Public defence: Flavia Devonas Hoffmann

Although collaboration with artists is common in the teaching profession, teachers are insufficiently prepared for such collaborations. This article-based thesis investigates how the practices of education and art can be aligned to prepare student teachers for teacher–artist collaboration.

Alignment is a useful concept for understanding the relation between teachers and artists who engage with different objectives, knowledge domains and practices in their everyday work.

Background

The empirical context is the design of a new course on teacher–artist collaboration in a Norwegian teacher education programme. The Cultural Schoolbag (TCS), a national programme that provides artist visits in schools, serves as a case. Primary data consists of video recordings of participatory design workshops in which participants from the field of education and dance design the new course. Other data consist of artefacts produced in the design process, a survey and reflection notes.

Drawing on theoretical underpinnings from sociomaterial theories and social practice theory, analytically foreground the relations of human and non-human elements of the practices of education and art in sociomaterial arrangements.

Research questions

Based on this foundation, this thesis examines

1. how relations between the practices of education and art can be created in teacher education to prepare student teachers for teacher–artist collaboration
2. what conditions enable the creation of these relations and
3. how these relations can be conceptualized.

These and the overall research question are discussed with reference to three articles.

Articles

The first article provides an in-depth analysis of how the newly developed participatory design method Choreopattern infrastructures a sociomaterial arrangement for aligning participants around a shared matter of concern. Choreopattern uses embodied and aesthetic approaches to design the new course. This article provides an understanding of alignment that involves spatial, mental and emotional alignment and shows how the participants in various ways enact engagement, agency and knowledge.

The second article traces the design process of the new course in which student teachers and dance students together create a TCS-dance project. Using materiality and relationality of practice as analytical resources, I identify three patterns of relations that contribute to designing a shared setting between the practices of education and art: convergence, collective enactment and connective segmentation. These patterns indicate that the practices of education and art need to be aligned in various ways in teacher education. The article also highlights the role of materiality in the design process.

The third article is a conceptual contribution to what skills student teachers need to acquire to engage in short-term artist visits in schools, which are characterised by the ‘unknown’. I argue that students need to learn to attune to the landscape of affordances in artist visits and direct their attention to particular affordances in that landscape. Teacher education can scaffold a landscape of affordance so that student teachers can develop those skills.

Findings

Across the articles, the findings show how sociomaterial arrangements can be designed by creating relations between the human and non-human elements of the professions of education and art. I further develop the conceptual potential of alignment in terms of directedness, connectedness and positionality to capture qualities and features of the relation between the practices of education and art.

From this perspective, the preparation of student teachers for teacher–artist collaboration is not so much a question of empowerment and levelling out asymmetries but of designing sociomaterial arrangements where the resources of the practices of education and art are brought into alignment.

Throughout the discussion, I have highlighted several implications for teacher education, teacher artist collaboration and research.