PGCert Education – Artist Teacher Practice

• If you are an art educator this programme will support you in developing your own art practice.
• You will be given support to integrate contemporary arts practices into educational settings through exposure to current debates about art education.
• The course qualification will support your long-term professional development including career progression within educational and other professional settings.
• The Artist Teacher Practice course provides strong partnerships with the Pitt Rivers Museum, visual practitioners and artist tutors (visual arts practitioners who are also engaged in educational practice in a range of contexts).
• The School of Education department at Oxford Brookes provides strong partnership links with a wide range of additional organisations, including the four Oxford University museums (The Ashmolean, Pitt Rivers Museum, The University Museum and The Botanical Gardens) and regional art education network Oxford Art Teach (OAT).
• There is an opportunity to engage with a regional group of art educators who are currently exploring the notion of a learning community, involved in current debate about art education and developed to share good practice and support art colleagues in this locality.

Professional accreditation

This programme is equivalent to 60 master's level credits. You will exit with a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, which is equivalent to one third of an MA Education. 

The PG Certificate: Artist Teacher Practice consists of two modules (total of 60 credits) taken part time over one year.  The modules are:

Integrating Contemporary Practice into the Classroom (single module, 20 credits)
An introductory three day exploratory course, delivered through a series of workshops held at Oxford Brookes University and the Oxford University Museums, linking to contemporary interpretation of the Pitt Rivers Museum's collection. This is followed by two days to critically explore ways to integrate contemporary visual arts practice into the classroom.

You will:

• Explore contemporary practice in a museum setting
• Extend theoretical and practical subject specific skills, knowledge and understanding
• Share ideas, meeting and working with new colleagues
• Work with a number of art/education/museum specialists
• Experiment with and reflect critically on innovative ways to link extended practical subject knowledge to classroom practice
• Integrate appropriate theory and practice into research
• Present work as a portfolio of evidence with writing/annotation and examples of planning, resources and artworks produced by pupils.

Developing Personal Artistic Practice (double module, 40 credits)
This module enables you to develop your own subject knowledge through a series of workshops and seminars at Oxford Brookes University and the Oxford University Museums by:

• Providing facilities and expertise to develop practical and theoretical subject knowledge
• Providing access to contemporary interpretation and exploration of the Pitt Rivers Museum's collections
• Debating contemporary issues related to current art theory and art education theory
• Developing a body of artwork which extends your own contemporary art practice
• Creating a reflective journal to demonstrate development of ideas in a critical way
• Presenting ideas/work to a panel
• Producing a body of work which does not need to culminate in specific outcomes but does include an informal group display of key artworks.

Please note: as our courses are reviewed regularly, course content module choices may change from the details given here.

Learn more about our Artist Teacher students and what they like about studying the course.

Teaching and learning

Teaching is delivered through workshops, crits and seminars held at Oxford Brookes University, Harcourt Hill Campus and the participating Oxford University museums. It involves a programme of occasional whole day intensive sessions with online resource-based learning.

Approach to assessment

Module 1 is assessed through a 3,000 word assignment plus a 1,000 word formative essay plan. This focuses on a project run in a professional setting where students support learners to embed interpretation into a contemporary art project.

Module 2 focuses on making one's own visual practice and is assessed partly through a portfolio of evidence, a reflective journal and an individual presentation to tutors.

Specialist facilities

Opportunities to engage with contemporary interpretations of the Pitt Rivers collection with visual practitioners is a key feature of this programme.  

The 2019-20 programme will begin with students working directly with a contemporary practitioner in the Pitt Rivers focusing on aspects of the collection.  Pitt Rivers education staff will also provide the opportunity to engage with interpretation of the collection.  Additional opportunities to work with practitioners is embedded throughout Artist Teacher Practice, often working with new pedagogical approaches which can be utilised for artistic or educational practices.

The second module involves working consistently with artist tutor Dionne Freeman, who is a successful practising artist working in art education. Dionne will tutor you in developing a new portfolio of personal artistic practice and engage you in small group critiques to support the development of your ideas.

The art studio at the Harcourt Hill Campus includes a mac suite and access to the studio in the evenings and weekends. Students can negotiate the use of these facilities out of school/office hours.

Field trips

Opportunities are provided for you to work in partnership with Pitt Rivers Museum and across the University Museums Oxford. This involves working with visual practitioners and artist educator specialists, focusing on interpretation of contemporary art, craft and/or design.

Additional Costs

There is an additional cost on the double module Developing Personal Artistic Practice, this will be £100.00 to purchase additional materials to complete the double module.

Attendance pattern

All face-to-face sessions will occur either in school holidays or on Saturdays.

