Transition from artist to artist teacher: A case study of graduate student studio teaching

This work is a qualitative inquiry, using naturalistic, descriptive methods of educational anthropology to form a case study of the teaching and learning environment in a particular graduate teaching assistant's (GTA) University Foundations drawing classroom. Data reveal relationships, patterns and forms in the GTA's teaching behaviors, classroom phenomena and the student's learning behaviors. Inferences are drawn from the descriptive data and hypotheses are formulated that concerns itself with how the particular graduate student teaches studio art and why. By recording a GTA's personal pedagogical evolution and investigating the assumptions and values that underlie the process, the researcher has discovered general characteristics of university visual arts teaching for structuring knowledge in that area. Conclusions are education in the arts is personality driven, good teaching is a sustained and willful act and curriculum must be sequentially ordered for optimum student learning