Reflections on index vocabulary forming
Some reflections from participants on the teacher-practitioner which emerged through word-storming the terms creative practitioner, teacher and teacher-practitioner as three distinct groups, include the following:
There appears to be a lack of definition of the role of the teacher practitioner and an underlying a sense of insecurity, which was not present in the discussions about creative practice and teaching.
In discussing the creative practitioner, mostly positive attributes were identified - although there are some negative aspects to being a creative practitioner there is little evidence of insecurities - uncertainty etc. are things that practitioners are clear about, as these characteristics are the badge of job - such as struggle, struggle to find space. Discussion predominantly focused on talking about the process of creation and values where insecurities are focused in things you have some control over developing. Words such as brave and challenges refer to insecurities but the meeting of these in a context ..
Discussions about the teacher practitioner focused on areas of responsibility rather than creative process, and how to maintain the creative process whilst the organisation may be resistant to insecurity and challenge - dominance of institutional context for teacher practitioner.
For teachers, discussions didn’t touch on insecurities, role seemed quite clear, has an historical grounding [of practitioner teaching] - focus on history - how teaching has change and how ‘we were taught’ ….
Goal orientated aspects and imperatives of education and teaching process contrast to practice where the goal, or happy accident, is more likely to emerge. In education there is no room for mistakes so goals mean you are more likely to be afraid of making mistakes..
If practitioners are given freedom of time and practice and an open brief in terms of results this enables you to be a teacher and practitioner where you are taking real knowledge - you can teach risk and getting lost - tactics of practitioners and makers - but have to do some of that ‘in a bottle’ translate it into a different context.
Negotiate what is appropriate to being a teacher-practitioner - practicum is hard to pin down - can’t say you are going to do one thing or another [as a teacher], you might offer an example for student to reflect on; deal with ‘it’ in the studio context.
Issues of ownership may be an issue in HE - be clear if it’s your own work or that of your students. Teaching theatre is not how ‘I ‘ would do it when directing theatre in practice - it’s the students’ work not mine [normally it would be a shared product] as need clear role as teacher-practitioner.. but have to work it out by context to context.
Reflections on the Teacher-Practitioner Index:
Participants reflected that the Index contained many emotive words - love, joy, passion etc.
It was suggested that identity should be in the centre as it’s mostly what we are talking about and that the word values is missing from the vocabulary although it was discussed. Hard work and certainty missing form the core space …
Several labelled images were selected as being particularly symbolic of the teacher -practitioner, interestingly all of these express some sort of contradiction or relationship between different states:
It is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the Index making process. It is clear the role and characteristics of the teacher-practitioner as distinct to creative practitioner and teacher is complex and difficult to refine or pin down. There was some consensus that once you start to define a term [the index being seen as being unfinished] more and more questions emerge.
Words used within the discussion generally referred to emotions, behaviours and states, processes or contexts. These groups or categories, appear fairly equally represented although there are perhaps less emotive words and actually words such as discomfort, empathy and restless were nearer the creative practice end of the scale than the teaching, with behaviours such as broker, sharing, motivator at the teaching end. Notable within the index are places where words are positioned next to each other but are contradictory in meaning, such as pro-active and standing back, or integrity and subsumed. This potentially reveals the personal investment of individuals and identity issues within the teacher-practitioner role, as many people chose to describe it differently.
There seemed greater positivity expressed in the vocabulary developed by the small groups to describe what it is to be a creative practitioner or a teacher, than that for the teacher practitioner.
Participants of the ‘teacher’ group figuratively described the process of segregating the role of teacher from their practice as “like having to amputate a limb”. The nature or roles of teaching and practice as distinctive or different was evident in some of the small group discussions which had a singular focus of teacher or practitioner, but there was a sense that the group as a whole felt the teacher practitioner has a role and identity which is inclusive of a range of characteristics across the fields of teaching and practice, which in turn are context dependent.
Participants felt that working with images as well as the text, extends associative range beyond what would have been looked at, made things more beautiful and also ‘aestheticised confusion’. Others felt that the visual and verbal intermingle, but having to put them together (labelling images with words) created some constraints.
Full text/image teacher-practitioner index
Antonia Clews, 10by10 Project Leader : Report on Workshop No3: Index 4/09