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Abstract
The following questions were posed to guide this research: 1. What is it to be an artist teacher? 2. How are artist teachers educated? 3. Should the education of artist teachers be encouraged and extended? Case study 'A' is a practitioner based investigation of three art and education courses provided by the School of Education of Anglia Polytechnic University (APU), conducted in order to ascertain if there was an implicit policy to educate students as artist teachers. Case study 'B' involved participant observation in which an artist teacher summer school, at Tate Modern and Wimbledon School of Art, was studied as an example of a course with the explicit aim of educating artist teachers. The Artist Teacher Scheme (ATS), of which the summer school was a part, was also examined. The evidence indicates that the teacher who also makes art, or the artist who also teaches, is a phenomenon with an historical and conceptual lineage. The term 'artist teacher' has been used in the USA to describe this practice and the term has also been introduced in England to describe participants on the ATS educational initiatives. It is concluded that in case study 'A' , students' were educated as both artists and teachers although the explicit term 'artist teacher' was only occasionally used in course documents. Regarding case study 'B', it is concluded that the fundamental aim of the artist teacher summer school was to give art teachers the opportunity to extend, or re-engage with, personal art practice in the belief that this practice would both develop the individual as an artist and inform the individual's art teaching. The main proposition that emerges from this study, and is considered to demonstrate validity, is that practise as an artist teacher should be extended and supported in art education through a positive model in which dual expertise is valued and developed. However, evaluative monitoring of the courses cited, and similar courses, regarding the benefits for artist teachers and the education of their students, could be a fertile area for further research.