Professional Master of Education

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 2103).

The question, ‘what does it mean to teach and make art that is of and for our time?’ anchored this PME cohorts experience of the programme. It was explored through many facets including their design and delivery of curriculum in post primary education, research inquiries and learning encounters that involved peer tutoring, special educational needs placements 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 they think, contextualise and make work as artists informs their methodology as teachers. The Change Lab experience and exhibition in the NCAD gallery in 2018, gave the student teachers the opportunity to do just that. This sought to support the teachers collectively in tackling themes of development education in designing a dynamic art curriculum for second level through their art and design practice. The Change Lab was about the duality that exists between pedagogy and practice from the lens of the artist and, in turn, the activist-educator.