Pixel International Conferences

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
[1] Sanne F. Akkerman & Paulien C. Meijer (2011) A Dialogical Approach to Conceptualizing Teacher Identity. Teaching and Teacher Education vol.27, pp.308-319.
[2] Gert Biesta, Mark Priestley & Sarah Robinson (2015) The Role of Beliefs in Teacher Agency, Teachers and Teaching vol.21:6, pp.624-640.
[3] William Charland (2011). Art Integration as School Culture Change: A Cultural Ecosystem Approach to Faculty Development. International Journal of Education & the Arts vol.12(8).
[4] Fianne Konings and Barend van Heusden (2014) Evaluating Partnership, or how to Evaluate the Contribution of Cultural Institutions to an Integrated Curriculum for Culture Education in Primary Schools. International Yearbook for Research in Arts Education vol.2, pp.66-78.
[5] Katherine Strand (2006) The Heart and the Journey: Case Studies of Collaboration for Arts Integrated Curricula, Arts Education Policy Review vol.108:1, pp.29-40.