Arts-Based Leadership: Crafting a Caring Learning Space

• In Event: Roundtable Session 7
  In Roundtable Session: Meaning-Making in Arts Education: New Reflective Approaches to Research

Abstract

Grounded in an Arts-Based Leadership methodology and coupled with Nodding’s Care Theory (2005), this study examined the degree to which teacher-leaders and instructional coaches might craft a caring learning environment in a middle school setting. Specifically, the study considered if when using the Feldman Method in arts-based instructional leadership to assess teaching practice that school leadership and teachers might also invite a qualitatively different conversation as an antidote to the mechanistic and legalistic paradigm that currently burdens teacher and leader interactions. Dialogue skills such as intonation, empathy, respect, and listening were explored through classroom observations. Results suggest that an arts-based leadership approach may in fact change the nature of the dialogue between observer and teacher.

Author

• Zach Kelehear, University of South Carolina