Minding the Gap: Exploring the Potential of the Teaching Portfolio as Curricular Innovation

Abstract

In this conversation, we explore the potential for curricular innovation in community art education through the adoption of a traditional training activity for student-teachers: the teaching portfolio. The experience of introducing portfolios in the final course of a community-based program of study provides an opportunity to reconsider the nature of becoming an art teacher in the community and how that differs, and/or is similar to, traditional teacher training for schools or adult learning environments. We discuss how we theorize the role of portfolios as part of professional identity development among student-teachers in the community, and how portfolios can operate as a mechanism from which to begin to reconceptualize community art education in contemporary teacher preparation contexts. Although community art education (CAE) shares evaluative qualities, common goals, and outcomes with both formal K–12 and adult (postsecondary) learning environments, CAE has been largely overlooked as a site of innovative practice and consequential learning for student-teachers in terms of standards of practice that reflect professional preparation in ways unique to the community, yet comparable to traditional teacher training and/or adult education. The commonly held belief that the idiosyncratic nature of informal learning equates to informal teaching practice is compounded because teachers in the community are not necessarily certified or accredited in our Canadian context by provincial governments, even though learners in the community range from early childhood to the elderly and require different strategies and philosophical orientations to succeed. At the same time, CAE professionals do include certified teachers who elect to teach in