Collaboration as Individual Learning Event: Collective Consciousness and Shared Practice in the Development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Visual Arts Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

This chapter shares a suite of collaborative artmaking projects, designed to use Arts-based inquiry through an a/r/tographical lens to enable deep learning and the development of pedagogical content knowledge. These projects are underpinned by a desire to provide authentic and engaging learning experiences for Visual Arts pre-service teachers in a studio setting, appropriate to the contexts and complex demands they will face in such environments in their teaching careers. The projects are linked by notions of visual performance where the pre-service teachers, motivated by discussion, stimuli and feedback engage in several phases of critical, reflective and creative thinking through the material practice of painting. The paintings become palimpsests, revealing and concealing levels of contemplation , experience, negotiation and subjectivity as Art, research and education connect and disconnect through action and thought. In this way, pre-service teachers engage in mapping the networks of interactions, dialogues, group dynamics and learnings whilst their emergent identities as Visual Arts teachers are entwined with their developing understandings. The purposes of this rehearsal are varied and multifaceted. Collaboration in this context is an ergonomic modality in the development of teacher identity and proficiency because it occurs in emplaced and authentic settings. In this way, pre-service teachers draw upon communal affect and live performance to critique and analyse the layered actions and experiences that materialize; the learnings become at once, collaborative and individuated.