Teachers' and Artists' Collaborative Teaching and Learning

The new dimension of a stimulating, open and innovative learning environment in education is recognised in the integrative collaboration of all those involved in the educational process. Such an environment provides children with a variety of contextual experiences to enter the symbolic world of culture and art. Collaboration between artists and teachers has been identified as an essential approach to improving the quality of planned arts practice in kindergartens and schools. In order to improve collaborative teaching between teachers and artists in Slovenian preschools and primary schools, a design-based research methodology was used. The paper presents a snapshot of the pre-intervention situation and the impact of interventions that involved teachers in collaborative work with artists and children’s participation in the educational process. The study involved 116 preschool teachers and 148 primary school teachers. The results showed the importance of involving artists in the educational process. By involving artists in the pedagogical process, teachers can gain information about how children can participate experientially and expressively in artistic experiences, which 1) relieves the burden of predetermined and overstructured curricular practices, 2) enables pupils to participate experientially and expressively in artistic experiences, 3) provides teachers with insight into children’s experiential and expressive capacities/competences, and 4) provides artists with insight into the possibilities of integrating authentic artistic experiences into education.