Mentoring educators to facilitate quality and meaningful art education

Abstract

Quality and meaningful art education is a very important vehicle for learning and knowledge acquisition which is within the reach of all children in schools. Unfortunately, due to a variety of reasons such as the fact that generalist trained teachers, with no specialised training in art, are responsible for the teaching of art in schools in South Africa, as well as recurring educational change and subsequent uncertainty, lead to the situation that art lessons currently taught at many schools do not answer to the requirements for quality art education. There is a great need for in-service training to address the shortfalls in the teaching of art in schools. When skills building workshops in art education were offered, teachers requested personal interventions on a one-to-one basis with a focus on their own particular strengths and shortcomings. Mentoring the educators seems to be a means of addressing their needs to improve the quality of their teaching of art. In response to a plea from teachers this research project was designed during which inexperienced and insufficiently trained teachers who are responsible for art education were mentored. Four sites were selected at which the teachers were mentored. There were marked differences in the circumstances and conditions at the four schools, however, from all the sites there was an outcry for assistance in the planning and presentation of quality art lessons and for lesson ideas. The one similarity in all the cases was the fact that they were all generalist trained teachers who are responsible for the teaching of art in their own class and some other classes as well. The mentoring followed a cyclical process and was adapted for art education. The process comprised the establishment of a relationship in which the mentor and mentee played equally important roles, needs analysis, the mentoring process, which iv consisted of joint planning of lessons, model teaching, discussions and coaching sessions, reflection and then to return to the beginning of the cycle. The process concluded with a workshop. The entire process was recorded, reported on and assessed upon termination. Data that was collected at the four sites was analysed according to themes that were developed from the literature on mentoring in education as well as the literature on quality and meaningful art education. Themes that have emerged are the mentoring relationship, the role of the mentor, the role of the mentee, the purpose and goals of the mentoring, the mentoring process and the mentoring outcomes. The thesis concludes with recommendations for the mentoring of educators in the teaching of quality and meaningful art and suggests that no child should be deprived of the learning opportunities through art that can form part of their primary school experience.