Present moments, present lives: Teacher transformation through art -making

This dissertation provides insights into why and how many elementary school teachers are attempting to retrieve the arts from the margins and to rewrite the texts of their personal and professional lives.;I examine the effects of three teacher professional development programs in the arts: Teachers As Artists, Learning Through the Arts, and The Creative Arts Learning Partnership. I also recount the processes and outcomes of seven case studies in which I assisted and accompanied teachers in art-making over a period of several months. One of those case studies involved seven years of data collection, as well five months of weekly art-making sessions.;Transformation Theory and The Continuum for Teacher Transformation in the Arts provide my theoretical frameworks. I also draw heavily upon those writers in the arts whose notions parallel the current concern in Transformation Theory for change through relationship with "Otherness." In the program research and in the case studies, I use a mixed methods approach and analyse the data with an eye to identifying emergent themes.;My program research shows that teachers will extrapolate from their own experiences in professional development programs in the arts to their own teaching, often providing students with meaningful arts experiences for the first time in their teaching careers. Four factors emerge as essential to teacher development in the arts: hands-on art-making experiences, collegial support, involvement of professional artists, and eradicating, or at least minimizing, systemic barriers to the arts in education.;In the case studies, I provide a view of the rushed and stressful daily lives of contemporary teachers and students. The case study art-making sessions provided a rare opportunity for the teachers to relax and to sink deeply into an activity, and into new kinds of relationships with themselves, their colleagues, their students, and the physical world. All of the participants found ways to integrate their learning into their personal and professional lives, according to their specific situations, and personal dispositions and needs. These case studies display how sustained art-making, while fulfilling the function of conveying skills and knowledge in the arts, can help participants learn to rest in insecurity and "not knowing," a kind of expansive experience that promotes receptivity to and wonder about the unfamiliar and the unknown. My research has highlighted how infrequently experiences that promote accepting and cherishing attitudes towards Otherness occur in the lives of elementary school students and teachers, and how much such experiences are needed in a fractious world.;In my closing chapter, I call for the reinstatement of the arts at the centre of school curricula. I also appeal to arts educators and researchers in the arts to devote part of their energies to ensuring that the results of research into the powerful effects of arts experiences, for teachers and students alike, are presented to individuals who have the power to fashion meaningful school reform.