Artist-Teachers' In-action Mental Models While Teaching Visual Arts

Abstract

Studies have examined the assumption that teachers have previous perceptions, beliefs and knowledge about learning (Cochran-Smith & Villegas, 2015).

This study presented the In-Action Mental Model of twenty leading artist-teachers while teaching Visual Arts in three Israeli art institutions of higher Education. Data was collected in two stages: videotaping of art lessons and stimulated recall interviews.

Data was analyzed in three steps: Three artists-teachers' data was analyzed and based on the results, explicit (behavioral) and implicit (mental models) categories were built. In the second step, all the categories were analyzed in accordance to the three teachers' data. In the third step, data collected only from the artist-teacher that used different lesson patterns in the same lesson was analyzed.

The teacher's mental model is influenced by the subject matter – visual arts. As evidence, the general mental model (Mevorach & Strauss, 2012) does not include all the components of the in-action mental model of teachers teaching visual arts. The characteristics of various types of subject matters may contribute to the understanding of the in-action mental model of teaching, and understand how these subject matters influence the in-action mental model, and the Teaching Model as a whole.