Context:

One of today’s European trends in education puts teacher teams and team teaching in the spotlight, as favorable with respect to individual, ‘isolated’ teachers (EC, 2015, 2017). Arts teachers, for example, are often employed in interdisciplinary teams because of the expectation that they can make creative and solution-oriented contributions in interdisciplinary projects. While this evolution might be presented under the self-evident motto ‘stronger together’ inside and outside the classroom, inspection of educational policy documents and observation of practices in schools reveal a multiplicity of functional roles and responsibilities assigned to groups of teachers, in relation to the implementation and control of new educational policy requirements, and to the use of teacher-team dynamics for effectiveness and efficiency-driven innovation (Frenssen, Tamassia, 2020).  Today’s arts teachers in schools are confronted with this.

Topic:

This arts educational research project is a reaction to these practices. We explored the possibilities for being together and teaching together as subject-matter arts teachers in a secondary school. With the arts teachers we started not from external requirements and obligations in relation to policy and innovation, but from the own deep and shared love for the subject of arts (pedagogy).

The research project was a three-year project. These were turbulent years: schools had to impose new curricula, teachers had to implement new teaching objectives in practice and corona provided an adapted school routine. In this paper presentation we look at the way the teachers as a collective started to commemorate their arts classes, and how they decided to develop a lesson together. The process through which the involved teachers went, is accurately mapped and presented in the publication of NW 29 from last year. There is attention for (1) the way their lesson was designed together and (2) the arts pedagogic positions of the teachers (in relation to content, students and colleagues) in the team-taught lesson.

Research question:

How can a collective of eight subject-matter arts teachers, in cooperation with a small collective of field researchers, achieve a collective practice as a form of team teaching, that is initiated from the own deep and shared love for the subject of arts (pedagogy)?

Theoretical framework:

In the theoretical part of this study we were inspired by the work by Jacques Rancière, Gert Biesta, Jan Masschelein, Maarten Simons, Elizabeth Ellsworth and Tyson Lewis. It is also these authors who make us think about the place of research in the practice context of a secondary school.

European/international dimension

Team teaching is currently receiving lots of attention, not only at the level of educational policy, but also within educational research in the European context. This is not new, team-teaching has been a "hot topic" for some time (e.g. Murphy, Scantlebury 2010). The concept whereby different teachers stand in front of the class seems to intrigue researchers. However, the approach in articles about team-teaching is often practical-organizational.

The project we present is innovative because it explores the possibilities of teachers teaching together starting from the figure of the subject-matter teacher, and not replacing it by something else or ignoring it.  By considering the possible intertwining of the educational concept ‘team teaching’ with the subject-specific knowledge and practices of a secondary school teacher, we arrived at a different educational concept: the pedagogic collective of teachers.

The teachers and researchers in this study work in Belgium. However, the turbulent educational landscape is not a typical characteristic of education in this country. Our reflections on the unpredictable and precarious character of educational (research) practices in these conditions, and how small collectivities coped with that, are of relevance for researchers in other European countries.

Context in which the research method must be placed: -practice-oriented research -concrete case study -aim: mapping the explorative route of a collective of teachers in the world of the subject of arts Method: ethnographic research Our practice-oriented work can be placed in the tradition of critical school ethnography. We applied this in a project aimed at exposing problems and limitations of team teaching in the context of secondary education. Here we worked with arts teachers. Our focus was on the subject-specific cooperation of teachers in the context of a subject group. In the initial phase of our research, we started from literature and document study. Gradually, insights were interwoven with field studies. Literature, documents and practices were in constant dialogue with each other. This interplay opened up our research path. Field work with section groups of arts teachers: The section group of arts teachers is anchored in the fibers of a school culture. We went through a practical cycle with the school-bound section group of arts teachers. During the cycle we refined our answer to the research question. After the literature study, the first versions of the design strategies, teaching positions and actions were created. Data processing method: The data from the document and literature study is handled according to the method of systematic review. We start from a set of key terms. These key terms are refined and adjusted through confrontation with literature. We process the data from the case study in the secondary school through ethnographic research. We opt for this because there are already many perceptions about the concepts of team teaching and team learning in secondary education. The ethnographic methodology offers us the opportunity to analyze the complexity of a school-bound educational community. The ethnographic approach is in line with the way we work with the section groups of arts teachers. The researcher consciously thinks about his role within the research context, in this case in his work with the section group. The insights that come from this analysis are fed by conscious questioning the activities. In the second phase, the proposed design strategies, teaching positions and actions are explored and used.

-A collective of arts teachers, an underestimated dimension: Within the group of arts teachers, there is a resistance to concepts such as team teaching, as they are often used in schools to achieve external goals. These goals are outside the field of the arts (education). A collective that starts from a focus on content offers opportunities to express the relationship between subject, school and policy from the position of the subject-matter arts teachers. -Arts as a connecting element: Letting the group work is often forgotten in team teaching. Not from practical considerations, but from content. In this project, the love of art proves to install an unexpected connection between the teachers. Before this project, mainly practical organizational issues were on the agenda in the section. The notion of speaking as a group was not present at the time. The project caused a shift. -Collectivity gives a voice: The collective dimension is a dimension that offers a lot of security. The collective gives the arts teachers in this school a voice toward the school community and a voice towards school policy. -The collective as an artistic concept: The concept 'collective' has a tradition in the arts. It is given different interpretations. It is interesting to put the concept within arts education in relation to this concept within the arts. Some artistic collectives give a lot of space to the autonomy of the individual artists involved. Other collectives leave little room for the freedom of these artists. The collective of teachers we have worked with in this school leaves a lot of autonomy for the individual. The collective dimension also arises in working together outside the classroom. There is no obligation for collectivity during the lessons.

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