A shared place of discovery and creativity: Practices of contemporary art and design pedagogy.

This article explores the practices of 50 beginning teachers on an Art and Design PGCE course working with 250 learners within a sixth form context. The aim of this project was to explore contemporary art and design practices, explore the concept of artist/designer/craftsperson/teacher/learner/researcher, enable PGCE students to collaborate with sixth form pupils and develop new approaches and strategies to art and design pedagogy. Through practices that blurred learner-teacher identities a dialogical pedagogy emerged and a collaborative community of practice was developed. The beginning teachers also started to construct their artist teacher identities, understand what it means to practice as an artist teacher in the classroom, the impact of these practices on teaching and learning and develop new learning methods. This project demonstrates the possibilities of these practices for contemporary art and design pedagogy however, how and can these endure and be sustainable for this community of beginning teachers in the current cultural, social and political contexts of education.