This workshop intends to present and reflect on the methodology, the pedagogical strategies and the learning experiences of Seminário I, a curricular unityof a PhD course in Arts Education, at Lisbon University. This PhD confers a double certification with Porto University, where the course previously existed, and is the first year in Lisbon, giving the opportunity of a new and organic structure organization. Despite this experience and constant contacts with the institution of Porto, the highly experimental character of the entire curricular project was assumed.

In this Seminar I , which focused on a State of the Art of the pedagogical issues of Research in Arts Education, and whose overall objectives were the formation of a discussion group, we assumed the principle of holding seminar classes under the direction of more than one Professor at the same time, in this case, two of the authors of this proposal.

These are teachers with training and experience in education but less experience in artistic education, being for the first time teaching in this doctorate, which is why they assumed that the syllabus would have to be implemented throughout the course and in negotiation with the class. A broad set of textsof international authors was indicated by the professors of Porto, all in English.

The class of Seminar I consists of nine students of regular attendance and one student as regular listener, with diverse formations (Painting, Theater, Dance, Architecture) and professional practices (teachers, mediators, art educators). All students are native Portuguese-speakers, two are of Brazilian nationality and one Mozambican.

One of the first activities provided by the PhD Program in Arts Education was the organization of a 2-day workshop with Dennis Atkinson, in Oporto, which was intended to be a moment to gather teachers from the two universities and the four schools involved (Institute of Education of the University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Porto, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto), as well as the two groups of students (based in Porto and in Lisbon University) to listen and debate the ideas of the English researcher. Previously a dossier had been prepared with the main works of the author, which the students worked in the different curricular units. Somehow, this first moment allowed for a conceptual tuning that subsequently continued to be worked out in Seminar I classes. The community was especially provoked by the ideas of “Pedagogies of the event”, “real learning”, “not-known”, “intra-action”, “intra-relating” and ‘inter-relating’, and the teachers tried to correspond to this common desire of “disruptive” moments advocated by Atkinson (2006, 2014, 2015, s/d).

The challenge was thus to create a new form of “pedagogy of the event” that was both challenging and met the present needs to stimulate and engage students, but that could also support the long time-span research culture towards the writing of a PhD thesis – the event yet to come. Writing, questioning, relating conceptual perspectives with personal experiences, sharing and co-creating are key concepts in these intra and inter-relating processes of learning towards a creative, critical and collaborative community. Atkinson’s work stimulated the need to shape broader pedagogical perspective, to move beyond the dominance of speeches until it reaches a new territory (Atkinson, 2006: 26) 

Therefore, by the expression “pedagogies ‘for’ the event” we aim at identifying and describing our local, emergent and contingent forms of addressing the need to build new forms of pedagogy in the higher education, especially attending the needs and aspirations of a specific public such as the Arts Education postgraduate students.   

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