Abstract:
There has been a plethora of research done on all kinds of beginning teachers, but little has focused on art education teachers, and even less has focused on how beginning art education teachers make sense of their early teaching experiences. It is, however, known that teachers of art come to the profession with multiple skills that can be beneficial in developing a successful pedagogy and a sense of professional identity once they learn to put all of those skills together into a cohesive teacher-self. It is important to recognize the development of their teacher identities as a way of understanding their future effectiveness and dedication to the field of art education. This understanding could also help to develop better teacher preparation programs and in-service experiences for beginning teachers. Therefore, this study sought to understand art education teacher training and the possible problem of isolation, and how these impact art education teachers' abilities to develop professional identities. The study used emerging research study methods that involved 7 preservice and novice art education teachers from a university in Alabama. The teachers participated in questionnaires, one-on-one interviews, classroom observations, identity bricolage-making workshops and the writing of reflective artist statements. The findings suggest that past school biographies, parental and teacher influences, isolation, and artistic lived experiences contribute to teachers' development of their professional identities.
