As a practictioner I engage in creative practices, my knowlege as a practioner is often tacit, experiential, and process-driven. As a teacher I facilitate learning, translating practice into structured pedagogy. I guide students through reflection, critique, and skill-building in ways that may differ from their own practice but often are the same.
Orr and Shreeve explore in “Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design” how practitioner and teacher identities interact, cross fertilise and influence each other (Orr & Shreeve, 2017). As a practitioner I am bringing industry relevance, live projects, and experiential knowledge into teaching. As a teachers I use critical pedagogy, structured reflection, and student-centered learning to deepen both my own and my students’ understanding of creative processes.
The studio environment however blurs those boundaries, making learning immersive and fostering a community of practice where students learn by doing, just as professionals do. The studio highlights the hybrid nature of my roles, requiring both creative expertise and academic rigor. As practitioner-lecturer I often act as translators, making tacit creative knowledge accessible in a educational context (Biggs & Karlsson, 2011).
As much as I expect creativity from my students, I believe it is the role of us teachers to show outstanding practice as part of our teaching, to take risks and to surprise. Teaching in art and design is not a one-way transfer of knowledge; it is an exchange where practitioners also learn from students. Students bring new perspectives, approaches, and cultural influences, which can inform the practitioner’s own creative practice (Shreeve & Trowler, 2010). Students learn as much from observing the practitioner’s creative processes as they do from direct instruction. Practitioners model professional behaviors, ways of thinking, and problem-solving strategies which students absorb through observation and practice. The practitioner’s own work and research become a source of inspiration and learning. On the other hand the process of explaining artistic decisions and critiquing student work often leads practitioners to reconsider their own methods. It is constant interplay where teaching is informed by real-world practice, and practice is enriched by pedagogical reflection, for the students as well as teachers.The research informs the teaching, and student work conversely inspires new directions for research, as students and graduates become collaborators.
References
Biggs, M. and Karlsson, H. (2011) The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts. London: Routledge.
Orr, S. & Shreeve, A. (2017) Signature Pedagogies in Art & Design. Abingdon: Routledge.
Shreeve, A., Sims, E., & Trowler, P. (2010) A Kind of Exchange: Learning from Art and Design Teaching. York: Higher Education Academy.