Intentionality, Complexity, and Collaboration: The Identity of an Arts-Integrated Teacher

• In Event: 18.045 - Arts-Integrated Early Childhood Education: Model, Implementation, Impact, and Future

Abstract

This presentation proposes and will describe essential aspects of ECE teachers working within an AWL model, with particular attention to one aspect of a teacher’s identity -- an “embodied mindset” -- which encourages a more dynamic and holistic view of arts-integrated teaching and learning. These ideas about teaching emerged from a series of qualitative studies that examined ECE teachers’ beliefs, practices, and collaborations with artists as they grappled with the complexities in arts-integrated teaching and critical reflection.

A teacher constructs her/his professional identity from her/his wellspring of personal and professional attitudes, experiences, and abilities as well as beliefs about children, learning, and teaching -- and in our case within a context of beliefs about the arts as well. The critical-reflective approach to arts-integrated teaching within AWL “involves the interplay of the emotional and the cognitive that enables disturbances, reconfigurations and shifts in knowledges, understandings and identities” (Miller, Nicholas, Lambeth, 2008, p.354). Juxtaposing identities of teacher, artist and researcher -- both within and across individuals in AWL -- affords opportunities for just such challenging, internal ‘disturbances, reconfigurations, and shifts’ (Sameshima, 2008; Wiebe, Sameshima, Irwin, Leggo, & Gouzouasis, 2007). We have been interested in the extent to which beliefs, self-efficacy, types of reflectivity, and approaches to documentation of young-children’s learning influence teachers’ receptivity to the complexities of arts integration as well as enhance their identities of artist, teacher, and researcher? What impact does this critical-inquiry stance have on ECE pedagogy, artist-teacher collaboration, and valuing the arts for both child and personal/professional development?

AWL has a long history of teacher inquiry through critical reflection that influenced the course of the professional development components and resulted in tools to measure beliefs and self-efficacy. Two specific studies afforded opportunity to explore more deeply how these were articulated in practice and influenced personal/professional identity. Date sources involved: reflective journals, concept maps, inventories, interviews with teachers and artists, reflections and use of the documentation process, and classroom observations. The two specific projects/studies uncovered insights into the intentionality, collaborations, and complex thinking/working of teachers in nine early childhood classrooms. Synthesis of the data suggests a confluence among teacher’s beliefs, arts self-efficacy, and types of reflectivity, in relation to understanding the complexities and decision-making involved in arts-integrated teaching. Receptivity to artist-teacher collaboration and level of engagement in the documentation process advanced professional growth. Full integration of AWL suggests an “embodied mindset” that encompasses: 1) awareness of oneself as a both a learner and artist; 2) viewing teaching as a creating, constructive process, 3) openness to learn from others, and 4) engagement in multiple types of reflectivity. Implications for professional development and further research will be discussed.

Author

• Patricia Pinciotti, East Stroudsburg State University of Pennsylvania