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Being in two camps: conflicting experiences for practice-based academics

Developed from doctoral research and first presented at the 3rd International Conference: Preparing for Academic Practice, Oxford (2009) this article was selected by peer review for a special edition published in Studies in Continuing Education, an international Education journal. The text was based on a case study examining problematic relationships between teaching and creative practice and the ensuing issues arising in the students’ learning experience. Tutors experiencing the relationship as conflicted were less likely to help their students to understand what was required to become a professional creative practitioner, because they withheld certain kinds of information, such as the best way to resolve the creative process. For the tutor who feels their roles are constantly under tension, their identities are compromised and they belong in neither an education nor practice environment, described as an uncomfortable place to be, with neither role being undertaken successfully. The study also explored contextual reasons why such a conflict might arise for individuals by using an Activity Theory perspective to explore roles, mediating artefacts and objects of activity, enabling potential explanations to be proffered for the resulting tensions. The study challenged existing underlying assumptions within higher education that those who are practitioners always make the best teachers through examining actual experiences. It offers opportunities for new and part time teachers in creative subjects a vehicle to examine and explore their own development as tutors and to understand how and why they might move through this experience to establish more positive working relations. Hourly paid staff are increasingly employed in Higher Education and this study offers ways for individuals and institutions to successfully manage multiple roles. It positioned creative arts tutors firmly in the arena of academic practice in a publication largely devoted to doctoral student experiences of academic practice in mainstream university subjects.