Teacher-artist partnership as teacher professional development

Teacher-Artist Partnership (TAP) programmes in Ireland have, historically, tended to be ad-hoc, short-term, and underfunded. They have, moreover, lacked an explicit focus on teacher CPD. In 2014, a Government of Ireland funded initiative was set up to address these shortcomings and to explore how TAP, as a model of CPD, could support arts education in Ireland’s primary schools. The initiative involved six teachers and six artists collaborating on arts projects in six schools across the country. In this article, the authors examine three of these partnerships, focusing, specifically. on the professional development enabled by TAP for the three teachers involved. In their analysis, the authors draw on data from an initial week-long residential summer course and the ensuing in-school partnerships. Data sources include teachers’ and artists’ diaries, classroom observations and focus group interviews. The authors found that TAP enabled considerable professional development for the three participating teachers, all of whom were highly motivated and had significant expertise in the arts/arts education. In this article, they consider the implications of their findings for the role of TAP in developing a sustainable approach to arts education in Ireland’s primary schools.