The artist-teacher scheme as postgraduate professional development in higher education

The Artist-Teacher scheme has been established in recent years to encourage, revive and maintain the creative practice of visual arts teachers. Higher education institutions providing postgraduate qualifications have completed their pilot phases of the scheme, and the first postgraduate certificates and degrees have been awarded. This paper describes and illustrates work of students on these courses, and the relationship of their renewed creativity to their experience as professional teachers. The information was drawn from interviews with students, staff and initiators of the scheme, as well as student evaluations. There is a summary of the history of the scheme and a description of its recent manifestation in the pilot postgraduate programmes. The paper also includes a discussion and analysis of features of the Artist-Teacher scheme: the gallery collaborations, the relationship of theory to practice and to pedagogy. Students' responses to the scheme are discussed and, finally, emerging evidence of the positive impact that the Artist-Teacher scheme is having on classroom performance is considered. Although ATS continues to exist in a number of forms, such as summer schools and day/evening classes and part-time postgraduate certificate/Masters degrees, it is the mainly latter that is the focus of this paper.