It took me a long time to decide to do this MA Art and Design in Education and I am happy to say that I started it 3 weeks ago. I was concerned about whether to do MA Fine Art and to continue my work as a fine artist, or to combine my art practice with my experience as a careers professional, Montessori preschool teacher and freelance arts educator. Even though I would love to dedicate more time to concentrate solely on producing art work for my own gain, I decided that I would like to progress in combining my experiences to see where this will take me in the future. This has also been confused by the issue of my interest in training to work as a child psychotherapist!
Over the past 3 weeks at the Institute of Education we have listened to each other’s interests in many different areas, but mostly beliefs surrounding art education which has thrown up discussion on gender, race, sexuality, multiculturalism, linguistics, anthropology (social and visual), participation, collaboration and play. And the course is full of educators (nursery, primary, secondary, further and higher education) which is a rich mix of opinions, values and an incredible variety of differing art practices.
We now have time as individuals to reflect on our beliefs and to decipher how they have developed the way we work as educators. I am also curious how this will contribute to my job as careers professional at the University of the Arts London.
