Space: Teacher-Practitioner reflections on the relationship between teaching and practice.
Space focused on prompting participants to explore the third space ‘in between’ teaching and practice, and the liminality of the different teacher and practitioner roles.
Questions offered for participants to consider include; what does this interstitial space allow and generate in terms of cross over and new ideas? How do teacher-practitioners maintain the integrity of their roles and develop a professional profile? How do the roles influence or direct the practice of ‘the other’ and what are the tensions between them? How can the tensions be identified and exploited?
Overview:
Notable within this workshop, despite being given the space to reflect on the relationship between teaching and practice from a practitioner perspective, discussions tended towards discussing the institution/academy, or student learning, and participants appeared to find it difficult to focus on teacher-practitioners as having a distinct perspective. Indeed the tensions between practice and teaching are generally framed as tensions relating to academic perceptions of the value of research [as practice].
Participants expressed familiar tensions between creative and academic contexts, which are often raised in teaching-focused staff development scenarios, and these concerns are not distinct to teacher-practitioners (as opposed to teachers). Issues such as the prioritising of quality, assessment, benchmarking and end-product over process, the lack of time, and issues of constraints on creativity and risk-taking within academia, were identified as the prime context of teaching, whilst the context of practice and it’s processes were less actively described. The outcome driven culture of HE is described as being at odds with the concepts of freedom/space, highlighting the conscious effort required to make space for self [as a practitioner] within an institution.
Of interest are the comments that teacher-practitioners may find it difficult to act as ‘teacher’ rather than from their subjective positions as ‘practitioner’, when faced with student’s creative problems. From the other perspective, it is suggested that full time teachers keep the connection with their practice through ‘practice-like activity’ - as they might within their practice, through the classroom ’studio’ with their students. A further view is that some practitioners want to keep their practice separate from their teaching and feel that teaching drains them creatively.
A further insight is that some practitioners feel the need to research ‘knowledge’ in order to teach, but welcome this as an opportunity that benefits their practice, along with co-learning through their students. Other literature (Artist Teacher Scheme evaluation 2006) reveals that teachers who have lost touch with their practice feel the need to participate within a community of practitioners, to keep themselves up to date and also that knowledge of the contemporary arts field makes full time teachers feel more confident. This up to date knowledge and its impact on confidence is thus shared by both teachers and teacher-practitioners, although practitioners may feel their expertise is teaching through creative process, whilst they feel teacher’s expertise may be derived through the teaching process.
This workshop highlights that there are opportunities to ‘reclaim’ or reprioritise practice and a further recognition that with an emphasis on the development of pedagogy, ‘practice as practice’ may be being forgotten, whilst many of the teacher-practitioners emphasis how important their practitioner identity is to their teaching.
The Balancing trick of the teacher-practitioner:
Logistical constraints prevent freedom as a practitioner - the realities of doing a job [of teacher]. There is a requirement to be involved with admin and management, which makes it difficult to carry out practice, but there is also pressure in relation to research, which makes HE fraught. Research can be divisive - the bridges between those that ‘do’ research, and teaching and curriculum development, are under-developed [issues to do with academic culture creating barriers between values]. Recognition that the institution may prevent flows and establishes systemic constraints through years worth of ‘how we do it’, preventing opportunities to explore connections.
Teaching is rewarding process personally but perhaps not so rewarding for practice. There is a difficulty in being creative when helping others become creative. When supporting individuals with your own creative energy and ideas, it’s difficult to have much left. One needs strategies to not give away too much of oneself - not put oneself into students work/practice (”where would I go with this”?) rather than focusing on drawing the individual out - difficult to balance role of facilitator, rather than having own subjective opinion/experience in response to an issue.
Practice can be individual [private] or with a desire to connect with ‘arts’ community so that the educational institution can become part of your practice in some way - the issue is also a balance of integrity. A set of ideas, ideas that need testing, discussions with students and projects you set [as teacher-practitioner], can all be associated with something you are currently working on in your own practice, which makes it quite nebulous.
Teaching is a privilege, to have the ‘head space’ - but the practitioner side is that you need to do something about it .. Many colleagues find the connections problematic and want to keep their practice separate. Many teachers say they are practitioners although not that active, and one view is that there is a difference between creative [more 'self searching' through their practice] and commercial practitioners.
