The Teacher Practitioner Relationship: Visual Research
Over 60 participants have already drawn the teacher-practitioner relationship cards since the initiation of this research method in February 2008 at an Artswork staff development event, Bath Spa University. Each workshop, as part of the 10by10Series, will continue to integrate the simple card drawing exercise within the session, as both a means to introduce participants to reflecting on the teacher-practitioner relationship, but also to contribute to this growing body of visual research. The aim is to accrue over 200 of these cards to underpin the varied techniques and materials gathered from across the 10by10Series.
It should be noted that not all the workshop participants prior to the 10by10Series are currently employed in professional practice, so the drawings do not exclusively reflect the experience of teacher-practitioners, but more accurately represent perception. 31 of these cards are from the ADM HEA Teaching Creative Practice event in July 2008, where the audience was disciplinary specific and the proportion of teacher practitioners/teachers is unknown.
The experiences, views and interpretations represented on the cards, across a range of disciplines, have been grouped into broad types of relationship typologies. The cards varied from very simple, almost naive responses, to representing fairly complex sets of processes and factors, including intrinsic and extrinsic, cultural and personal. At this initial stage of the research, through interpreting the commonalities and patterns in the drawings, four typologies have emerged to form an over-all framework for understanding how the role of the teacher-practitioner may be perceived and experienced.
The full range of the diagrams can be viewed and commented on, in the Gallery.
The Teacher Practitioner Relationship Typologies
Each typology contains further complex relationships such as dependence and dominance and individual diagrams indicate different structures and processes within the broader label. Some examples of diagrams below illustrate how they are informing 10by10 research:
Mutual Relationship:
[33% of the drawings]
The characteristic of this category is inter-relatedness, where there is some overlap between teaching and practice, as each informs and influences the other in a cyclical manner. Both fields are distinctive with different characteristics and contexts.
Mutual: Processes inform each other, cyclical. Equal exchange but the characteristics are different.
Mutual: Each field informs and benefits the other, distinctive characteristics within different contexts Practice benefits from teaching. Both contexts combine to define creative process.
Interstitial:
[36% of the drawings]
Practice and teaching are generally seen as overlapping to create a dialetical or interstitial space. Other than it being in-between or shared, the characteristics or nature of the space are rarely described
Practice is predominantly represented as informing teaching rather than the other way around, so that it less clear how teaching informs practice.
Situated Identity Teacher-practitioner views self as behaving in distinct ways, dependent on context. Teacher-practitioner located centrally between two fields.
Interstitial Practice is outward facing. Teaching predominantly draws from other sources. Both fields over-lap, creating an emergent dialectical space
Transmission:
[6% of the drawings]
Transmission is both direct and indirect. There is a relationship between teaching and creative practice, but only in one direction; practice informs teaching.
This view is not specific to the Teacher Practitioner – it reflects the basic presumption that teachers bring research, subject knowledge etc. to teaching.
Transmission A one way relationship Practice informs teaching, flow is not direct. Teaching does not inform practice.
No Relationship
[23% of the drawings]
A number of drawings indicate that there is no or little relationship or connection between teaching and practice, or that there are boundaries or obstacles in-between.