This doctoral study concerns itself with the emergent identity formation of art student teachers: the knowledge and cultural systems [including TV and movies] through which art teaching identity conceives itself, and the ontological consequences [affects on art student teachers’ collective and self (dis)identifications] that evolve from those identifications. I examine how media representations of arts educators might act as a catalyst to help unfold the perceptions and desires student teachers have and how they affect how art education and art educators’ professional identities get imagined by student teachers. Specifically, I consider them as becoming-teacher, the space or movement in between their state of being a student and their state of being a teacher. I do not look at them as students in the University, nor do I look at them as teachers in the classroom, rather, I attempt to understand the chaos of the transition and dynamism in between these two states—the very plane of immanence within which they are currently situated.
In order to understand the movement of becoming-teacher, the methodology of the study includes individual interviews with three art student teachers and a group interview with the same three participants that took place after watching several pre-selected DVD clips of popular Hollywood movies and a TV series featuring arts educators. The DVD clips were shown to help answer the main research question which is: How can popular visual culture representations of arts educators be used as a catalyst to unfold student teachers’ unconscious pedagogical desires and fantasies about teaching art? Using a content analysis approach, I construct three categories of pedagogical fantasies that art student teachers may possess and/or employ with partial regard to the type of teacher they are becoming or desire to become/be recognized as. These pedagogical fantasies, of 1) subject-supposed-to-know, 2) student enchantment, and 3) ego-identification, support their desires and exist as necessary vehicles for turning their teaching realities into seemingly (deceptively) coherent wholes. These pedagogical fantasies support the student teachers’ desires for power/recognition, love/connections, and salvation/social justice.
Employing both Lacanian psychoanalysis and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy, I consider the affective investments student teachers might develop/employ in their teacher identities as well as how they may (re)negotiate those identities. Specific importance is given to exploring what might happen in those moments when art student teachers begin to realize their pedagogical fantasies about teaching (art) are merely (deceptive) illusions. To conclude, I suggest that teacher educators can use fantasy and desire as an impetus for discussion about/working through the anxieties of the profession of teaching art and art teacher identity.