The Pedagogy of Ontology

• In Event: Pedagogies of Ontology: Interventions and Intraventions of Practice-Based Research

Abstract

Objectives:
This paper examines an experimental artist-in-residence intervention in a secondary art teacher education program entitled Becoming Pedagogical, introducing the notion of a ‘pedagogy of ontology’.

Theoretical Framework:
Becoming Pedagogical connotes a state of embodied living inquiry whereby the learner reflectively and reflexively questions his/her intentions/actions in and through time (Irwin & O’Donoghue, 2012; May, O’Donoghue & Irwin, 2014). A/r/tography, a form of practice based research that inquires into phenomena using artistic and educational means (Springgay, Irwin, Leggo, Gouzouasis, 2008), allowed teacher candidates to engage in living inquiry and to learn skills of observation, questioning, analysis and interpretation. They acquired skills as they moved from desiring to ‘be’ a teacher as expert to ‘becoming’ a teacher as inquirer (Britzman, 2003).
Thus the complexity of becoming pedagogical includes an examination of one’s ontology as an artist and as an educator.

Modes of Inquiry:
The experimental project took place at a major university with a group of 25 secondary art teacher education candidates who worked with two artists committed to socially engaged art practices. The artists spent three weeks during the first semester of the program with the teacher candidates and later returned to complete the collective art production and to discuss the artwork and processes with all involved.

Data Sources:
Semi-structured interviews with the artists were conducted on a weekly basis during the artist residency and the researchers involved also held focus group discussions with those teaching alongside the artists. While these qualitative methods were used, the intention of the project was to engage teacher candidates with a broad understanding of a/r/tography as a way of inquiring and perhaps more importantly, in engaging in contemporary art practices with a particular emphasis on socially engaged art. Artistically rendered artifacts (products) including photographs and a collaborative group exhibition are also examined.

Results:
The intervention created the conditions for questioning pedagogical practices within visual arts, which in turn, offered the conditions for questioning artistic practices within education. The intervention, initially conceptualized within a specific time frame, endured in and through time for the teacher candidates, instructors and researchers involved, bringing forth two unforeseen results of the research. 1) Regular discussions held over the remainder of the program became subsequent interventions, providing participants with the time and space to collectively question what unfolded. 2) These on-going interventions greatly impacted the multiple identities of the instructors, researchers, graduate research assistants and/or artist-educators in which a complex assemblage of identities emerged.

Scholarly Significance:
Current art teacher education is often modeled after a modernist conception of art and education. This project moves beyond modernist interpretations to postmodern and post-structural practices and engages teacher candidates with contemporary ideas thereby disrupting stereotypical ideas about art, teaching, and learning. Furthermore, by allowing graduate students to interpret their experiences within the project and in their own professional practices, the result is an immersion in intravention practices that concentrate on exchange and becoming.

Author

• Rita L. Irwin, The University of British Columbia