Professional Master of Education

The Professional Master of Education (PME) is a two-year master’s programme which leads to a professional qualification to teach Art and Design at second level. The conceptual framework that underpins the delivery of the PME programme operates on the principle that "art teacher education is not centrally concerned with the teaching of art, or teaching about art, but rather is expressly committed to teaching through art" (Granville 2012, p.2).

The question, what does it mean to teach and make art that is of and for our time? anchored the PME cohorts’ experience of the programme. It was explored through many facets including their design and delivery of the curriculum in post primary education; research inquiries and learning encounters that involved peer tutoring, Inclusive Education and engaging with the gallery as a pedagogical site.

The programme is orientated around a sustained immersion in one’s practice as artists and designers. Essentially how the student teachers think, contextualise and make work as artists and designers informs their methodology as future teachers. The annual Change Lab experience and exhibition in the NCAD Gallery gives the student teachers the opportunity to do just that. The Change Lab is an Ubuntu funded project, http://ubuntu.ie/, that was designed as a model of practice to integrate Global Citizenship Education (GCE) into the heart of learning in the Professional Master of Education (PME) programme. The Change Lab instils in our student artist-teachers a strong commitment and motivation to teach for social justice and sustainability through the lens of their practice as artist, researcher and teacher. Each year the Change Lab consists of the student artist-teacher working in groups in the NCAD Gallery space, for a three week period, to create a body of artwork that critically reflects social injustices and unsustainable practices that define our time.

The Change Lab website  https://thechangelab.ie was created to showcase the students' lab experience and the multiple layers that the project involves.The site also acts as a pedagogical repository and a digital archive for past iterations of the Change Lab experience. Please view our film https://vimeo.com/755596971/e609609a1e which captures the evolution of the students' working process to present how they research, respond and articulate the visual art curriculum through a GCE lens.

Granville, G. (2012) Trajectory, Torque and Turn: Art and Design Education in Irish Post Primary Schools. In Gary Granville (Ed) Art Education and Contemporary Culture: Irish Experience, International Perspectives. Bristol: Intellect Books.