A reflective topical autobiography of an art teacher, exploring her professional growth

Abstract

This thesis investigates the professional growth of teachers, their knowledge bases, the interplay of professional growth and research, and includes a discussion on meaningful art teaching and learning. Social Constructionism provides a lens to explore the life and the voice of an art teacher. This study emphasises the importance of lifelong learning and professional development, which are both key in quality teaching and learning. As a generalist teacher, the researcher was not fully aware of the value of art in education. She had no formal training and did not understand its significance. When she became consciously aware of her teaching, she realized she needed to grow professionally to teach art meaningfully. Through offering her personal story, she encourages teachers to start their own intentional processes of professional growth. This dissertation explores the professional growth of an art teacher, through the methodology of a reflective topical autobiography (RTA) and is framed in a qualitative, narrative paradigm. Data is drawn from an autobiography. The data analysis is a deep reflection on selected professional incidents. The meaning of these incidents is probed using the prescribed process of RTA. This reflection will result in a reflective topical autobiography, which will be formalized into research findings. The findings clearly show the interconnectedness of personal and professional growth, which are the result of intentionality. The researcher develops a reflective approach towards her teaching and starts questioning her identity as a teacher of art. The researcher is also actively participating in the process of her research and is not distanced from it which makes her experience of the research process, as a form of action research, deeply personal.