Asking difficult questions in perilous times: early career teachers, art practice and the questioning stance

Brennan, Vega ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-6655-1157 (2024) Asking difficult questions in perilous times: early career teachers, art practice and the questioning stance. In: Peace | iJADE Conference 2024, 7-9 November 2024, Liverpool Hope University, UK. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Peril pervades our current times: in society, politics, the environment, our communities and the restlessness within ourselves. We seem to veer from one conflict to the next without resolution or hope of progress. However, through education, we, as art educators are in a unique position to creatively and collaboratively seek pathways to peace. The UNESCO Recommendation on Peace, Human Rights and Sustainable Development (2024) reminds us of the imperative to work collectively for peace. As an artist-teacher and teacher of teachers, when I make art, when I am in the classroom, I constantly ask myself ‘What questions do I need to ask?’ and ‘How do I ask those questions?’ From that questioning stance, a ‘turning outward’, we can seek to understand, create mutual respect, and from mutual respect, foster the conditions for peace. Within art practice there is a generosity of time and attention, an expansive motion that continues to excite me. My trainee teachers have embraced that generosity and embodied openness and curiosity within their radical teaching while they negotiate issues such as geopolitics, gender identity, freedom of speech and their own identities as early career teachers. This paper explores how my identities as an artist-teacher and teacher-trainer intersect and how I/we disrupt tacit assumptions to create ways forward in a difficult world.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Speech)
Departments:	Institute of Education > Secondary PGCE
Additional Information:	Vega Brennan, Secondary PGCE Lecturer, Art and Design, University of Cumbria, UK.
Depositing User:	Vega Brennan
Date Deposited:	16 Dec 2024 10:36
Last Modified:	16 Dec 2024 10:45
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/8544

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