Abstract

This study uses arts-based inquiry and other visual methods to explore teachers’ and students’ understandings of effective pedagogy in the context of the Dominican Republic. Centred around Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory of learning and Schön’s (1938) notion of the reflective practitioner, the study seeks to reveal teachers’ and students’ deeply entrenched assumptions, values, and beliefs that govern teaching and learning processes. Both teachers and students will participate in the construction of creative artefacts that combine visual and textual data. Artefacts made by students are then fed back to teachers through cycles of inquiry in order to further facilitate reflection and to use student voice to engage teachers in collaborative professional inquiry. The research is designed with an ethnographic lens that conceptualises art as another cultural tool used to make meaning of one’s world and surrounding environment. It supports a conceptualisation of teaching and learning that is both technical (effective) and relational (affective) and thus uses art as another means for teachers and students to portray their cognitive and emotional selves.

Sophia D’Angelo is a first year PhD student at the Faculty of Education’s REAL Centre. Last year she completed an MPhil in Education, Globalisation, and International Development and focused her thesis research on teacher professional development in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to this, Sophia lived and worked in the Dominican Republic for four years, teaching at the university, primary, and secondary levels both in the public and private sectors, and completing a Princeton in Latin America Fellowship as a teacher trainer in a Dominican educational non-profit. She is passionate about culture, creating culturally sensitive classrooms, and designing culturally relevant curriculum to train teachers of immigrants, refugees, and other marginalised youth.