based teachers of art, design and communication. This thesis explores conceptions of teaching held by academics in departments of art, design and communication and explores links between those conceptions and the communities of practice associated with the subject context. It also aims to further investigate how approaches to teaching relate to the concept of communities of practice.

The qualitatively different ways that teachers of creative practices experience their teaching is explored The study focuses on teachers of practice-based subjects in art, design or communication The data is from an interview study of 44 teachers from eight UK Universities and is explored with a phenomenographic approach The analysis was grouped into three discrete sub-disciplines, media practice (15), fine art (11) and design (18), through which variation in the practice dimensions could also be discerned The research adopts a second-order perspective on the experience of teaching a practice-based subject in art, design and communication departments. The important feature of this analysis is the community of practice dimension, in particular how teaching is perceived as contributing to engaging with the social practices which constitute the particular creative practice.

Following the interviews with art, design and communication teachers, a slightly revised Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI), with the inclusion of skills and communities of practice items, was distributed to teachers in the UK. 73 returned questionnaires were analysed. The results show (a) that the ATI has validity in practice-based areas, and (b) that all teachers aim to develop students’ skills, but those with a student-focused approach are more likely to also focus on the practice and the real world problems of the profession. The positive correlation between an emphasis on development for the professions and a student-focused approach to teaching, offers insight for those involved in the further development of teaching practice

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