The Common Spaces of Artistic Teaching and Educative Mentoring

• In Event: Curriculum and Aesthetics

Abstract

Artistic teachers have a complex set of philosophical orientations to teaching and conceive their teaching as artistic expression and their students’ learning as aesthetic experience. Artistic teaching develops over time, through dialogue with other teachers, and may also carry over into the pre-service/ new teacher mentoring relationship. Unfortunately, pre-service teachers and new teachers often describe having sub-par mentoring encounters that do not promote growth and continued learning through aesthetic experience. A possible avenue for the promotion of growth and continued learning would be for artistic teachers and new teachers to participate in educative mentoring.

Educative mentoring is a type of mentoring which encourages experienced teachers to view themselves as teacher educators. As teacher educators, they would help novice teachers learn how to “teach and develop the skills and dispositions to continue learning in and from their practice” (Feiman-Nemser, 1998, p. 66). The practice of educative mentoring could open possibilities for learning opportunities beneficial for mentors and mentees, such as collaborative reflection, teaching, planning, inquiry, and critical examination of teaching practices (Feiman-Nemser, 1998). Artistic teachers may be able to aid pre-service and new teachers in a productive fashion within educative mentoring approaches by guiding the developing teachers to aesthetic experiences and helping them uncover the connections between teaching as artistic expression and learning as aesthetic experience.

Authors

• Chelsea Beth Chandler, University of Toledo

• Kelsy Krise Krise, University of Toledo