It’s time to report progress on the initial teacher education research we are doing. Our research aims to explore what primary ITE students in England are taught about the arts, for how long, where and by whom. The research is quite complex as we have to get perspectives and information from:

• University course leaders, university arts specialists, university partner schools
• School based course leaders, school based arts specialists
• Teach First course leader and arts specialists

We are also considering whether we can squeeze a small ITE student survey before the end of this school year.  Another possibility, very much dependent on time, is to add in the various support networks run by arts organisations, and subjects associations. 

We will provide the information from the research to several APPG groups that are interested in teacher education and in the arts. While our research is specifically about the arts, it will also shed some light on foundation subjects more generally. 

Can you help?

We are having some difficulty finding the right people to contact in universities and are working our way through several routes to get in contact with all of the ITE courses. We also know of course that everyone is really busy and our request sits alongside many others. 

We are talking with people using a structured interview, but we do also have an alternative – an online survey. If you are a course leader or arts specialist and we haven’t found out how to reach you, and you would like to help, you can complete our online survey. We would be very grateful for your participation. 

Primary university based ITE course leader: 

https://nottingham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/art-in-primary-itt-survey-hei-course-leader

Arts specialist for university based primary ITE course:  

https://nottingham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/art-in-primary-itt-survey-hei-art-specialist

Photo: Tate teachers summer school