Possibilities for playful pedagogy: a creative arts teacher-educator’s self-study.

Abstract

I am an emerging female academic at the School of Education in a research-intensive university in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. When I assumed the teacher-educator role, I assumed I would excel due to my prior experience as a freelance artist and highschool teacher. However, I had never reflected on the skills and understanding needed to teach preservice teachers about teaching. I soon realised that my experience was insufficient for my current role. Suddenly, how I taught Creative Arts became as crucial as what I taught. I became motivated to focus this research on teaching Creative Arts through playful pedagogy due to self-reflection and observation of the preservice teachers I taught. What I noticed was that they lacked demonstration in their Creative Arts teaching. This observation inspired me to improve my teaching practice and learn about integrating playful pedagogy into my practice. The theoretical perspective of becoming guided this doctoral study, and assisted me in weaving the pedagogical threads of my becoming a teacher-educator. The research questions necessitated transparent reflections through memory-work and arts-based methods. In my initial reflections, I identified the salient idea of play and how it had been evident throughout my life. This approach provoked the concept of teaching through playful pedagogy. I explored the impact of play on my life and from my memories, identified ways in which I could teach more effectively. I also sought to understand the possibilities of playful pedagogy in my teaching practice, and learnt about practical ways of integrating playful pedagogy into my practice. My learnings translated into lessons that I integrated into my teaching practice; these benefitted me as a teacher-educator, the students I taught and will continue to teach and, by extension, the learners they will teach one day. This thesis details the methodological and theoretical explorations of my learning and experiences as they were employed to support my doctoral journey. In this quest to integrate playful pedagogy into my teaching practice, my most valuable highlight was the self-discovery and confidence I gained through the process of reimagining and becoming a teacher-educator.