Samtidskonstbaserat gestaltningsarbete i utbildningen av bildlärare : Om vikten av transformativ beredskap i förändringsprocesser

This dissertation addresses student learning processes in contemporary arts- based practice in visual arts teacher education programs. The arts-based processes studied are based on the explorative method for exploring social and social phenomena. ‘Art’, as a school subject, is based on scientific foundations that are informed by a ‘semiotics of art’ perspective. Notwithstanding this, artistic methods comprise a large part of the subject. The aim of this dissertation is to deepen our knowledge of the students’ experience of the learning processes that are present in contemporary arts-based practice in visual arts teacher education programs. Three empirical investigations into two visual arts teacher education programs were conducted. Study I reports on an investigation into an introductory course in contemporary arts-based practice where focus was placed on the student’s learning processes. The theoretical frameworks used in Study I were hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism, and transformative theory. The results of Study I were reported on in their entirety in a licentiate thesis (Cronquist, 2015), and can be summarised in terms of the concepts ‘resistance’, ‘challenges’, and ‘alienation and conciliation as a communicative process’. This introductory study gave rise to new questions which demanded both further depth and breadth in their answers. These issues were addressed by investigating an additional art teacher education program and by analysing the more advanced courses in this program, in contrast to the analysis of the introductory courses that were analysed in the first investigation. Study II presents an investigation into the meanings which emerged in the students’ experiences of the learning processes in a prescribed contemporary arts-based projects whilst Study III presents an investigation of the meanings with emerged in the students’ experiences of learning processes in a prescribed contemporary arts-based independent project, second cycle (Master of arts in secondary education for upper secondary). Study II and Study III take their point of departure in Dewey’s ‘pragmatism’, where human behaviour is considered to be a transactional process between people and their environment. The method of analysis that was used in these studies was inspired by ‘practical epistemological analysis’ (PEA) (Wickman & Östman, 2014). The object of study, which links all three studies together, addresses deepening our knowledge of the learning processes in contemporary arts-based projects. The results of these studies are revealed in three distinct problem areas namely, the laboratory - explorative problem, the subject-cultural problem, and the methodology problem. The laboratory - explorative problem involves the difficulties which students are faced with when they are tasked with making independent choices of methods for creative laboratory - explorative workprocesses in art projects. The subject- cultural problem refers to how students carry within themselves their experiences of learning processes from other subjects and how they put them in contrast with their learning experiences in their art classes. The methodology problem reveals to us how scientific research methods and exploratory art methods come to collide with each other (from the students’ perspective) in the students’ independent art projects. In conclusion, I present a discussion of the questions and challenges that contemporary art concepts can provide to an art teacher education program. ‘Transformative preparedness’ is highlighted as a central concept which students can use to move forward in their art teacher training when habitual behaviours are challenged. ‘Transformative preparedness’ is based primarily on the ability to adopt another person’s perspective. Keywords: teacher education program, art teacher education program, contemporary art, art project, contemporary arts-based practice learning processes, transformation, subject culture, artistic project method