Difficulties with being a practitioner within academic culture:
Benchmarks for ‘research as practice’ are new
Issues of institutions not catching up with industry - still in traditional style degrees because ‘the system’ can’t evidence quality
Teaching for creativity where institutions don’t take risks
Teaching students to articulate through materials, who may never go on to become creative practitioners
Benefits of being both teacher and practitioner:
Students input into they way one sees own practice, and you can gear teaching around own interests
Research is needed to inform teaching, make sure ‘know’ enough
Teaching personally rather than being a resource - students look at you as doing what they are trying to learn, expected to bring your own practice -
Mature students bring wide contextual knowledge where you can learn from them as a practitioner
‘Updating’ on subject based knowledge [research] - the more you know the more informed your practice is so benefits the individual through meeting the expectation to carry out research as a teacher [but possibly not so specific to own research interests]
Teaching is an enjoyable process - a good feeling - a reverse struggle when have to go back to practice - sometimes ‘I’m a teacher-practitioner not practitioner-teacher’
Teaching and Practice as Process:
Teaching and practice processes run in parallel activities and sometimes converge and fall apart, but are equally important:
Critical reflection is part of training as an artist and is used as a teacher Teaching is informed by the way practitioners make works - [e.g how it is encountered, affected] - like a student project.
‘Art’ doesn’t work on a routine basis - it’s a process that can’t be assigned to time constraints - teaching impinges on practice. There is a lack of time - ‘research’ time is essentially used as a ‘catch up’ time. In defining ‘practice time’ allocation’, it changes the nature of work e.g. “this is research”..
If you have to benchmark a product - how does this impact on the process? - struggle with students as the product is assessment related - students want a formula, but as a practitioner it’s difficult to work with this structure - to box the creative process, and difficult to define for others. This concept of achievement restricts creativity and creates fear and conservatism within the learning environment
The ‘comfort zone’ is where artists ‘do process’ and teachers ‘do product’ and artists resist this [product], seeing work divided into creative versus measured/academic work, rather than looking at things as not so qualitatively divided.
Practice as research:
‘Political noise’ or institutional policy and priority has a major impact on the value of practice within HE, with pedagogic practice and ‘research as practice’ current agendas at institutional level. The strategic issues of getting time and money means that practice has to be seen or described as research for it to have validity. Research is often ‘in-house’ within the institution, the idea being that it feeds down through practice - but some practice is given higher accord. The question is whether there is a pressure on the integrity of the artists’ practice - and these tensions are felt.
Practice and research have become synonymous and yet this isn’t being discussed or the efficacy of practitioners being researcher or whether research is integral to being an artist. Does every practitioner by default research? This suggests that there are conflicting institutional messages with researchers not being involved in teaching and not enough bridges between teaching, research and practice.
Seeing practice as research gives it a currency, validity, it can then be funded and supported; but if it’s about industry practice [about working with a client] then unless it has a research component, it’s not seen as the same activity. But practice contributes to a research culture.
Teacher-Practitioner Identity:
Frustration is expressed at the ‘power plays’ and politics which exist, including the status issues of part-time teachers, and the different language and experiences of ‘freedom’ between full time practitioners and teacher-practitioners. The impact of context on identity is viewed as crucial in terms of the extent to which practitioners may engage with the educational culture, versus opportunities to pursue networks external to HE, with perhaps greater kudos for an artist. For full time staff they may be pursuing ‘practice like’ activity with students in the classroom as a type of mimicry for practice - by default working ‘through’ the students to maintain way of working, or to establish a research profile.
Practitioner aspect of teacher-practitioner needs to have authority, tools and resources to give students
Practitioner’s see self, and are viewed by others, differently because they are actually producing work [not just teaching].
Deliberately don’t try and think about what is my practice and don’t want to see yourself mirrored back by students and also don’t feel fully developed as an artist.
Practice is not visible to students but the confidence that come from it is and practitioners feel a bit on trial, are ‘checked out’ [web-sites/google etc] by students who need to position you..
Whether conscious of it or not, in a teaching role practitioners are passing the ‘identity perception’ on [am I still an artist if I didn't create anything this year?]
Antonia Clews, 10by10 Project Leader : Report on Workshop No2: Space 4/09