Beyond the artist-teacher fantasy: a Lacanian psychoanalytic investigation of K-12 art teachers' artist identities
type: CreativeWork
description: Many who identify as artists become public school art teachers because they see teaching as a noble profession and viable means to earn a living in an art related field. A career in art education also seems to offer the protected time they desire to continue their work as artists. Often those entering the field anticipate that they will be able to create artwork on weekends, during holiday breaks, or over summer vacation. However, once embarking on their careers, these teachers find themselves using free time on teaching related work such as lesson planning, grading, and advising extracurricular activities. Art teachers compromise their art-making time for teaching, ultimately neglecting their art practices. These art teachers long to reconnect with their abandoned art practices and identities as artists while continuing their rewarding work as art teachers, forcing them to straddle two conflicting worlds. Each has its own practices and values that represent two seemingly different identities. This doctoral study investigates the tension between these worlds to explore how might the concept of the artist-teacher be recognized as a fantasy that is necessary for inciting/sustaining pleasure in teaching. To better understand these tensions, this project employs case study methodology to document and describe the personal narratives of four K-12 tenured public school art teachers in the Midwest, who identify as artists. While engaging in similar pursuits of negotiating artist identities while teaching, each art teacher addresses these tensions through an array of different personal and professional experiences. Despite these differences, in semi-structured interviews, the art teachers describe the central tension as an internal conflict between opposing desires—the desire to be seen as artists and the desire to meet normative professional values embedded in teaching discourses. Thus, the conflict between art teachers’ artist and teacher identities could be understood as…
abstract: Many who identify as artists become public school art teachers because they see teaching as a noble profession and viable means to earn a living in an art related field. A career in art education also seems to offer the protected time they desire to continue their work as artists. Often those entering the field anticipate that they will be able to create artwork on weekends, during holiday breaks, or over summer vacation. However, once embarking on their careers, these teachers find themselves using free time on teaching related work such as lesson planning, grading, and advising extracurricular activities. Art teachers compromise their art-making time for teaching, ultimately neglecting their art practices. These art teachers long to reconnect with their abandoned art practices and identities as artists while continuing their rewarding work as art teachers, forcing them to straddle two conflicting worlds. Each has its own practices and values that represent two seemingly different identities. This doctoral study investigates the tension between these worlds to explore how might the concept of the artist-teacher be recognized as a fantasy that is necessary for inciting/sustaining pleasure in teaching. To better understand these tensions, this project employs case study methodology to document and describe the personal narratives of four K-12 tenured public school art teachers in the Midwest, who identify as artists. While engaging in similar pursuits of negotiating artist identities while teaching, each art teacher addresses these tensions through an array of different personal and professional experiences. Despite these differences, in semi-structured interviews, the art teachers describe the central tension as an internal conflict between opposing desires—the desire to be seen as artists and the desire to meet normative professional values embedded in teaching discourses. Thus, the conflict between art teachers’ artist and teacher identities could be understood as…
author: Horwat, Jeff
language: en
keywords: Artist-teacher, psychoanalysis
date published: 2016-07-07T19:53:15Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:26:32Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/90496