Participatory pedagogy and the professional identity of future art teachers

This article examines how participatory pedagogy shapes the professional identity of future art teachers. Although scholarship on teacher identity has shown that becoming a teacher is a dynamic, relational, and contextually mediated process, research on participatory pedagogy has more often emphasized engagement, innovation, and inclusion than professional becoming. This gap is especially important in art teacher education, where learning is inseparable from critique, interpretation, representation, and cultural mediation. The article argues that participatory pedagogy influences the professional identity of preservice art teachers not simply by increasing classroom activity, but by repositioning them as reflective, recognized, agentic, and ethically situated participants in educational practice. Drawing on literature in teacher identity, co-creation in higher education, arts-based reflection, and art teacher education, the discussion identifies four interrelated mechanisms through which this process occurs: reflective externalization, relational recognition, agentic authorship of practice, and ethical-cultural positioning. The article also argues that the formative potential of participation is never automatic. It depends on intentional facilitation, equitable structures of voice, and assessment models able to value collaborative and reflective learning. By bringing together these fields of scholarship, the article repositions professional identity formation as a central outcome of participatory pedagogy in art teacher education and offers a concise conceptual framework for future research and curriculum design.