The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the theoretical outcomes and the analytical framework emerging from the research developed about the Project 10x10 by FCG (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Portugal), a program of teachers´ continuing professional development.

The program works in-between spaces of art and education, curricular subjects and artistic fields, schools and art foundation, teachers and artists, teachers and students, teaching and learning. This is so since “10x10” is grounded on cooperative work developed by teachers and artists and implemented in the classroom context. Although taking place between the art foundation and the school, and making use of artistic devices and rationalities, this is not an arts education program; rather it promotes teachers’ critical distance towards the classroom. By being grounded on cooperative and creative teamwork, the program aims to develop, implement and shed light on particular pedagogical strategies – named as micro-pedagogies in the guidelines of the project “10x10” – derived from the confrontation/dialogue between artistic and pedagogic practices and strategies of work.

The research project we developed assumed the potential of the educational experiences created within 10x10 and was organized around three articulated axes: theorization of the 10x10 educational experience, analysis of 10x10 practices and its dissemination.

We had already the opportunity to share in ECER 2014 and 2015 some of the preliminary findings of this project - data collected during the years of 2014 and 2015 concerning participant teachers’ perceptions about different dimensions of the program. In this paper, we propose to discuss the outcomes of the theorizing exercise developed through the analysis of the 10x10 practices. Our approach is an attempt to inductively construct educational theory through the analysis of a particular experience of teacher education. This analysis holds on the reading of the nature of the 10x10 practices, their characteristics and elements and relies in certain positionings concerning pedagogy, the relations between art and pedagogy and between artistic and pedagogic practices.

We understand pedagogy as an ‘in-between’ that happens in the specific interaction between theory and practice that exists in education (Houssaye, Hameline and Fabre, 2004); as an opportunity to think, and keep, the contradictions inherent to education and to the educational task, as well as to think the educational principles, purposes, facts and actions (Meirieu, 2004). This perspective allows us to think 10x10 practices according to their educational nature related with the educational principles and purposes underlying the actions developed within the program. It has a political, philosophical and anthropological dimension that allows us to think beyond merely technical or didactical aspects of 10x10 practices. We ground this perspective on an idea of the weakness of education (Biesta, 2010), and on the need of developing a poor pedagogy (Maschelein, 2008). It is also based on Masschelein & Simons’ (2013) ethical, political and aesthetical perspective about pedagogy, that argue for the recovery of the public dimension of pedagogy as a central aspect for the understanding of educational contexts, processes and actions.

Through this theoretical positioning we’ve analysed the experiences 10x10 according to their public dimension, considering the knowledge, meanings and experiences made public through 10x10 practices. We explore the possibility of a heterodox dialogue between pedagogic practices and artistic practices that understand that the artistic work opens an other space and time which consists in the ‘partage du sensible’ (Larrosa, 2013; Rancière, 2010). The relation between artistic work and pedagogical work potentiates learning and sharing of the common world. We proposed to think the way in which 10x10 opens space for this dialogue placing artistic work and pedagogical work as elements of the construction of a common world.

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