Output details

A phenomenographic study of the relationship between professional practice and teaching your practice to others

This article presented a unique methodological perspective, which was centred on the experience of relations between creative practice and creative teaching in Higher Education Institutions. Shreeve developed a phenomenographic approach to examine variation in the experience of the relationship between two roles, creative practice and teaching others to become practitioners. Previously phenomenography had been used to examine differences in perceptions, conceptions and approaches to teaching and learning in a range of different subjects and levels in education. It included conceptions of research, teachers’ approaches to teaching and students’ understanding of subject areas in Higher Education. Phenomenography had previously been used by Shreeve, Drew and Bailey (2003) to explore variation in approach to the research component and the study approach (2002) of fashion textiles students.

This article was the first to examine variation in the range of possible ways to experience two related but distinct roles, that of a personal creative practice and enabling others to learn to become creative practitioners in art and design and focused on the way a relationship was experienced, rather than a specific object. This new application of a recognised methodology extended the ways in which Higher Education might be understood and researched through phenomenography. It has also contributed to a growing body of research which is specifically directed at Higher Education practices in creative subject areas, which have relatively few distinct studies and few which are represented in mainstream educational literature. Studies in Higher Education is the highest ranking British Higher Education journal and the presence of art and design as a contributor to national HE debates in the journal are relatively few.