The Future of Education

The future of education is social and creative. Everywhere, governments are stimulating programmes fostering the creative development of children and supporting the collaboration between schools and societal partners. Based on a qualitative study of a state-sponsored collaboration programme between primary schools and community arts centres in the Netherlands, this paper will present the results of a discourse analysis of interviews with generalist teachers and arts teachers on their professional identities and in-class interaction. Eight pairs of participants were interviewed three times during one school year on their organisation, their collaboration, and their self-perception and perception of the other. The resulting 24 hours of audio recordings were transcribed and analysed using Atlas.ti. After repeated coding, staring with in-vivo coding and building up to more abstract codes, the research concludes that perceptions of self-identity as a teacher and perceptions of the other’s professional identity are the connecting element in the collaboration. In this paper, the main codes will be presented in the form of a dictionary, explaining the different interpretations and associations generalist elementary teachers and arts teachers have of crucial aspects such as content, creativity, didactics, learning, safety, space, and structure.

Keywords: arts education, collaboration, professional identity, creativity, school organisation, professional development.

References
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