Programme changes

On rare occasions we may need to make changes to our course programmes after they have been published on the website. For more information, please visit our Changes to programmes page.

Tuition fees

Home/EU - part time fee: 2019/20: £1,990 2020/21: £2,365

Please be aware that some courses will involve some additional costs that are not covered by your fees. Specific additional costs for this course, if any, are detailed in the 'This course in detail' window above.

Questions about fees?
Contact Student Finance on:
+44 (0)1865 483088
finance-fees@brookes.ac.uk

Funding and scholarships

Entry requirements

Applicants need to be working in art education in some capacity. It is preferable that candidates have a first degree in education or an art-related practice, although this can be negotiated according to individual circumstance. Applicants do not need Qualified Teacher Status.

How to apply

Careers

Students who have completed or are completing the programme have found career progression in the following ways:

• Additional management responsibility within the school/department, such as head of department
• Progression from arts co-ordinator in primary school to Senior Lecturer in Education (primary art)
• Engagement in further arts-based master's programmes
• Opportunity to contribute significantly to arts based-awards developed within educational settings, such as Arts Award and Arts Mark
• Artist in residence opportunities
• Presentation of research projects at the national NSEAD conference
• Opportunity to publish research projects in NSEAD publications
• Opportunity to present visual arts research at national conferences.
• Opportunity to exhibit artwork in public spaces.

There is a route towards developing visual art education doctoral work at Oxford Brookes University as a result of the completion of the MA programme.

How Brookes supports postgraduate students

Supporting your learning

From academic advisers and support co-ordinators to specialist subject librarians and other learning support staff, we want to ensure that you get the best out of your studies.

Research highlights

Programme Lead: Rachel Payne is a Senior Lecturer in Education at Oxford Brookes University. Currently undertaking an Educational Doctorate her research interest is in exploring how learners make meaning when working with creative practitioners and in cultural contexts such as museums and galleries. Rachel is also the Vice President of the NSEAD and is actively involved in championing arts based education nationally.

Artist Tutor: Dionne Barber is a freelance artist from Oxford. Her practice focuses on working with others, sharing skills and facilitating projects for people to express themselves through the visual arts. Specialising in spatial and self-awareness, Dionne uses her expressive approaches to deliver learning and self-awareness, as well as teaching to inspire, engage and enthuse others.

Dionne currently delivers training and specialised consultancy work on how to use the arts to reach more vulnerable groups and transform attitudes and spaces. She has exhibited her work in London, Amsterdam, The Pitt Rivers Museum and Oxford Botanic Gardens. She has also project managed various group shows including The John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University of Natural History and the Harcourt Arboretum. Dionne has worked on the Artist Teacher Scheme since August 2008.

Sustained excellence in research and publication has ensured that a significant proportion of our School of Education staff were entered for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) in 2014 (UoA 25). Almost 90% of our research was deemed to be of international merit, with around one half either ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’. Contributions to the REF were spread across all of our research groups.

Our research aims to create impact on contemporary educational issues - supporting knowledge creation and developing innovative approaches to researching pedagogic practices. The School’s research strategy functions at all spatial scales, from local to global. We publish our highest quality research in leading peer-reviewed journals. Emeritus, Honorary and Visiting Research Fellows contribute to our research programmes and outputs.

The School holds two major research conferences each year - the School of Education Research Conference and the EdD Colloquium. Our Research Seminar Series (which attracts both internal and external speakers) runs annually - all students are invited to attend. We also organise a number of conferences, lectures, seminars and debates, some of which have an international reach.

Members of the School are engaged in a variety of funded and unfunded research projects; we have previously enjoyed prestigious funded scholarships (such as the Fulbright – Peabody scholarship) and, when feasible, offer funded Research Studentships to doctoral applicants. Our Centre for Educational Consultancy and Development (CECD) regularly secures consultancy and research money.

As might be expected in such a research active school, many staff are engaged as editors, editorial board members, or reviewers for various peer reviewed academic and professional journals, as well as online journals.

View all staff profiles for School of Education

Research areas and clusters

The School of Education at Oxford Brookes University is a thriving centre for educational research and teacher professional development. Students on master's level programmes therefore join a large research community comprising researchers at all levels of higher education study.

The School’s six research groups reflect a thriving research community of academics, scholars and students. They exist to encourage engagement in research, publication, conference presentations, seminars and workshops. These groups focus on:

• Inclusion and Wellbeing
• Policy, Partnership and Leadership
• STEAM pedagogy and learning
• Humanistic Perspectives on Education
• Early Years
• Applied Linguistics.

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